Software Engineer at Oxford Abstracts

Software Engineer | Mid->Senior | Remote | GMT +/- 3 hours | £60,000-£100,000

About us 🚀

Oxford Abstracts is a world leader in academic conference software. Powering conferences around the world and over 10,000 events (and counting!)

Our mission is to empower organisers with purpose-built tools and expert support to effortlessly create outstanding academic conferences.

We're a friendly, distributed, team of 15. Founded in 2001, we know our customers well and have widely used products. We are rapidly growing and looking for team members to help us build our product. If you would like to find out more about our team, look at https://oxfordabstracts.com/company/about/

Our values 🤝

• Transparency. We’re open and honest with our clients and each other.
• Customer focus. We listen to our customers and use their feedback to make their experience even better.
• Continual learning. We try new things and adapt as we go, always remembering that no one knows everything!

Tech stack 🖥️

• Purescript. This is our primary language, both frontend and backend.
• Nodejs.  For extending Purescript on the backend.
• GraphQL. Most of our APIs are GraphQL based and we use Hasura extensively.
• Postgres. Our primary DB.
• AWS. We use this for most of our infrastructure.

In our existing codestack we use Purescript extensively as a primary language. Purescript has helped us ship value to our customers at pace and with confidence. We're happy to up-skill new team members who come with an appetite to learn; if you are keen to pick up functional programming, we could be a good match!

The Role 📃

We are looking for a Mid-level to Senior Engineer to join our tech team.

You will work over a variety of our products, ensuring we ship high quality, tested code.

You will work collaboratively with design, product and the broader business to help us shape and decide what to build and how to build it.  

Days at Oxford Abstract are varied and there is space for you to define this role with your own expertise. 

Examples of recent projects include:

• Building a product to design and distribute conference certificates.
• Building a ticketing system for academic events.
• Putting all of our infrastructure in code, using OpenTofu (Terraform).

The role is fully remote, based anywhere in timezone GMT +/- 3 hours.

For this position, the salary range is £60,000-£100,000 depending on your experience.

About you 👉

• You are comfortable with working in a remote environment in a relatively small team
• You have a hands-on, problem solving approach
• You have excellent technical and non-technical communication skills
• You’re a self-starter: you thrive on taking ownership of initiatives with limited oversight
• You are able to build and ship end to end product functionality
• You are comfortable working closely with our product manager and designer
• You are comfortable asking for help
• You are comfortable cooperating with all areas of the organisation

Technical must-haves ✅

• Experience with, or willingness to learn, Purescript
• Willingness to try new technologies and get stuck in
• Basic SQL knowledge or a willingness to learn
• Experience in frontend development
• Good working knowledge of Git

Technical nice-to-haves ➕

• Purescript
• Purescript halogen
• Functional programming
• NodeJS
• AWS infrastructure
• Hasura
• Tailwind CSS
• Bash
• Testing Library
• Playwright

Benefits 💆

• 30 days holiday a year, including bank holidays
• 4 day week summers (June and July) for 5 days pay for full time employees
• 5 annual learning days
• £1,000 annual personal development budget
• Work from home budget
• Fully remote
• Flexible working hours and days
• Annual, full company, abroad get together
• Option to work 4 days a week (with adjusted salary)
• For those employed on the UK payroll we offer additional parental and pension benefits

The hiring process  📅

• Zoom screening
• Short take home challenge
• Technical interview
• Pair programming
• Final interview

All our interviews are carried out on Zoom.

Please ensure you have good internet connection and audio prior to the interviews.

As our interview process evolves the order of these steps may change but this should give you an overview.

Diversity & Inclusion 🗣️

Oxford Abstracts is dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusion in our workplace. We actively seek out diverse perspectives in our hiring process and strive to create an inclusive environment where all team members feel valued, respected and able to bring their authentic selves to work. We believe that embracing diversity enriches our culture and enhances our ability to innovate and serve our community.