Senior Backend Engineer
(all genders) ☠️
Are you an experienced Backend Engineer with a taste for adventures on the high seas of US parcel shipping? Do you enjoy solving real-world problems with a healthy dose of pirate spirit? We are team Fancy, we are hiring, and we'd love to hear from you!
Summary
Team: Fancy (product team, shipping domain)
Position: Senior Backend Engineer (all genders)
Location/Remote-Work: This is a hybrid role: work from home as much as you like, but close enough to join us in person for our team meetings - like our retrospectives every three weeks. During your onboarding, we'd love to see you at our home port a bit more often!
Languages: German and English (B2 is the minimum level for both)
Your Role
We're searching for a seasoned backend engineer to join our cross-functional product team "Fancy", named after an old pirate ship from the 17th century.
Here, you’ll help us build on our modern, user-friendly web application using PHP, React, and TypeScript, with your focus on the backend. You'll work closely with your fellow pirates from engineering, product management, and design, and you'll dive into product discovery yourself: sparking ideas, sitting in on user interviews, and translating customer and support feedback into real world improvements.
We work in self-organized teams, so we're counting on team players who bring their own initiative. You'll help shape how we work together and take ownership of far more than just your code. You can have a real voice in decisions, help set priorities, and nurture a culture where learning and experimenting go hand in hand. At Pirate Ship, you don't just swab the deck.
What We're Looking For
You are a seasoned backend engineer or a full-stack engineer with a strong backend leaning. Ideally, you bring 6+ years of experience aboard.
Must-Haves:
- PHP8
- SQL/MySQL
- Understanding of object-oriented programming (OOP)
- Understanding of domain-driven design (DDD)
- Understanding of distributed systems and asynchronous data processing
- Experience with unit and integration tests (PHPUnit, Codeception, Cypress)
- Fluency in git and corresponding workflows, CI/CD (Gitlab, Docker)
- Understanding of design patterns, and best practices for clean code
- Experience with agile software development practices
Nice-to-Haves:
- Experience with TypeScript
- Experience with Apollo/GraphQL
- Experience with functional programming in JavaScript (React)
- Experience with NoSQL databases and key-value stores, e.g., Redis
- Knowledge of security best practices, fraud detection, and penetration testing
- Experience in product-oriented development
You can check out our full tech stack in our Tech Radar.
Mastering every area is not necessary. What matters most is that you share our values and are a good fit with our crew. We value personal growth and provide the space for it. Strong English language skills are essential, as we regularly communicate with colleagues in the US and write documentation in English. At work, we communicate mostly in German, but we are also able to express ourselves in English. If you speak pirate that wouldn’t hurt either – YYYAAAARRRRrrrrrr!
The Team
Team Fancy charts a safe course for merchants through the choppy waters of US parcel shipping. We create pricing transparency, help with rate calculation, and make the checkout experience smooth enough that our customers keep sailing back to our home port. In short: we own the customer journey all the way until the shipping label is ready and everything's set for the voyage ahead.
Here's some of what we're currently working on:
- Integration of new APIs with failover/high-availability capabilities
- Discovery/Implementation of new features to support our customer journey
- Architectural improvements following DDD and Hexagonal principles
- Expanding and improving our test suite (Codeception, Cypress)
- Monitoring, RUM, and log management with Datadog
- Improvements to user flow and accessibility
Diversity
We're committed to diverse teams and especially welcome applications from women and non-binary people.
Who we are
Since our founding in 2014, we’ve been disrupting the package shipping market in the US with our software.
Our mission is to make the complex parcel shipping process as simple, user-friendly, and affordable as possible. We operate in multiple locations in the US and serve the American market exclusively. However, the development of our web app has always had its home base in Hamburg-Ottensen.
Together with our overseas colleagues, we work daily to deliver the best possible product for our users. This is what we're valued for, and it’s the wind in our sails.
Our Values & Culture
As an owner-managed company with a crisis-proof product in a growth-oriented market, we can combine high-quality standards, attention to detail, and an attractive working environment with great conditions. We believe creativity and room for personal ideas provide the optimal environment for innovation, progress, and quality. Trust and helpfulness, combined with many opportunities to take on responsibility, enable personal growth. This means working with little hierarchy and a pull, not push, approach to tasks.
This agile, self-organized way of working requires a high level of personal responsibility and enthusiasm for close teamwork. We give each other quick feedback and aren’t afraid of conflict, but always find fair, solution-oriented consensus. In doing so, we learn a lot from each other, and value diversity as opportunity.
To ensure long-term collaboration, we do everything possible to make family and work compatible.
What Doesn’t Fit
You won’t be happy here if you expect complete, end-to-end processes like in large corporations. On our ship, some things are still not perfectly tied down, but we work together to improve systematically. You’ll also be unhappy if you’re a lone wolf, apathetic, or expect to be told exactly what to do. And if you happen to be a macho, fascist, or conspiracy theorist, you’ll be quickly keelhauled!
Anything Else?
We haven’t listed the usual perks like free fruit, beer, foosball, or ball pits. If you’d like those, let’s chat. We either already have them or can make them happen!
We offer the following conditions:
- We’re hiring in Hamburg and surrounding areas, as we regularly meet in person for team retrospectives and other special events, such as our planning days
- Part-time work is possible
- We have a flexible working time model
- 30 days of vacation
- Regarding development environments: we use macOS – Windows isn’t supported and isn’t planned. Most of us use PHPStorm, Vim, or VS Code.
- We offer an extensive budget of EUR 3000 per year for learning through conferences or trainings
Next Steps
If you think you’d be a good fit for our team, feel free to reach out via anheuern@pirateship.com
What to expect
- Introduction call (50-60min): Spend time with our Engineering Manager, align on the responsibilities of the role, and answer your questions.
- Get to know the team (50-60min): You'll meet the Software Engineers and Product Manager on the team and learn more about the current challenges.
- Technical Deep-Dive discussion (60-90min): You'll get to solve a little coding challenge at home as a conversation starter for a technical Deep-Dive discussion afterward.
- Offer to come on board (30 min): At this point, the team is excited about you.
