Software Engineers

Product development with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView

Summary

• UK, remote team with regular meet-ups (candidates must be UK-based)
• Work directly addressing the nature and climate crises

*We are not currently seeking support from recruiters with filling these roles, so will not accept applications from recruiters*

About Verna

Verna builds software to help people manage land in the best way for the environment – enhancing biodiversity and drawing down carbon, whilst making sustainable returns.

We have built the market-leading software for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), England’s revolutionary new approach to data-driven nature recovery. Our B2B SaaS app, Mycelia, is in daily use by ecologists and planners to get the best outcomes for BNG projects.

Verna has recently finalised a multi-million-pound fundraise, to help accelerate the growth of the company – and the impact we can have – over the coming years.

Roles

We are looking for a number of software engineers to expand our product development team, building a B2B SaaS application. We seek talented, flexible, creative engineers who are happy to get stuck into all aspects of developing compelling, effective, and accessible product experiences.

Because we’re working primarily in Elixir and Phoenix this is a full-stack role, but with an emphasis on delivering new user-facing features. Successful applicants will have a good understanding of how to deliver rich, easy-to-use, and accessible user experiences, including:

• Writing clean, well-structured code to implement rich interactive user interactions balancing the work done in the client and on the server.
• Determining the implications of new user features on the back-end data model.
• Keeping the application efficient, resilient and secure.
• Generating well-structured semantic and accessible HTML/CSS.

This is an opportunity to be an early team member at a start-up, aiming to change humanity’s relationship with the natural environment and help tackle the climate and nature crises. You’ll join a small, focused software team, with personal impact on the design and engineering of our codebase. Your compensation will include share options, enabling you to share in the company’s success.

Like ecosystems, teams are more vibrant, innovative, and resilient when they are more diverse. We welcome applications from everyone, and particularly people from under-represented groups of every kind.

This is a hands-on role, so you should expect your primary activity to be delivering good, clean, well-tested code.

You’ll be working closely with a small software team including the CTO, so there will be plenty of opportunity to give and receive feedback on the work the team is doing.

We believe that well-informed teams deliver better products, so you’ll be invited to take part in meetings with customers and other stakeholders, to hear their concerns and ideas first-hand.

We currently operate as a remote team, with London office bases available. The whole team meets in person every six weeks or so, typically in London.

Key technologies we are using include:

• Elixir Phoenix LiveView for the core of the web application.
• Typescript to supplement the front-end user experience beyond LiveView.
• PostgreSQL, with PostGIS for geospatial analytics and querying.
• Go for offline data engineering.
• Docker and AWS for deployment.

You will be writing code in Elixir for this role. Prior experience with Elixir or Erlang is ideal. However, we will consider candidates who have prior experience of other functional languages and can demonstrate a track record in rapidly becoming productive in new languages and server-side frameworks.

About you

We’ve listed some key skills and ways of working below. Above all, an open mind and an ability to learn are more important than checking off every bullet in these lists.

Technical skills

• You value clean, well-structured code – including tests.
• You can think, design, and problem-solve at the system level.
• You enjoy thinking through how product features will be usable, effective, and accessible for a range of target users.
• You understand and value web accessibility and full compliance with WCAG.
• You understand the need to make software conform to principles of security, privacy, observability, and maintainability.
• You understand the value of good docs, and can produce clearly written documentation to help ensure shared team success.
• You have experience in at least some of: Elixir, BEAM/OTP, Phoenix LiveView, Typescript, PostgreSQL, geospatial data analysis, API design, AWS dev-ops.

Ways of working

• You share our mission to help address the climate and nature crises through better land management.
• You are happy to both give and receive feedback.
• You’re a clear communicator and are fluent in English. You believe in the value of good communications, both written and verbal.
• You understand that building great software is a team effort, and you can show how you’ve helped teams to grow and become more effective over time.
• You share our belief that more diverse teams create better outcomes.

How to apply

For an informal chat about this opportunity:

Please email careers@verna.earth with the subject line “Software Engineer – Application”, and including:

• Your CV.
• Answers to all of the three questions below. There is no need to write more than 150 words per answer.
  • Functional programming experience: Please outline your experience with functional programming, and describe one or two key benefits of the functional approach. As context, our core language, Elixir, is a functional language running on the Erlang virtual machine.
  • Product development experience: Product development is a multi-faceted process encompassing understanding customer needs, designing creative solutions, implementing those designs, ensuring the product can reach the customer, and measuring and understanding resulting benefits and gaps. Whether in software or elsewhere, please describe your experience in one or more of these aspects of product development.
  • Motivation: Why do you want to work at Verna?

Selection process

The stages of the selection process are:

• 30-minute introductory call with the hiring manager.
• 90-minute technical interview, with a coding challenge submitted beforehand.
• 30-minute interview with co-founders.

We will consider applications on a rolling basis, until the roles are filled.

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