Last Updated: June 12, 2022 (Still active!)
TL;DR: Early-stage startup hiring a founding Flutter developer. We’re on a mission to expand access to the world’s knowledge with a short video platform offering useful content for professionals. Details about us, the role, and interview process below.
Who we are
CIRCLES is the short video platform offering useful content for professionals.
Our mission at CIRCLES is to expand access to the world’s knowledge for every professional. We aim to empower every individual to pursue the career they want, and to do their job better than before. We see a world in which every person can learn and share knowledge in a global, interconnected, professional community. We are at a technological inflection point that brings this future within reach.
This is not a normal startup. To build the next content platform for professionals, we need to be Spartans: a tight team of talented contributors that can execute efficiently with extreme ownership. We focus on creating a great place to work and an amazing team to work with, because we have lots of hard work ahead of us. Our team is motivated by impact and determined to succeed.
We’ve launched into private Beta in February 2022, and have some of the largest data science influencers using CIRCLES to share knowledge in short video. We are in a unique position to bring high-engagement content to a high-value audience, with early revenue valuing our experience at 10x what TikTok offers advertisers. We’re currently preparing for a public launch (750k reach).
Our team is highly technical, with a focus on building great products using cutting edge tech. We also love learning from each other, and are looking for people who bring a new set of experiences and backgrounds to our team.
Role overview
First and foremost, we're looking for people who are passionate about what we're doing—this is an opportunity to give future professionals another caliber of potential. We’re building a new platform with new technology, so you’ll be able to find challenges to sink your teeth into.
Our initial client tech stack is native iOS, where we have developed deep knowledge of the iOS ecosystem. We use some low level libraries such as Metal (GPU processing) and CoreML (Machine Learning). We also see Flutter as a tool to massively expand access to our core users.
Since most of our team are generalists, we have flexibility about how you would operate. Here are some possibilities:
Create a scalable architecture, designed for robustness and reliability.
Design specifications, document and stay organized on a big project.
Compile, test and distribute our app into Google Store and Apple store. It would be valuable if you have knowledge of CI•CD pipelines to automate these tasks. For iOS, we use fastlane.
Build a wrapper with our native Video Engine on iOS.
Work in a fast paced environment with high uncertainty, be able to remain calm in a startup environment where delivery and speed are key.
Why you might be excited about us
We're working to solve a massive global problem to expand access to knowledge for every professional. Decisions you make at the company may shape the next professional content platform.
We're small, so you'll be able to contribute efficiently and without bureaucracy. You'll quickly have responsibility over big areas of our product.
You will have a seat on a rocket ship. This is a high-growth potential startup, so if CIRCLES is successful, you’ll be very successful.
You’ll work closely with the founders, providing the opportunity to be involved in company building from day one.
You will have freedom to operate. We prefer to outline responsibilities and objectives and then get out of the way.
Why you might not be excited about us
We're starting from scratch, so if you like more established companies, it's not (yet) the right time. You'll help build our company's culture.
Since we're an early stage startup, projects and priorities may shift.
We’re not making improvements, we’re fixing what’s broken. If it’s hard for you to work in a triage environment, this will likely be hard for you.
We can't (yet) provide close mentorship for junior developers, especially as we're remote and small. As we grow, we'll get a lot better at this.
Since you'll have a lot of responsibility and creativity over projects, they may not be defined perfectly initially. You'll be expected to bring your own experience and perspective to help us do the right things, and raise flags if you think we should do things differently.
About you
None of these are requirements, but do describe the kinds of people that we think would be most effective at CIRCLES right now.
Confident in your core domain and eager to be relied on as the expert.
Excited about tackling hardcore technical challenges on the frontier of product development
Enjoy thinking through trade-offs, with both mindfulness of short-term needs and our long-term direction.
Experience with Flutter for mobile app development. We work on the following technologies as well where prior experience is a big plus:
Swift
Machine Learning
Metal in iOS
You'll help push us to be our best, and we're excited for recommendations and insights you have as you join. You'll be an owner and contribute towards how we work.
Joining our team
We want you at your best, and won't be giving you gotcha-style algorithms questions. We want to get to know you, hear about what you're interested in, and learn about what you hope to do in the future.
1. Meet us and learn about CIRCLES
You'll first talk to Yacov and won't need to prepare anything in advance. The goal of this conversation is to get to know you and mutually explore if we might be a good fit for each other. You'll learn more about Levels and have a chance to ask any questions about our company, team culture, and product.
If we're both excited to continue, we’ll introduce you to Manu to learn more about the founders and the company.
2. Technical discussion
We'll have another conversation to talk in depth about your technical experience. We'll talk about frameworks you've used, how you make technical decisions, types of problems you like to solve, etc. Before this discussion, you will prepare a short lesson teaching us something technical (as a blog post, screen recording, etc — we're open to whatever format works best for you).
This is primarily used to get a better feel for your experience, how you work, and where you may fit in. It'll be used to design the rest of the interview process.
Through this and the next steps, you'll meet more people in the company so we can get to know each other.
3. Technical challenge
Working through similar problems independently as a take home challenge.
Alongside this, we'll ask you to teach us something technical (live or async), so we can see how you like to communicate technical topics. We'll include full details about this when we get here.
4. Reference conversations
We will talk to a few people you've worked with before to learn more about how we can best work with you. We expect to hear great things, so this is primarily so we can work with you as effective as possible.