Senior Ruby Software Engineer

Published on January 15, 2025

About us We’re the indie media company helping millions of people succeed at work. And we're on a roll, growing faster than any company you'll have worked at before. For the past five years, we've benefited from consistent triple-digit growth. We make content - from in-depth guides to training courses to members forums that help people succeed at work. We support organizations through better-led, better-equipped teams that benefit from smarter buying decisions. We've built a portfolio of influential online brands with community memberships, products, and strategic partnerships that work together to seamlessly connect people with the knowledge, information and tools they need to succeed. About the Role: As a Software Engineer at BWZ you are responsible for the whole development process, starting with discovering, planning and developing, ending with testing and deploying. You will work in an environment that offers freedom with responsibility and encourages simplicity with risk-takin

About us
We’re the indie media company helping millions of people succeed at work. And we're on a roll, growing faster than any company you'll have worked at before. For the past five years we've benefited from consistent triple digit growth.

We make content - from in-depth guides, to training courses, to members forums that help people succeed at work. We support organizations through better led, better equipped teams that benefit from smarter buying decisions.

We've built a portfolio of influential online brands with community memberships, products, and strategic partnerships that work together to seamlessly connect people with the knowledge, information and tools they need to succeed.

About the Role:
We’re looking for a Senior Ruby Software Engineer to join our remote team of experienced engineers who develop and maintain our main systems and micro-services architecture. The core Rails applications you will focus on, power our group's media network and form the heart of a mesh of sites that is being used by millions of users and software advertisers across hundreds of industries.

In this role you can work remotely or in a flexible regime, if you are in Curitiba, Brazil. Keep in mind that you will be collaborating with teams both in Europe and in the North American PST time zone, so your hours will need to be at least partially compatible with those locations.
Who you are:
  • You are a Software Engineer with 5+ years of experience in web development projects.
  • You have experience working with front-end and back-end development.
  • You don’t like repetitive tasks, so you automate everything you can.
  • You are good at managing your own working time.
  • You are curious about how things are done and how they work.
  • You like to test new things, you don’t mind if it doesn't work and move on.
What you'll be doing (responsibilities):
  • Design, build and maintain efficient, reusable and reliable code
  • Ensure the best possible performance and quality for our code
  • Identify bottlenecks and bugs and devise solutions to these problems
  • Help maintain code quality, organization and automation
Our stack:
  • Frameworks: Rails, EmberJS, Bootstrap
  • Languages: Ruby, Python
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis
  • Tools: Linux (Ubuntu, Debian), Chef, Memcached, Sidekiq, Git, SASS, HTML, CSS, AWS (S3, EC2, RDS, etc.), Sinatra, JavaScript
How your success will be measured:
  • Ownership & Proactivity
  • Quality & Delivery
  • Development Speed
  • Communication
Your skillset includes:
  • 5+ years of development experience
  • Proficient in Ruby and at least one other programming language (Python, PHP, etc)
  • Experience with Rails or a similar MVC framework (django, symfony)
  • Experience with PostgreSQL or other relational database
  • Good understanding of object oriented programming
  • Good understanding of Chef/Puppet or a similar configuration management tool
  • Comfortable following the best practices like testing (rspec), refactoring and writing clear, self-documenting code
Nice to haves:
  • Ideally experience with AWS (S3, EC2, CloudFront, etc.)
  • Ideally experience with Ember.js or a similar Javascript framework
Salary Statement:
This contract position is available as either a fully remote or hybrid position if you are located close enough to our coworking space in Curitiba. The role offers a competitive daily rate in USD. Compensation is determined through interviews and a review of education, experience, knowledge, skills, abilities of the applicant, equity with other team members, and alignment with market data.

About Us:
Black and White Zebra is a rapidly growing, independent media tech company headquartered in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Since 2012, our portfolio of influential digital publications has been helping millions of people succeed at work.

Our brands cover project management, product management, people management, customer experience, quality assurance and others, with the goal of connecting people with the knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed professionally.

We got our start in 2011 as The Digital Project Manager blog, founded by our CEO Ben Aston. Since then, we’ve grown into an international team of 70+ creators, strategists, and innovators with a portfolio of more than 14 online publications. We enjoy an impact-driven environment that combines the agility of a startup with the creativity of an agency and the diversity of a global company.

We’ve recently ranked #30 in The Globe and Mail’s Fastest Growing Company list and received a CMI award for Best Digital Publication for The Digital Project Manager—and we’re listed in both Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers, and Best Employers in BC.

All of this growth is driven by our commitment to our mission: In a world of evolving skills, practices, and technology, we’re creating a playbook for the future of work and empowering communities to create it with us.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion: 
Black and White Zebra is an equal opportunity employer and considers all candidates for employment regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, age, disability, marital status, military or veteran’s status (including protected veterans, as may be required by federal law), sexual orientation or any other category protected by law. We celebrate all backgrounds and attributes that continue to help make our team impactful, iterative, adaptable, and fun!