At PetsApp we're doggedly determined to make veterinary care purrfect. We provide a platform for veterinary clinics that allows them to better engage with pet owners and make sure their patients get the care they need. Our main products are a React Native app for both iOS and Android and a web app, which both have real time chat, video consulting, appointment booking, and payments. We want to help clinics better serve pets and their owners while making life easier for veterinary teams.
Since PetsApp launched in January 2020 we've had enormous growth in the UK & Ireland:
>£2 million in payments
>300k virtual care interactions
7.3k iOS App Store reviews
4.9/5 iOS Rating
Top 10 rated Medical iOS app
About us
We're a small but mighty engineering team, well equipped to solve hard technical problems, and now we're looking for more engineers to join us and complement our existing skillset!
Currently our backend stack runs on AWS and we have utilised much of their serverless offering, which has allowed us to achieve the numbers above without breaking a sweat. We have lambdas running Typescript, although open to a "polyglot" architecture if different languages become more suitable. All infrastructure is provisioned using Cloudformation & AWS CDK which gives us reliable and repeatable deployments and environments.
Who we’re looking for
Someone who has experience architecting robust solutions using well defined patterns while utilising modern technology, tools and concepts like serverless. If any of the tech we've described above makes you think that something is missing, or should be replaced, then let us know! We're looking for people who will continuously challenge our assumptions — backed up with experience — and who can help us make the best decisions on tech.
You are somebody who cares about affecting change. If you want to use a new piece of tech, or re-architect something, you only need to convince a few of us that it's the right thing to do; and because we believe in constructive candour - if it isn't, we'll convince you why.
You should have at least 5 years working as a software engineer and you will be experienced solving hard problems where there isn’t always a clear route forwards. Most of the engineering team is spread out across the UK, we are a remote first company and we are country agnostic. Remote working experience isn’t necessary, but any views on how to do it amazingly would be a bonus.
What you’ll be doing with us
Ownership is something we take really seriously, which is why you’ll be own and be responsible for projects from beginning to end. We’re a nascent team constantly striving to be better by evaluating our processes, but right now we work in 4 week cycles (with 2 weeks of "slow” time interleaved) where you’ll have the chance to start doing some deep and meaningful work. Each cycle pushes our product on immensely, and when each chunk launches you will undoubtedly be able to say that you have improved the lives of a significant number of pets.
Here is a taste of the types of problems we’re interested in solving:
Building a free text search service that can scale from hundreds of thousands to millions of pets
Integrating with third parties where there isn’t an API (this is that sweet spot of very hard, very interesting, and very impactful)
Building a push notification service that can send tens of thousands of notifications without impacting our production stack
Scaling our stack to handle the traffic of millions of pets
Building a real time recommendation engine
Building a system to ingest the data for millions of pets
Ownership also extends to writing and shipping code. You will care about how code makes it into production, and once it’s there everything required to know that it’s working as expected. We are still very much a startup, which means we come with all the hallmarks of a team who has needed to work quickly to build a meaningful product that has helped over 100 thousand pets. To do this, we have had to cut some corners and we’re acutely aware of that, so you will be someone who is passionate about improving everything from deployment pipelines to test coverage, and even thinking about rearchitecting production systems where the original spec might not fit what we’re trying to do now.
PetsApp is a fantastic place to work
You will have noticed we don’t advertise perks like your birthday off, or a working-from-home allowance. We want you to decide how you spend your days off and your own money, which is why we have a generous holiday allowance of 25 days (+ public holidays), and fair salaries.
Really, you are the best person to tell us how you do you best work. When we talk about flexibility, we mean it. And that’s why you’ll see our Slack statuses changing to 🚴 or 🚶 when we’re out cycling in the Scottish Highlands or hiking in the Peak District. Sometimes you might even see a 💤 too.
That doesn't mean we don't have fun though! Expect the occasional yoga session, or cocktail making kit, or movie night. These are just the things that make being part of our Pack extra special.
Our interview process
First up will be a 45 minute call with Will our CTO. After that a short and interesting take home tech test. Then final round will be 1.5 hours on technical things, and 1.5 hours talking through our culture with PetsApp’s CEO Thom.
The package