Looking for a new adventure? You've come to the right place.
We're an Amsterdam-based team of 45+ individuals with 15+ nationalities among us! A varied bunch of ‘citizens of the world’ with a range of cool skills and hundreds of thousands of kilometers under our travel belts. And we have something important in common (other than our very well-worn passports):
We want to change the way people travel.
And that's exactly what we're doing, with the travel app to plan, track, and relive trips in a smart and beautiful way.
Polarsteps has over 8 million users already, but for us, this is just the beginning. We have big plans for the future, and so we need even more talented and enthusiastic people to help us on our journey.
Want to know more about us? Here you go.
Your expedition: DevOps at Polarsteps
We’re a small team, doing big things.
If you haven't seen our app yet, go ahead and check it out — you'll see that we care (a lot) about providing a seamless, top-quality user experience for every one of our travelers. And it is this that has got us ratings of 4.8* and 4.7* on the app stores (where we’ve been featured multiple times). But it doesn’t stop there — not only did Google create
this awesome video about us, but we’ve also been mentioned in two of Apple’s WWDC keynote speeches!
We’ve got an impressive past but we’re even more excited for the future — and the impact you can make from day one is huge, with everything you ship affecting millions of users.
As our user base continues to grow at an impressive pace, platform performance and scalability are calling out for your expertise. If you enjoy optimizing and automating complex systems, we have an exciting opportunity waiting for you.
It's not just about accommodating user growth; it's about creating an experience that leaves both users and developers impressed. So, being our Senior DevOps Engineer, you’ll play a vital part in shaping the future of our platform.
Since you'll be the first DevOps Engineer joining our backend team, this means that you'll be operating in a stand-alone role within this specialty for a while; a typical startup set-up, with a broad scope and impact!
If you are a proactive, strategic, and pragmatic problem solver with a passion for automation and optimization, we'd love to hear from you!
Your itinerary
What your journey at Polarsteps will look like day-to-day:
You will:
- Collaborate closely with our Engineering team to ensure the stability, scalability, and reliability of our platform.
- Manage the day-to-day operations of our stack on Heroku and AWS.
- Identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement in our architecture — collaborate with the Engineering team and other stakeholders to - develop and execute action plans.
- Enhance and maintain observability, monitoring, and alerting tools to uphold platform stability.
- Handle incident management and responses effectively.
- Participate in the on-call rotation schedule.
- Keep infrastructure and troubleshooting documentation up-to-date.
The equipment in your backpack
What we’re hoping you’ll bring with you:
- 7+ years of experience as a DevOps Engineer, SRE, or Platform Engineer.
- Proficiency in automating architecture and processes on AWS.
- Experience monitoring and troubleshooting issues on a similar stack to ours (e.g., Python, PostgreSQL (RDS), RabbitMQ on Heroku and - AWS).
- Experience with optimizing SQL databases; you should be comfortable diving deep into PostgreSQL, from sizing and provisioning to understanding slowness and analyzing queries.
- Proven ability to scale infrastructure to accommodate growing workloads.
- Strong communication skills to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
- Demonstrated autonomy in problem-solving and decision-making.
- Fluent in shell scripting and programming languages such as Python, Ruby, Go, or Rust. While this isn't a primary development role, you should be comfortable making backend code changes to facilitate automation and solutions.
- Pragmatic approach to balancing quick solutions with long-term, sustainable ones.
Bonus points if you’re:
- Experienced in migrating platforms from Heroku to AWS.
- Familiar with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools like Terraform and/or Cloudformation.
- Knowledgeable of platform security best practices.
1st class extras
Some cool things to make the journey extra sweet.
- A yearly free flight or train to a random location! Give our Teleporter a spin
here.- A shiny new MacBook to work your magic on.
- Hybrid working. Split your time between the office and your home, as you see fit.
- An extensive home office set-up — everything from noise-canceling headphones to a standing desk.
- 30 days of vacation (for adventures or sitting on the couch, it's up to you).
- Two paid Culture Days for days that are important to you, but not recognized by the official Dutch calendar.
- The option to switch up your zoom background by working from another country for up to 8 weeks a year.
- A personal development budget for that curious mind of yours!
- A pension plan to help you save for those around-the-world retirement trips.
- Delicious daily office lunches.
- Awesome monthly parties, as well as team trips away.
- A lively office in downtown Amsterdam, with travel costs reimbursed.
- Free Polarsteps Travel Books to contain all your far-flung adventures.
At Polarsteps, we believe the best products are built by people as diverse as the travelers using our apps! That's why we specifically encourage people underrepresented in the tech industry to apply for a role with us. Because we believe that diversity — be it age, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, ethnicity, or gender identity — makes both the world and the workplace better.
Think this is the path for you? Find out more about how we hire.