Elixir Engineers at dscout, Remote/Chicago, US

Introductory paragraph

dscout (dscout.com) is a qualitative research platform that connects panelists with researchers doing sociological, product, UX, etc. types of research. We have native mobile clients to reach panelists (we call them 'scouts") where they are and offer media rich research options.

About us

My name: Greg Vaughn
My position: Principal Engineer
Company name: dscout
Website: dscout.com
Country: USA
Company info and history:

Our web platform is built on an Elixir backend tied together by GraphQL APIs. We make heavy use of PostgreSQL for our storage needs and we host our platform on Heroku. Another core part of our offering are two mobile apps - iOS and Android - that are written in Swift and Kotlin respectively. We also employ WebRTC, Twilio, and WebSockets for live video streaming and use Python for NLP and media processing.

A few more tech details and challenges we deal with:

  • Our platform relies on a mature GraphQL API built on Absinthe
  • We are a video heavy platform with complex video processing and property based testingfor verification (we combine multiple video streams, including screen shares, and we do picture-in-picture generation)
  • dscout Live, our realtime video interview product, utilizes WebRTC via Twilio and supports multiple participants
  • Research survey design involves skip and knockout logic and we verify question flow using graph traversal approach
  • Exporting gigabytes of video data can be a challenge - we use streaming archive generation
  • We use collaborative workspaces through Phoenix channels and presence
  • We make heavy use of background job workflows to compose media processing, for ML models, payments, data ingestion, etc and we rely on Oban for the heavy lifting

About the job

Job title: Elixir Engineer, Senior Elixir Engineer
Job description: Backend focused Elixir Developer
Salary range: Negotiable
Position on remote work: Remote or in-person in Chicago
Qualifications or experience required: A mid to senior level understanding of Elixir and related technologies, or similar level in Ruby and wishing to learn Elixir on the job.

What the successful job applicant will be working on:

  • Be an active member of a cross-functional product development team that frequently interfaces with business stakeholders
  • Collaborate with teammates to continuously improve the ways you and your team work
  • Focus on backend work (and don’t mind an occasional frontend PR)
  • Be responsible for the technical quality of the team’s product
  • Develop customer facing applications in a fast-paced agile environment
  • Work closely with the design team to deliver user-friendly and modern products
  • Apply DevOps mindset to improve the Continuous Delivery pipeline and other operational aspects of our SaaS platform

About the interview process

Applications will undergo a phone screen followed by a technical interview, a small take-home project with a review, and finally a behavioral interview to asses team fit.

Further info

Our full list of openings including React Engineer and Engineering Manager can be found here:

We can only hire applicants who are authorized to work in the USA at this time.

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