Frontend Engineer

About Blendle

Blendle is the biggest platform of premium journalism in the Netherlands.

Blendle is basically an iTunes for Dutch newspapers, an app and a website where readers can buy articles.

Blendle fulfils an important task Journalism is a vital component of any society, but even the greatest newspapers and magazines continuously show a decrease in sales. Blendle offers a new revenue stream which will help ensure the continuity of great journalism.

Position

Blendle is looking for an experienced Front End Engineer. The goal is to provide a seamless and fantastic user experience for journalism. We believe a combination of stories that change your perspective on what's going on and a butter-smooth way to discover and sign up for Blendle will help us grow our platform and make more users happy.

A second goal is to build an organization that helps people grow in their skills. You can read more on how we do this in our public handbook. This is why we spend a ton of time on coaching and feedback within Blendle. We'll help you set audacious goals and grow new skills.

A typical day of working on Blendle's frontend codebases could involve:

• Together with our Product Managers and Marketing experts you’ll work on a new landing page to reach as many new people as possible
• With our Data Analyst you will implement and analyse the results of AB tests to continuously improve our platform
• You add a new feature to our payment flow to make it as easy as possible for users to deal with the hassle of payments and managing their subscription
• You maintain our existing code base, work on simplifying the codebase, and spot and fix issues when they arise
• Together with our Designers and Experience Team you come up with a new onboarding flow, making the experience for new users even more delightful
• You update our deployment process to make it even easier to ship code

Our technical stack currently includes:

• Microservices: currently web projects are split up into three different projects (web-client, web-payments, and web-landings). This allows us to keep each codebase focussed and optimized for its task, while also giving us room to experiment with new tools
• React: all the previously mentioned projects use React as UI framework. We have a shared components library called blendle-lego that is used across all projects
• Typescript: we first experimented with this in the web-payments projects and we really liked it. When setting up web-landings, we decided to use Typescript again
• MobX / RxJS / AltJS: these are the frameworks we use for data and statemanagent across our projects 
• Next.js / Create React App: to ensure quality, maintainability and to keep up with the rapidly evolving front end landscape, we try to stick with industry standards for our projects

Your qualification

• 3+ years experience developing web applications in JavaScript
• 2+ years of writing high-quality production code
• Experience with React or other similar frameworks
• Experience with communicating with RESTful API
• Knowledge of testing principles
• Strong English communication skills both written and verbal

Will be a plus

Experience with TypeScript

What we offer

• A full-time job that you’re free to plan into your week however you’d like
• Full travel reimbursement
• A MacBook / Windows laptop 
• Freedom to work anywhere, everywhere
• Free and delicious lunches
• Free weekly massages
• Flexible holidays
• An awesome team of young and ambitious people that all share the same passion: to make journalism accessible and help people make better choices
• A location in Utrecht, the heart of the Netherlands, at a 3-minute walk from the central station
• Very generous parental / birth leave for daddy
• And other perks

Additional details

Why Blendle?

1. Blendle fulfils an important task - Journalism is a vital component of any society, but newspapers and magazines continuously show a decrease in sales. Therefore, Blendle offers a new revenue stream which will help ensure the continuity of great journalism.
2. People pay us because we spend so much time on crafting a better user experience for reading and listening. The product you get to spend your time on building is enjoyed by over 1 million users worldwide.
3. We're moving fast! We're experimenting continuously with new technology, and aren't afraid to try new stuff in a small part of our app or API to test the waters. Our infrastructure is built with speed in mind, so we have fast cycles where we build, ship, validate and iterate. You get to play with new stuff and learn, and we get all the benefits from using state of the art software.
4. Freedom - We believe that you are the best person to decide when and where you work. Huibert starts his day with a run and by opening his laptop in his garden in The Hague and Jean regularly spends the night talking to himself in our chat program whilst coding. We assume you know what works best for you, so you don’t need us to make the rules.
5. We find learning really important. Every quarter we reserve three full days for the whole company to work on whatever new thing you'd like. Some of our best features originated from these sessions.
6. Freebies - On top of a monthly donation to your bank account, we take good care of you in the office. Every day, lunch is prepared with love, and we’re happy to fix dinner and weekly free massages. Don’t live in Utrecht? Then we’ll cover the expenses for the thing that gets you here: either public transport, or your dear electric/fuel-sipping car.