Want to Build Bristlr? We’re (Always) Hiring!

If you’d like to work at Bristlr, you’ve just passed the first and most important step; wanting to work at Bristlr.

We’re not a normal company. We’re an early stage startup, and we’re a beard-focussed dating service with mighty ambitions and big plans.

People joining us are expected to be awesome. We’re looking for people who are excited by weird challenges and who can think on their feet. Everyone in a tiny company has a speciality, but we should all be able to at least understand (and sympathise with) what everyone else does. Transparency, honesty, and knowledge sharing is our goal.

The role

So you want to work at Bristlr? Awesome. Hi five! Next, we need to find you a job.

What are you good at, and what are we weak at? We don’t require any previous experience, as long as you’re a good learner. Here’s some notes to help you:

Technical

• At our heart we’re a technology company.
• Our stack is all JavaScript, all the way down (PhoneGap, jQuery, NodeJS). If you love JavaScript, we’ll love you. But no, we won’t use the new shiny framework everyone is raving on about. We all know it’ll be replaced in a year.
• We sit atop Heroku and AWS, and love microservices.
• “Brutally pragmatic agile” best describes our working practise. Generally we follow the sensible parts of agile-stuff (kanbans, standups, post-it notes, no backlogs, smugness etc.) but run away screaming from over-prescription.
• TDD and pair programming is wonderful.
• Done is better than perfect.

User experience

• Our UI and our UX is core to the experience of using Bristlr. If you know how to build beautiful stuff, come and make us pretty.
• Currently we use HTML5 for our apps, not native.

Growth

• If you’re a beast at customer acquisition you’ll have fun here.
• We prefer experimenting with new channels and methods, rather than relying on the tried & tested (and saturated) old channels.
• We focus on tangible numbers and impact. For context; if we’re talking signups, then we’re measuring change in the thousands.

The hours

We care a lot more about the impact you have on the company, community, and product, than how many hours you work. We’ve also learned that the more flexible the hours you have, generally the better you are at getting stuff done. You choose your hours. Want a 40 hour week? Sorted. Want to only work on Wednesdays? That’s cool too. Choose what’s going to make you happiest, and feel free to experiment.

There will always be some contact hours (we’re based in Manchester and it’d be great if you were too, but it’s not essential) because we like working in pairs, sharing knowledge, and bouncing ideas around. Also, it’s totally your turn to make the brews.

We’re not going to expect you to clock in, sit down, do some set job, then clock out. We expect you to be making a difference.

The payment

Be realistic and be honest, and keep the number of hours/days you want to work in mind. How much money do you need to do this job and be happy? Don’t undercut yourself, it’s a dick move, and won’t work out in the long term. If you’re not sure, we’re happy to talk openly about this sort of stuff.

Application

Email john@bristlr.com with your CV and a job description for the job you want. And/or, if you’re in Manchester, find John, go for coffee (he’ll buy) and pitch your job, then yourself.

You’re also always welcome to pick our brains on any of this stuff, even if you have no intention of working for us. Knowledge sharing is a good thing.

If you think our methods are too unconventional, please write a job description for an HR manager and send it in, along with your CV.