Better Stack

Compensation

Full Description

The challenge Read about how we think about software and what it’s like to work here. We’re designing a product by engineers, for engineers. Our CTO, CEO, and COO are all software builders who understand what it takes to craft elegant, efficient, and delightful products. And we’re continuously looking for more amazing engineers to help us create high-quality software with exceptional UX—end to end. You’ll do more than write code. You’ll shape the product user experience, polish user interface, optimize backend performance, benchmark database queries, and ship secure, scalable software. We’re looking for software engineers who, if given enough time, could build Better Stack on their own. This role is not about filling a narrow niche but taking ownership and shipping impactful software that users love. We believe the best software engineers are at least 100x more productive than the average ones, as they can pragmatically switch between different styles of engineering. We don’t think of software engineers as a commodity. What you’ll do • Use AI to aggressively ship high-quality code. We expect you to be on top of the latest tools, models and trends in AI-assisted software engineering. We think that using AI is no longer optional. We expect you to be amazing at prompting, to know when to leverage different models, and to have first-hand experience with Claude Code, Cursor, and opencode among others. At the same time, we expect you know when not to use LLMs and instead debug or design an algorithm by hand. We’re not looking for vibe coders. • You’ll implement, test, and deploy secure, fast, and scalable code in production—independently or with lightweight collaboration. • Work directly with our CTO, CEO, and our designer to deliver end-to-end features, from backend to frontend, within a single day. • Use our modern yet opinionated tech stack—Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Redis, ClickHouse, Redpanda, JavaScript, Vue.js, Tailwind, Docker, and more. • Keep our frontend fast and consider SEO & AEO. • Ship software while maintaining security and performance across the stack—understanding basic web security principles without over-relying on frameworks. • Collaborate asynchronously while avoiding unnecessary meetings. We trust you to manage your time and ship. This might be for you if • Software is your hobby. You’ve written web scrapers for fun, built apps for personal use, or explored side projects to learn new tech. • You love shipping things end-to-end. Styling buttons in the morning, adjusting the database schema at noon, and deploying to production in the afternoon? You’ll like it here. • You value speed and pragmatism. You know how to prioritize and cut the right 5% of a feature to simplify its implementation by 100x. • You take security very seriously, without blindly relying on modern frameworks. • You write fast software. From optimizing SQL queries to reducing frontend reflows and choosing the right number of threads, you’re always looking for ways to keep applications fast. • You’re a generalist. You don’t need to be an expert in every area of software engineering, but you’re comfortable wearing multiple hats and learning quickly. • You care about UI and UX. Pixel-perfect designs and seamless user flows aren’t “just for designers.” Refactoring UI is/would be your go-to guide. • You prefer fewer meetings and more doing instead. Team stand-ups? No thanks. Async tools and clear communication? Yes, please. • It’s great if you’ve worked with our stack but it’s definitely not a requirement. We need you to be flexible about the tools you use. Great software engineers can pick up new stack fast. As far as you worked with some web technologies and at least some SQL databases, you’re just fine! • You agree that software engineers are the artists of our age. Read Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters, one of our favorite books. Who you’ll work with • We consider our team to be a professional sports team. Everyone aims to be the best in the world in what they do. From YC alumni to ex-Google and ex-Shopify colleagues, you’ll be in great company. • Our founders Juraj (CEO) and Veronika (COO), and Tomas (CTO) who remain hands-on and ship code. • Our 1-man design team Juraj jr., and Simon, engineer turned technical product manager, who ensure that every feature you build looks and feels incredible and consistent with the rest of the product.