Remote Lead Engineer (Ruby) in Ipswich

Hi, we're Bloom & Wild. Founded in 2013, our mission back then was to make sending and receiving flowers the joy that it should be, by harnessing technology, brand and letterbox delivery. Together, we've fulfilled over 20 million deliveries (and counting!), making us the largest direct to consumer flower business in Europe. We announced £75 million Series D funding in 2021 and that same year acquired bloomon in The Netherlands and Bergamotte in France. Now home to a family of 3 beautiful brands, we're expanding our gifting offering to other categories like cakes, candles and cocktails. This is all part of our ambition to build Europe's #1 direct to consumer gifting destination.

Technology at Bloom & Wild

Our Technology team sits at the heart of our business, building and maintaining the solutions that power e-commerce, production, and fulfillment. Our platform uses technologies including Ruby and Rails and Python/React, backed by PostgreSQL, Fargate/ECS on AWS, and Cloud Run on GCP. It exposes APIs that are used by our multi-brand Angular webapp and our native iOS and Android mobile apps. We're also looking at developing new domain-driven services & microservices where applicable.

Most of our team is based in the UK or The Netherlands and works in a flexible model, with choice in how often they travel to the office. Our squads meet all in person at least once per quarter to maintain connections, collaborate on larger projects, and have fun together.

E-commerce Team at Bloom & Wild

The E-commerce team makes up a large proportion of the nearly 60 strong Technology team, which in itself forms a large part of the overall Bloom & Wild team of over 400 people. Alongside the OpsTech, Platform, Data and IT teams, the E-commerce team focuses on delivering the best experience to our customers before, during and after their purchase. Our E-commerce teams consist of four cross functional squads, responsible for a business and architectural domain – you'll join our Subscription & Retention squad responsible for accelerating business growth and profit through delightful customer experience built on robust, scalable systems.

What you'll be doing...

• Delivering the Engineering roadmap for your squad.
• Driving technical strategy within the team and ensuring alignment with overall business strategy.
• Ensuring that non-functional requirements (e.g., performance, security) are considered and met during the product development lifecycle.
• Resolving complex technical challenges and providing guidance to other team members.
• Mentoring and supporting the development of other engineers within the team.
• Leading projects and initiatives, ensuring successful delivery and execution.
• Fostering a culture of continuous improvement within the Engineering team.

You’ll love this role if...

• You are an experienced Ruby developer (5 years+) with detailed knowledge of Ruby on Rails in a production environment coupled with experience of front-end development using frameworks like Angular or React.
• You have experience working with RESTful APIs, version control tools such as GitHub, CI tools such as Codebuild, and testing tools like RSpec/Cucumber or similar.
• You have experience of distributed service architectures, including how best to test and release them, and how to ensure system stability when making changes independent of other services.
• You are able to use Observability tooling to understand, diagnose, improve, debug, measure and visualise platform health.
• You are up-to-date with the latest technologies including AI for example Machine Learning for personalisation or automation of processes.
• You have experience of breaking down complex problems into incremental, manageable valuable chunks.
• You take a collaborative, data-driven, and experimental approach and are able to demonstrate the ability to foster this mindset in your colleagues.
• You are able to get going quickly, understand complex systems and also be able to communicate with non-technical team members.
• You are an experienced leader, mentor and coach; capable of supporting and elevating those around you.

It would be great if...

• You have experience working in a fast-growing (preferably consumer-facing) startup / scaleup.
• You are flexible and excited about using different languages and frameworks to solve problems, and love helping others do the same.

Belonging @ Bloom & Wild

We know that we learn through our differences, and building a diverse team has always been central to creating the best experience for our customers. We value all backgrounds, perspectives, ideas and experiences, and encourage everyone to share their opinions openly within our caring and inclusive team. Our champions community actively advances our culture of inclusion and belonging, which is organised around 8 pillars of diversity. These cross-business networks offer additional opportunities for connection, education, support and celebration, and ensure that inclusivity continues to be embedded in our ways of working.

Our ways of working

We really believe in the power of connection. For us that looks different depending on the team you work in. Some of our teams work together in person every day, whereas others may connect in person every quarter. We also believe in flexibility that supports you, the work you do, and your team. How much you work from home and from our office depends on a balance of those needs, and you'll agree this with your manager.

Whether it's through a shared project, a learning and development opportunity, or an afterwork social - we trust our teams to make the right decisions (for them and us) about where and how they work each day. We're big on collaboration, empathy, knowledge sharing and growth, and our values drive our priorities every day:

• Lead change for good: we have the guts to try new things and step up to do what matters most.
• Think deeply, act swiftly: we make sure there's thoughtful rationale behind our approach and always act swiftly to implement ideas.
• Care wildly: we pour care and creativity into everything we do and pay attention to the things that make a difference.
• Stay open, be curious: we're open about what we're doing and why, and we welcome challenges from each other.

Work that works for you

To care wildly for our customers, firstly we care wildly for our teams. We work hard to craft a culture of thoughtfulness and care, where there is a strong sense of inclusion and belonging, enabling all of our people to thrive and be successful each day. Our perks and benefits include:

• Flexible working & work from abroad.
• 25 days holiday + your birthday + flexible bank holidays, & option to buy additional holiday each year.
• 1 Volunteering day each year.
• Enhanced family leave and a workplace nursery scheme.
• A flexible training framework for every stage of your career.

Getting hired

We'll do everything we can to make sure your interview experience with us is a good one. It's a 2-way process, and we're keen to answer all of the questions you may have, so that you can be sure (and excited!) that we'll be the right place for you. If your application is successful you can expect:

• A chat with Leroy, our Talent Consultant for Tech - to discuss our role and learn a bit more about your skills and background and how we might match your career & development goals.
• An interview with Ella, our Engineering Manager to get into more of the detail.
• A chance to show us how you work through a technical challenge, which can be a live paired coding/whiteboard session.
• A Final chat with Steve, from our Martin or Steve from our leadership team.

We believe in leading change for good, so if there's anything that we can do to help throughout your application process, or if you have any feedback, please share this with us anonymously here so we can use this to improve your experience.