Before we dive into explaining this amazing opportunity, we don’t want to waste your time. So, if you don’t have Australian citizenship or permanent residency, or if you are representing a recruitment agency or an offshore/provider, then this is not for you. We understand you may be an awesome candidate, or have access to great candidates, but we will not consider such applications at this time.
Meeco is looking for a Technical Team Lead for our Australian team, where you can help shape the API-of-Me.
What is the API-of-Me¹ you might ask?
It is an emerging platform that enables the collection, protection and exchange of personal data. Our main objective is to provide a suite of developer tools and APIs to companies and organizations to allow them to build privacy first solutions.
A secure data enclave that allows people to keep their data safe and share information with the people and organisations they trust.We are passionate about building a new economy where data is not refined, as is done with oil, for power and profit, of a few mega corporations. Rather, we are committed to finding a new equilibrium where people and organizations enter a win-win relationship by building mutual trust in how data is collected, protected and shared.Read our manifestoto learn more.
Don't hesitate to apply, no matter what your background is. We would like to build a diverse team, and we welcome everyone. Our team is spread across Australia and Belgium, and collectively we come from diverse cultural backgrounds, speaking a range of languages, each with a unique personal data story.
About the Role
We are a global team of 25 people based in Australia, Belgium and the UK.The platform team currently consists of 17, responsible for designing, implementing, supporting and documenting several services that, all together, form the backbone of our platform.
Currently our technology stack consists mainly of several Ruby on Rails, Elixir and Java components for the backend services. For frontend, we primarily use Javascript and Dart for smartphone and decentralised applications, based upon blockchain and distributed ledger technology.
We’re a company that embraces innovation, so it is likely that our technology stack will continue to evolve and change. We are not averse to adding other technologies if the need arises for specific services.
We take pride in building software that is easy to understand, clean, well-structured and properly tested. We have formed our own opinions on how to write good code that are a result of programming for more than two decades. Sometimes, we have even found ourselves going against the popular vote on several topics.
- We favour the explicit over the implicit
- We treat frameworks as tools and not as an unquestionable authority
- We embrace the relational database and its possibilities and as such treat it as a first order citizen.
The following will help you understand what you'll be doing on a day to day basis:
- Being a technical leader; mentoring, triaging problems, offering a guiding hand
- Coming up with a detailed plan on how to approach high-level requirements including tasks and estimations
- Supporting the team to allocate and distribute the work according to individual capabilities
- Designing and implementing new services with business logic called from existing & new endpoints
- Investigating bug reports that inevitably occur, helping a colleague identify problems
- Reviewing and approving Pull Requests
- Implementing data integrations to enable end-users access public and private data, this might include open banking, social, health, wearable, weather, travel or IoT data
- Working with the latest W3C & DIF Standards for implementations for distributed ledger implementations including Verifiable Credentials, Distributed Identity including Self-Sovereign Identity
- Working on leading-edge payments solutions including micro-payments and tokens
- Contributing to a more transparent, open and trust-based personal data eco-system.
About You
We are looking for someone who has a deep understanding of how to write RESTful resources exposed as APIs, cares about clean code (a lot) and is ready to learn (a lot). It is a big plus if you have experience writing these web-based applications in Ruby on Rails and/or in building decentralized applications in blockchain technologies.
We build applications for the internet of tomorrow, a place where personal data is placed right at the center, protected start to finish. This means we often tackle questions that have no established technical solutions. Google won’t help you as much in this case as it requires a combination of existing tech and emerging solutions. One class of technology that we are exploring and see great potential is in the distributed ledger space. A good understanding and professional experience building decentralised applications or dealing with DLT is a big plus.
Meeco is an environment with more questions than answers. If you are drawn to original problems, which require imaginative solutions, you’ll feel right at home. This does require you to be open for and comfortable learning new things and develop proof-of-concepts on short timelines, identifying the tasks that matter the most.
In addition to established experience as a developer, we expect that you have at least 2+years experience in steering a team. using an agile methodology, be it scrum or a derivative.
You are able to support our executive team (Technology, Product, Design and CommercialOfficers) in writing up technical proposals, along with translating Meeco’s technical vision into practical goals that support the commercialisation of our products.
The following is our crazy wish-list. It is not necessary that you have all this experience, but the more proven competencies you have will increase your chances of success in the role:
- You have taken lead on directing and implementing solutions to complex, unbounded (technical) problems based on limited scope
- You have a track record of setting direction for teammates
- You know how to take steps in improving the quality of existing and future software
- You are comfortable communicating your ideas both verbally as well as written. We love to create diagrams to describe future systems.
- You have used more than one programming language to build software, which can of course include hobby and passion projects
- We have a soft spot for functional programming, so maybe you have too
- We build both backend and frontend applications, so if you have any relevant frontend programming experience, especially with JavaScript, TypeScript and/or Angular js would be awesome
- You have used languages with built-in concurrency models like Go, Erlang, or Elixir
- If you have a language you love, tell us about it!
- You have a good understanding of what goes on in a RDBMS, especially Post gresql. You are familiar with devops and Microsoft Azure would be a bonus.
- You know how to use Docker and Kubernetes.
We don’t expect you to know everything from the start and we have a team to show you the ropes. A good set of solid programming skills, natural leadership and to care about our mission is all you need.
You might have a computer science or related degree, or you might not. This is not what we are about. We care about what you know now and how you are improving yourself every day.
This is a job where we support remote work.However, we do have an office at Stone & Chalk at Docklands in Melbourne. Given the leadership and mentoring aspects of the role,-- we would like you to be in the office at least three days a week.At other times you are free to work where you work best.
We have team members in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, London (UK) and spread out in Belgium. An important reality is that this can often mean early mornings or long days.
We have flexible hours, so you can design your day around being an early bird or night owl. For six months of the year the time difference with Europe can feel brutal, and then the other six months when Europe is on summertime it is much easier. However, being able to work across time zones and self directed is a critical aspect of this role.
We value people who can work independently, are able to manage themselves, are supportive to each other and not afraid to ask for help when needed.We love you asking for help!
What We Offer
We pay a competitive start-uppackagebased on your experience and seniority in line with the existing members in the team. As we are still building our foundation team, additional incentives such as Options are available for the right person.
What We Have Achieved
We are early pioneers in the personal data economy and have been campaigning for digital rights, data portability and data control since 2012. You can read more on our achievements and announcements on our blog.
Funding; our founder bootstrapped the company for the first two years before raising private equity. We have runway and revenues, so the focus for us now is building awesome products
Brand & Reputation: We launched our first product into the market in 2014 and have built a strong brand in the personal data community. Search for Meeco on-line and you will see our consistent focus in helping build a global personal data economy. If you would like to know more about our crazy, wonderful, roller-coaster start up journey check out this recent keynote at the MyData Conference in Helsinki, or these recent podcasts such as this on entrepreneurship² or this on identity featuring our founder, Katryna Dow.
Awards: We have won eight international awards in Australia, UK, Netherlands and Germany for personal data management, identity, innovation and FinTech services.
Market: In December 2019 we launched our secure data vault inside KBC’s (Belgium) banking app and next month we are launching a media platform for kids called mIKs-it. These are just two great examples of how enterprises and other start-ups are using our technology to developer better Privacy and Security by Design personal data solutions.
Innovation: Through2020 we doubled our engineering team along with some really interesting blockchain/distributed ledger projects which we are currently productising to launch throughout 2021.
Meeco is Privacy and Security By Design. Security is at the heart of everything we do. We have clear security policies and procedures to ensure everyone understands their responsibilities, so that together we maintain a secure development environment. We run regular security training and are committed to continuous improvement.
How to Apply
By reading this you have reached the end, so if you feel you are the right person for the job, all you have to do is contact us at jointheteam@meeco.me
Please include what you like about the role, why you may want to join, any questions along with your resume and confirmation of your Australian citizenship or residency.
Last time we advertised we had hundreds of applications. Whilst we were delighted it took us a few weeks to consider the long-list and juggle interviews between Australia and Europe. If you meet the criteria, we will be in touch with you as soon as possible.
We’re all looking forward to meeting you soon!
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¹ We have since updated our developer portal. To view an archived copy of our previous developers page click here.
² This podcast is no longer available online. To listen to an archived copy click here.
