[Electronic Music] Lead API Engineer (Rails)
Proton
Proton builds software & services that power over 2000 independent electronic music labels, with over 1M plays per day on Spotify alone. Our core business is digital music distro: helping our clients deliver their catalog to DJ stores like Beatport and streaming platforms like Spotify, while also helping them monetize on social media networks like YouTube & Facebook. Our current focus is bringing DJ Mixes to Spotify & Apple.
The crew that runs Proton also run their own record labels, produce their own tracks, and many of us are DJs too. We're passionate about music and have built Proton to help solve problems that we face every day as music makers and lovers ourselves. Meet the team here!About the Role:
As a small company, most of Proton’s team wears many hats & take on a range of responsibilities. For this position, we’re looking for a senior/lead back-end (Rails) engineer to help build & maintain our Rails API. Full stack engineers are also welcome to apply.
Key Responsibilities
- API Development - Ongoing development of our Rails API that powers our DJ mix, promo pool, and label distribution platform.
- Audio Fingerprinting Infrastructure - Help build out the portion of our Rails API that integrates with our audio fingerprinting tech, to help identify tracks in a DJ Mix so they can be distributed to streaming platforms.
- API Migration from PHP to Rails - Help with the migration & development of our CMS (content management system) from a legacy PHP backend to a Rails API.
Requirements & Nice to Haves
- Real world experience working in Rails.
- Experience writing unit tests (Rspec) and integration tests
- Experience with relational databases (SQL)
- [Big Plus] Experience with PHP, or willingness to learn.
- [Nice to have] Experience with Linux: setup, configuration, management
- [Nice to have] Experience with Google Cloud Services
- [Nice to have] JavaScript (React, Cypress, Gulp, Webpack, Node)
Our Stack
- Rails + PHP
- MySQL
- Docker
- Google Cloud + Legacy Servers
- Redis + Resque
- JavaScript + React
- Algolia
- Circle CI, GitHub, Cypress, Pest
Work Environment: 100% Remote & Independently Motivated
Proton is a fully remote organization, so candidates must be comfortable & able to thrive without in person collaboration or a high level of daily social interactions. Our engineering team is entirely based in North/South America, so time zones are generally aligned. We organize our work in Asana, Slack, and GitHub.
Flexible Full Time, Supporting Lifestyle Design
Proton is committed to supporting lifestyle design & personal freedom for our team. While we have several full time salaried team members working 5 days a week, we also have contractors working flexible 15-30 hour weeks, or full time staff that squeeze their time into 4 days and take Friday off. In other words, we’re intentionally flexible to find a schedule that helps you thrive.
This position is full time, in that we require candidates to not have any other paid engineering work. However, it doesn’t need to be a salaried 5 day a week job: we’re also open to contractors who want a flexible schedule, but don't want to commit to a full 5 day work week.
Self-Starters & Creative Problem Solvers
We’re a team of self-starters who are not afraid to jump into new systems we don’t understand, come up with a proposed solution before asking for help, and always open to trying & learning new things. We’re looking for like minded engineers to join us.
A culture of electronic music lovers & makers.
Many of Proton’s team are also DJs, producers, or label managers. While not a must-have, we’re looking for engineers who are also passionate about electronic music. Each year, our team attends the annual Amsterdam Dance Event together and ideally candidates for this position would be excited to join us on the trip!
Values Alignment
There are a lot of digital distributors out there, but there are none like Proton. Our values set us apart from an industry otherwise obsessed with growth, mired in technical debt, and generally out of touch with actual needs of the electronic music creatives & community.
- Love & Respect for the Music — At Proton, everything we do is based on a passion and respect for the music & the creatives who make it. While this may sound cheesy, and any music company would say it, these are not hollow words: our love for the music guides everything we do. Our track record speaks volumes: see our greatest hits below!
- Lead with Integrity & Vision — Proton was born out of a lack of transparency, accountability, and technical leadership in the rest of the electronic music industry. We were upset artists weren’t getting paid fairly, but quickly learned why: it was increasingly difficult for label managers to actually do that in a digital era without the right tools. From our inception, we’ve been devoted to leading the industry forward with a vision for what needs to change, with creative & timely solutions that solve real problems & build trust with artists, music labels, DJs, and their fans.
- Grow Sustainably — Like our clients, Proton is a true independent. We’re not owned by another company and we’re also fully bootstrapped: this means we are not beholden to investors. While the rest of our industry (monopolies, startups and private equity backed firms) are obsessed with growth and scale, Proton is devoted to sustainable growth that doesn’t compromise our values. And it’s working: for the last 4 years, our average annual growth has been over 35%.
In practice, this means our company doesn’t aim to grow rapidly at the cost of compromising our values: we often prioritize engineering projects that keep Proton aligned with our values over other projects that might make our work easier & make the company more money. This is key for candidates to understand and embrace.
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