Senior backend engineer

Salary Competitive

Short pitch

We are looking for a technically strong expert to join our development team to facilitate effective technical decisions and development on the core backend systems and main products. The focus shall include but not be limited by modern digital identity standards (Self Sovereign Identity - SSI), cryptography and blockchain.


Your Responsibilities

  • Work with identity solutions for the future of identity, web 3.0 identity

  • You will support to architect a distributed system for modern digital identity standards

  • You will drive consistent standards and approaches (to write clean, well-structured and documented code, which is reusable, scalable, secure and performant) for our services

  • You will work in a agile way to prototype cutting edge solutions to rapidly test our product hypotheses, and return that learning to the team

  • You will become an expert in decentralised identity, engage with the standards community, and ensure our solutions are delivering value to our customers


Professional skills and experience

We expect you to have 4+ years of backend experience or to demonstrate capacity to clearly and concisely communicate about complex technical, architectural, and/or organizational problems and propose thorough iterative solutions. We will touch upon this during the homework.

  • You have to have proficiency at designing and implementation of distributed systems using the NodeJS stack (TypeScript, ExpressJS/Fastify, Axios)

  • Proficiency in SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g. PostgresSQL, MongoDB and good understanding of pros/cons among different databases)

  • Proficiency with GraphQL

  • Experience with Google Cloud Build CI/CD

  • Experience with test automation frameworks for backend testing (e.g. Jest, Mocha)

  • Experience with Google Cloud architecture

  • Have an interest in observing the stack with structured logging and distributed tracing.


Nice to have

  • It helps to have experience with authentication systems such as OAuth2 and open ID connect

  • Experience with containerization and container orchestration (Docker and Kubernetes preferred) in a cloud environment (Google Cloud preferred)

  • Understanding of frontend engineering (React.js)


Your soft skills

  • What we look for in a person, is someone to match the current team in values and principles. We’re committed generalists, eager learners, conscientious workers, and curators of what’s essential. We’re quick to trust. We see things through. We’re kind to each other and support each other. We reach for responsibility and hold ourselves accountable. We show up for doing the work and for each other

  • Positive attitude towards knowledge sharing within the team

  • Open-minded in working with different cultures and in an agile and remote team environment 

  • Fluent in written and spoken English with an ability to analyse and interpret information remotely

  • Ability to keep up in a fast-paced environment by maintaining good structure in daily work

  • Open to continuous feedback with an openness to each other. It is crucial Because we are in this for the long term

  • Goal-oriented and dedicated approach to work

  • Enjoy interacting with people and customers and soliciting feedback

  • Curiosity and constant willingness to develop new ideas and ways of doing things

  • Enjoy to engage in complex and emerging technology


About the job and company

We are an early-stage startup with all hands on deck and can ensure interesting tech challenges and a great team to work with. From ideation, to production and tracking numbers for impact - we believe in broad team collaboration on all levels to make the best product. As a senior developer you will come in to the team and contribute to all critical functions of Diwala.

So... what do we do?

We create digital solutions for identifying and verifying talent. Our vision is to infuse the global skill market with trust and transparency - to incentivize growth and independence. Our mission is to provide a digital proof of skills for talent around the world. No little task - we know! But we have a lot of fun doing it.


Practicalities

  • We do require that your normal workday has at least 4 hours overlap with the Oslo workday (currently UTC+1) without impinging on your personal/family life. 

  • Our team currently spans, UTC+2, UTC+3, UTC+5:30, UTC-4 The company as a whole works from 4+ cities across 4 countries. 

  • We are an early stage startup, that run with a clear focus. We want to achieve our goals while we strive for a work life balance. Norwegian law say it is expected to work a normal 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. We feel that is a nice balance. But to set expectations, there will be times that require heavier dedication. But expectations are to work a normal 8 hours work day, 5 days a week. 

  • As stated above, work life balance is super important. We have goals we want to achieve and therefore we have decided that there is a flexible vacation policy, you can take as much vacation as possible, but as of now we can only pay for 5 weeks each year, but it is up to you to plan and adjust to the amount of time of vacation days needed for a good work life balance.

How does the process look like

  1. We expect to spend some weeks to review all applications coming in. We say about 1-2 weeks after the application come in.

  2. You’ll hear from us at the latest two weeks after an application has been delivered, about the next step in the procedure, but can hear from us earlier. We are trying to process all incoming applications as fast as possible.

  3. We will do a short coffee chat to get to know you a bit better and align expectations.

  4. Then there will be a small homework assignment, for us to get a quick understanding of what you know,  who you are and your background. That includes coding, communication and architecture. This is to also get a feel of how you will work in a remote culture.

  5. Then on to an interview, where we talk about your place in the job, your current assignment and other important factors to find the right match. There will be no gotchas, no concrete right or wrong answers, or whiteboard coding. 

  6. When you have passed all steps, we take about 3 weeks to make a decision depending on the amount of applicants at the time of your process.


We know this is a lot of work and there’s a lot on the line. It’s a significant career move to consider. We appreciate the generosity and courage that go into giving us this consideration. Our conversation starts with this post. We look forward to hearing from you.

For more information or questions please contact us at snorre@diwala.io

Perks and benefits

This job comes with several perks and benefits

Flexible working hours
Flexible working hours

Time is precious. Make it count. Morning person or night owl, this job is for you.

Equity package
Equity package

Want to be a partner? Look no further.

Skill development
Skill development

We want to take you from good to great.

Unlimited holiday
Unlimited holiday

Take time to relax and reboot when you need it.

Remote work allowed
Remote work allowed

You know how you perform best. Work from your couch, your favorite cafe or abroad when you feel like it.

Work life balance
Work life balance

Carve out time for your kids, friends and personal cider projects.

Working at
Diwala

Diwala is a Norwegian-based company that is focused on building opportunities for youth, addressing the global issue of identity theft and certification fraud. Today, displaced individuals and people in emerging markets are challenged by high costs and slow manual processes to verify the authenticity of their skills, identity and credentials. As a result, these individuals have to deal with tedious and out-dated credentialing processes, and are in some cases forced to repeat years of education. This leads to both loss of productivity and inflated unemployment. Imagine that you had to flee your own home because of war. Like Aıscha Najjar, a Syrian doctor turned refugee immigrated to the United States to pursue her dream of work & a safe home. Yet, due to loss of information, she was forced to repeat medical school in the United States. If she had a verifiable skill identity, she might have had the privilege of practicing medicine without any questions. Aıscha`s story amongst others epitomizes the challenge Diwala is addressing. To tackle this challenge, Diwala has created a platform that enables schools and NGOs to issue skill-based identities, backed by blockchain technology. A skill-ID is a digitally verified record of a person’s educational and work history. Diwala is building an ecosystem of trust, by enabling educational institutions and organizations to safely and digitally issue and verify credentials. This will, in turn, save all parties time, money and build a bridge for global work opportunities for untapped talent. Complementing the platform, Diwala has built an app that allows students to easily receive, store and share credentials of both soft and hard skills. By utilizing a decentralized identity management tool, Diwala’s application will also give people ownership of their data information. Diwala is currently executing pilots regularly, to optimize the features and security of the platform in both Kenya and Uganda. Working with their implementation partner Clarke University in Kampala, Diwala recently issued the first set of skill-identities to both students and administrators. These are the first ever digitally verified certificates backed by decentralized identity and blockchain in Africa

Read more about Diwala

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