Founding Backend Engineer (f/m/x)

At Hyphen, we envision a future where everyone is equipped with the skillset, inspiration and community support to make their unique dent in the world.

We are a B2B edu-tech startup building a talent development platform which empowers organisations to develop Gen-Z employees (0-4 years experience) with the relevant power and hard skills. We will deliver a highly social learner experience through world-class web and native apps, plus enterprise-grade apps, integrations, and APIs for employers.

We are fortunate to partner with some of the best people in the space, are backed by world-class investors and have raised a substantial pre-seed round (the largest edu-tech pre-seed round in Europe this year!) from one of Europe’s top VC’s.
We are based out of a beautiful office in central London but offer fully flexible working arrangements.

The role

You will be Hyphen’s first engineering hire and work alongside our technical co-founder who is full-stack. We’re building on a super modern stack optimised for an incredible developer experience:

• 100% Typescript throughout the backend and frontend
• PostgreSQL for transactional data
• BigQuery + RudderStack for analytics data and ETL pipelines
• GraphQL API with Hasura and serverless functions
• Next.js frontend, hosted on Vercel

We want to enable you to do your best work, so we’ll tailor the role to whichever part of the stack suits you best — you can do mostly frontend, backend, or a mix.

It’s an exciting time to join: we are currently in the process of designing and building our learner web app MVP. Your input will be key in defining the direction of both the technology and the company.

What we’re looking for

• A team player — culture comes first at Hyphen. We’re looking for people who take a collaborative approach to building software and who bring positive and friendly energy.
• Very high standards — we’re only looking to hire the best engineers, designers, and product managers.
• Curiosity — the desire to understand edtech and learn new things every day is essential.
• A DIY mindset — we move fast and we won’t necessarily have all the answers laid out in a neatly formatted ticket. Hyphen engineers want to understand the ‘why’ and solve a real problem, rather than working to a narrow ‘definition of done’.

Must haves:

• Expert in functional-style Typescript/Node.js
• Understands and enjoys working in an event-driven, serverless paradigm
• Shipped enterprise-grade, secure APIs for trusted frontends and third party clients
• Experience in writing integrations and plugins for third party software via APIs

Nice-to-haves:

• Effective testing practices for GraphQL stacks
• DevOps and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions)
• Cloud infrastructure/IaC
• Data pipelines and engineering
• Knowledge of or interest in modern frontend is a plus

If you’re full-stack…

We’re looking for an interesting combination of the frontend/backend must-haves.

Don’t tick every box? We would still love to hear from you if you think you're a good fit!

What you’ll get

• 🛫 Be part of Hyphen: A unique opportunity to join a highly driven team of exceptional individuals right at takeoff and help build and shape a healthy, mission-driven company to improve the lives of millions.
• 💸 Competitive package: attractive compensation, including employee stock options. We have VC backing and a strong operational, execution-driven support network.
• 🚀 Path to tech lead/engineering manager/leadership: we’ll offer plenty of opportunity for more responsibility and career progression as we grow, if that is interesting to you.
• 👫 Build and develop your own team & set your culture: You will not only work with us on the overall strategy of the start-up, but you will also manage, grow and set a culture for your own team.
• 🎒We will get you set up: Operating system and hardware of your choice, additional tech equipment that you need, screens, you name it - we want to enable you to do your best work.
• 👓Wellbeing support: A monthly sport and wellbeing budget can be used according to your preferences.
•  📈 Lifelong learning and personal development: We will jointly develop a personal development plan that will enable you to achieve your professional goals. All related costs, e.g. coach, courses etc. will be covered by your annual L&D budget of GBP 1,000.
• There’s more! Enjoy flexible working hours, and events (brunch or dinner) and join regular off-sites and work actions.

What else to know:

Please also apply if you don't tick all the boxes in our description. We know that no candidate is ever perfect for the role and that there will be people out there who bring things to the table we haven't even thought of yet (and are super excited by this!).

You can learn more about the application process and our company perks right here: Careers Page.