hackworth :

Please note: this role has been filled and is no longer available.

Thank you for your interest in this position. Unfortunately, it's no longer available. We've left the original job posting here for reference, to give you an idea of the kinds of things we're working on. Please see our jobs page for up-to-date information on any positions that are currently available, and what benefits we offer.




R&D software developer, full time, London

Salary range: £70,000—£80,000 per year


Hackworth are hiring a full time research & development (R&D) software developer in London, United Kingdom. This is an on-site role, at our office in Shoreditch.

In this role, you'll help lead the research phase of our first product: a programming language optimized for learning to program, rooted in functional programming concepts, with a particular focus on the visualization of program execution.

We expect the research phase to last 9-12 months, during which time you'll be responsible for designing several prototype languages, exploring the programming language and computer education research literature for ideas, and explaining these designs and their trade-offs to your colleagues.

Once the research phase concludes, you'll help lead the development phase of the product, the result of which will be a novel interactive programming environment for children. We're targeting the end of 2021 for initial beta testing with schools and external organizations.

We also expect to open-source the product at some point during the development phase. You'll have the option of leading that open source effort, if you wish.

This role does not include any on-call, devops, or customer support requirements. You'll be focused exclusively on creating a great programming environment for kids.

About us

Hackworth Ltd is a well-financed, bootstrapped, private limited company based in London, United Kingdom. Our purpose is to make programming relevant to the interests of children of all backgrounds. Our first step toward that goal is to develop programming languages and tools that are designed for learning about computation.

We're committed to building a sustainable, ethical, socially responsible business. We serve children and schools; therefore, we'll never fund our business by selling ad placements or exploiting compulsion loops via loot boxes or micro-transactions. We want to build products that have genuine value to our users. See our about page for our commitment.

Tech

Our software stack is entirely Haskell and Nix. We use macOS on the desktop, and NixOS and AWS everywhere else.

In this role you'll be writing code in Haskell, although in the development phase, it may be necessary to interface with Swift, JavaScript, PureScript, or another mobile- or web-oriented language, depending on the target platform. (If you're not familiar with any mobile- or web-oriented languages, don't worry — we'll ensure you have the training and/or support you need.)

Your qualifications

To apply for this role, you should meet the following requirements:

  1. The equivalent of (approximately) 2 years' experience writing Haskell, in either an industrial or research setting. This experience need not have been all at one organization, nor one contiguous block of time; e.g., if you spent approximately half-time writing Haskell over a 4-year period at various jobs, that's perfect.
  2. You can be on-site at our London office at least 4 days per week. For more on our remote working policy, see here.
  3. You're eligible to work in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, we're not able to offer visas to work in the UK at this time. If you're an EU/EEA/Swiss citizen and you're concerned about Brexit, please see here.

It'll also help your application if you have a public GitHub, GitLab, or equivalent public portfolio demonstrating source code you've written personally. This code could be work you've done for previous employers, for personal projects, or for open source projects. Your portfolio need not demonstrate entire projects written by you — it could consist of substantial contributions you've made to third-party projects. A portfolio containing code written in Haskell or other functional programming languages is a plus.

If you don't have a public code portfolio, we understand. Not everyone has the luxury of working for an employer that's friendly to open source, or perhaps you don't like spending your personal time writing code for yourself or other open source projects. If you're unable to point to any substantial examples of code you've written, we may ask you to submit a relatively simple program to demonstrate your skills, instead.

If you're familiar with any of the following topics, that's a definite plus, and you should mention it in your application, but please note that these are not required for the role:

Finally, please take a moment to review our frequently-asked questions about working at Hackworth, to make sure you're compatible with our environment, our policies, and our culture.

Benefits

We offer the following benefits:

  1. 25 paid holidays per year, in addition to public holidays in England and Wales.
  2. A generous parental leave policy.
  3. A flexible working policy, giving employees the option of working a 4-day week with either compressed hours, or reduced hours at proportionally reduced compensation.
  4. Flexible hours, within reason.
  5. Bike and TfL Travelcard loan options.
  6. A liberal, explicit personal projects policy.
  7. We encourage employees to contribute to open source projects, and we're committed to open-sourcing as many of our own projects as is feasible.

To apply

To apply for this role, please submit a CV to [email protected]. (Please note: this role has been filled and is no longer available.) Even if you're unsure about your fit, or if you have any additional questions about the role, or about working at Hackworth in general, please get in touch! We'd rather hear from you than not.

Hackworth are committed to diversity. We are an equal opportunities employer and do not discriminate on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, gender reassignment, race, color, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, disability or age.