Backend Systems Engineer

At xneelo (Pty) Ltd, our backend software engineers are tasked with providing a world class API layer between the customer and their hosting services. As a backend software engineer you will be responsible for building and maintaining secure, consistent and reliable infrastructure and services that enable our customers to manage their hosting services in a dynamic and ever-changing environment. You  will be part of a cross-functional engineering team that will architect both the services and underlying hardware/software supporting infrastructures to provide and support these API's.

Our position as a large-scale, mass-market hosting company comes with a very unique set of complex problems that requires a team that is able to creatively solve these challenges in an innovative fashion. As a potential candidate for this team, you will be expected to tackle problem spaces that require you to apply industry-standard software development practices, expand our CI implementation, solve scaling problems, and many more in order to provide a reliable and performant platform that our customers have come to expect.

Product development at xneelo looks to the engineering of the backend infrastructure as a vital component of being able to delight our customers - by being part of transforming complexity into click-of-a-button simplicity.

We are passionate about frequent, iterative delivery of high-quality software and aim to build lasting solutions using Agile principles and the latest technology available.  

We work together in autonomous teams that take full responsibility for their own part of the xneelo ecosystem and require commitment to and understanding of the Agile (Scrum) development philosophy. The software development team is a fully remote team.

The ideal candidate will have a passion for

• Technology to serve operational and client requirements

• Programming, open source Technologies and IT in general

• Optimal systems and simple procedures

• Agile development and a self-organising team environment

• Sharing ideas and innovation

• Test-driven development mindset

A high level of proficiency in the following

• Backend and API software design & development

• Ruby (language currently in use), Java, Go, Python or PHP (we’re happy for you to transition to Ruby)

• Database design and architecture (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Mongodb, etc.)

• Software development within the Linux/Unix environment

• Strong familiarity with Linux fundamentals (Debian/Ubuntu etc)

• Agile development practices (team focus, continual improvement, automated tests, refactoring, continuous integration, pair programming)

• Object-oriented programming

• Effective communication

• Self-motivated and self-managing

• Understanding the true cost of a temporary solution and pursuing projects to their full completion

Advantageous skills

• Configuration management or code deployment at scale (Puppet, Ansible, Capistrano)

• Familiarity with containers (Docker or lxc)

• Container orchestration knowledge (Helm charts, Kubernetes deployment)

What you’ll do

• Solve interesting and large-scale backend technical challenges

• Be part of figuring out how we get better at what we do

• Look for opportunities to innovate and optimise

• In collaboration with the Product Owner and stakeholders, understand the needs of the customer in order to deliver innovative, robust solutions

Qualifications

• BSc or BTech majoring in Computer Science will be advantageous, however your ability to demonstrate your track record of writing quality backend software in production is what ultimately counts

• 5+ years software development experience

At xneelo, our sincere desire is that our team members are inspired by their success and able to operate with a high level of discretion and autonomy guided by our principles and values. We hope this appeals to you and look forward to hearing from you.