Senior Frontend Engineer
Job Description
About the Job
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. To accomplish that vision, we need to make TalkJS fully customizable and still fantastic out of the box.
Our out-of-the-box chat UI components are a unique selling point of TalkJS. It's a great feature, but we're perfectionists so deep inside we know that it can be way greater still. We're looking to extend the team with someone who can really lift it to another level. Our current frontend stack is primarily React/TypeScript though it's constantly evolving.
On top of that we want to make it 10x easier for our customers (developers and designers) to tweak the chat UI exactly the way they want with minimal coding effort. Our humble goal is to ship a product that's super simple to install, fantastic to use immediately, and infinitely customizable. Simple and customizable seem deeply at odds with each other, but we think we can pull it off. If you're up for the challenge of marrying the two, then this is for you.
We offer tremendous freedom and responsibility + work in a remarkably decent codebase (for a startup 😬). At TalkJS we like to think that we're good at striking a balance between meticulous code and shipping quickly. If that sounds like your kind of environment, then this is for you.
Our ideal candidate:
- has broad technical interests
- deeply understand the web platform
- likes to design great APIs/libraries for other programmers
- has demonstrable experience writing single-page web applications
- knows at least 2 programming languages well
- likes to work together with the team to make our product better across the board
Bonus points if you know mobile tech too (iOS/Android/React Native/Flutter).
Salary varies with skills & experience and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
About TalkJS
Product driven
We care tremendously about quality.
We want TalkJS to be the what every developer thinks of when building chat features, a bit like what Stripe has become for payments. This means the product has to be excellent on all fronts. To make this happen, we hire great engineers and give them the maximum amount of freedom and trust to ship fantastic SDKs, APIs, and features.
Independent people solving challenging problems
When we say “maximum amount of freedom”, we really mean it. At TalkJS you’re the “product manager” of your own work and you run it all the way, alone or together, from inception until it’s in our customers’ hands. Work flexible hours, from anywhere. No micromanagers, almost no meetings, and lots of collaboration.
Key culture highlights
Healthy work/life balance
Because you can't ship great stuff when you're tired and overworked.
Respectful working culture
Because only constructive feedback makes the product better.
Responsibility
Every team member proactively proposes and ships improvements, which lets us skip a lot of the usual project management overhead.
Small team, little hierarchy
Because a few fast movers can get as much done as four layers of management with hundreds of bureaucracy-shackled team members.
A no-nonsense working culture
To learn more about our culture, here are a couple of blog posts you might be interested in:
CEO Egbert discussing the origin of our Culture
When I was a dreamy wantrepreneur, my idea of running a startup involved foosball tables, slides, unlimited book budgets, and frequent company parties. However, when Joshua and I actually started TalkJS…
Developer Steven discussing his experience onboarding at TalkJS
Recently, I joined an organisation with some radical ideas about company culture. Let's look back over my time at TalkJS so far, and discuss the things that stood out to me — both good and bad.
Would you like to know more?
Some more background that might interest you: Technology Stack and Tooling (1)
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, show us an app your built (or helped build) and an API/library you designed (on any platform). Also, if you found us on a job site, could you let us know which? Thanks! 🙂
