Software or Infra Engineer : confirmed to principal - full remote

Job description

Batvoice is looking for seasoned engineers in its domain to further push performance and security. We are planning major architectural changes that you would participate in.

The scope is relatively large (see details in the Preferred experience section), so we are hiring more than one person - up to 3. Importantly, we are not hiring the best individual applicants, but the best combination of 3 (so if we get 3 amazing operations people and a few good developers, we will not be hiring the 3 devops), which means that your ability to work with others and breadth of knowledge will weigh even more than previously.

After being hired, you will have an onboarding with one of our senior or principal engineers, then decide on fields of specialty with the other 3 hires for our upcoming projects. We follow the shape-up methodology, and those of you judged to be above confirmed will also participate at the betting table.

Our upcoming projects you are likely to contribute to include:

• Re-examining our web architecture, especially on the storage end : postgres and its plugins are starting to show their limits for our use-cases. We will be examining how to split the storage up (for instance, a dedicated search database is very likely), and whether there are storage engines more appropriate for our use-case.

• Planning a change to our permissions model : our current attribute-based authorization model is very flexible, but shows its limits as we reach very high quantities of attributes and users. We have a much better idea as to what we actually need out of our authorization system nowadays, and so we can replace it.

• Capacity-planning for our infrastructure : we know that a certain degree of load ends up slowing things down, but we haven’t yet investigated where all the bottlenecks are. It’s possible that there are limiting bottlenecks all throughout and we’ll only see the largest one, or that we’ll only have a few to fix. We’ll have to figure out how to scale past this, and how to reduce machine bring-up and bring-down costs.

• Rework access control in our environments : right now, access to the kubernetes cluster is for the most part an on/off switch. If you have the ACL rights in tailscale, you have administration rights; if you don’t have the ACL rights in tailscale, you get nothing. This is just one example, but as we grow as a company, we’ll need (slightly) more complex infrastructure authorization approaches than “yes or no”.

The Environment

• We are a fully remote company. You will have to visit us in Paris at least once as part of onboarding, and we have to list some place on welcome to the jungle (“Offices” is a required field).

• We do not measure seniority by years of experience, but in terms of results and ability, leading to rapid advancement opportunities.

• We offer comprehensive healthcare coverage through Alan Purple (old subscription, slightly higher coverage than current day Alan Optimal with all extras) for you and your family (50% participation).

• From your second year onward, we offer a stock option plan for you to share in Batvoice’s long term success and journey.

Preferred experience

Research has shown that having strict quantitative requirements discourages applicants that would have otherwise performed well at the position from applying. As such, instead of experience, we define skills that will be relevant to these positions.

As long as you have at least one, you’ll be considered for the technical interview, and the more (and better) you have, the higher your chance to be hired. To estimate what seniority you’ll be judged as and for further details on how we make hiring decisions, take a look at our Seniority definitions, company Values, and documented Interview Process. Note that the salary will depend on the evaluated seniority, which we define up to Senior (past that it gets too variable).

Python : it’s the language we use, though if you’re intimately familiar with other dynamic languages (for example, say you can discuss the BEAM VM internal workings) we’re sure you’ll pick it up quickly.

Databases : currently we’re on Postgres (with TimescaleDB on some tables), but we’re hitting its limits, in part due to ORM use, in part due to how it functions internally. As such knowing general database internals (for example how the query planner works) is more important than “having worked with Postgres before”, though that counts for something too.

Web Frameworks : currently we’re using Django but the important part isn’t so much that (though knowing what it’s like is appreciated, it’s somewhat different than other comparable frameworks), but rather understanding what a framework does internally and being able to predict the impact. For example, do you know how an ORM works? Or perhaps what limitations a class-based router might have? Talk about them!

Kubernetes : our infrastructure lives in k8s, typically EKS, managed by Terraform and FluxCD. Our data pipelines go through Argo Workflows. We have a few physical machines connected to all of this via Tailscale. If multiple of these words mean something to you, you’re likely to be able to help out with our infrastructure.

Maintenance : it’s exciting to build new things, but what about keeping them working ? Someone needs to watch for security issues, update kubernetes operators, push for major python version upgrades, etc. And if it’s all documented and part of procedures, we can also more easily answer to audits (we get audited fairly often, but we always pass; it’d just be nice to do so with less effort). A mind for keeping things like this in mind is also a mind to know how things work, and be able to explain them too.

Ideally, you should talk about which of these scopes (and how) you want to contribute, to make the interview process simpler (you will be directly tested on those).

Recruitment process

The entire recruitment process (including the steps we take internally) is documented in our Public Handbook.

The short version looks like this:

1. Candidate directly here on Welcome to the Jungle

2. Your CV and Cover Letter are reviewed by Engineers.

3. Bidirectional Technical Interview with an Engineering Manager or Director.

4. HR interview and Culture Fit with our CEO.

Since we are hiring as a group this go-around, there might be a slight delay between steps 2 and 3, as we gather more candidates and figure out the groupings. Step 1 should take about 1-2 business days, and step 2 will be scheduled immediately for the next couple of days. The goal is to finish this month (July 2026).