Senior Java Developer
Anyone looking for a job at a US scale-up company? GrayHair Software specializes in postal data processing and analysis for large US firms. They handle 25% of all US Postal data and track billions of pieces of mail every year for the top US banks and insurance providers. They already have four Spaniards in the development team and they are now looking for their fifth player, in the shape of a Java Developer, to carry on growing. Are you ready? Keep on reading! 👀.
¿Qué harás?
Let's go back in time a little to see how they arrived to where they are today... Fasten your seatbelt and follow me ;)
The journey began in 2000 when GrayHair started as a mail tracking service. Just a few years later, by 2008, they managed to build a robust client list and added four additional services. However, in 2016 the company lost its founder… and later went on to pivot towards being a data-centric company. By 2020, the entire team was fully active and refocused on remote culture and tech transformation 💪. They learned from the past to grow into the future and became what they are today 🚀
GrayHair is a tech-company that specializes in processing and analyzing postal data for some of the largest companies in the United States. They handle 25% of all US Postal data and track billions of pieces of mail every single year for the top US banks and insurance providers. They process over 125 billion data points annually for their clients, providing increased visibility into vital processes across the organization to advance business goals.
Since 2000, they have become the leading consumer and provider of postal data, and their mission is to turn data into Business-Ready Intelligence. This intelligence enables company leaders to make informed decisions that can significantly improve essential business processes, such as marketing campaign effectiveness, fraud prevention, customer experience, and mail operations.
GrayHair is also undergoing a global technological transformation, redesigning all its services from scratch, taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies to provide even better services to its clients.
Business solutions currently offered by GrayHair include: Postal Optimization, Marketing Effectiveness, Customer Experience, Fraud Prevention, Mail Delivery Performance, and Address Data Quality.
What are they looking for?🧐
GrayHair´s wide product offering represents just a small percentage of their engineering. Most of what they do is backend driven, based in Java, and it doesn’t really involve user interface. They are currently in the middle of a migration over to AWS. They are looking at all the services they provide to clients from the ground up and re-doing them in AWS. There are 3 teams working in this area and it is where most of their development goes at the moment. They are using Spring Boot based microservices running on AWS ECS that are orchestrated via AWS Step Functions. While writing backend services is important, it is equally as important for teammates to have an understanding of how databases work and to be able to write SQL queries.
The ideal candidate they are looking for is someone who brings experience to the table, who’s hungry and will help them on their growth path. A team player, who likes to share and learn in equal parts, and whose goal is to continue growing alongside the team to find solutions for each new challenge that arises. Of course, you'll always be given the autonomy and freedom to do what you do best 😉
Tu evolución
En 1 mes
Your first two weeks in GrayHair will be completely dedicated to on-boarding. You will have the opportunity to meet with Product, Business Development, Data, Shared Services, DevOps, Finance, HR, Postal, and Client Operations to serve as a meet and greet and to get to know unique aspects of the company.
Between these onboarding meetings, you will get time to get your development environment setup in a way that works best for you 💻
During the second week you will have product demos and overviews with other business areas to help understand the great value their services bring to their clients.
Tus responsabilidades
Designing and developing software solutions that are highly available, scalable, and observable
Taking ownership of your work and ensuring high-quality code through testing and code reviews
Collaborating with other engineers and stakeholders to understand business requirements and provide technical solutions
Finding new solutions to pain points across the company's systems
Keeping up-to-date with emerging technologies and industry trends to help drive innovation
Working in an agile development environment, utilizing tools like Jira and Confluence to manage work and track progress.
¿Cómo lo harás?
They work with an Agile framework with 3 weeks sprints. They help the team develop and make sure there is a refinement at the beginning of each sprint so that everything is well-defined.
GrayHair has a very horizontal business structure thanks to the very fresh company culture they have created. They keep in touch with each other throughout the day on Slack. Communication is very important to them, and they encourage everyone to always give constructive feedback, you won't find barriers here!
¿Cuándo trabajarás?
There is flexibility. However, since GrayHair is based in the USA, they ask that all members of the team to be available between 9am and 1pm (UTC-4). In Spanish mainland time, this means you have to be available between 3pm and 7pm (UTC+2).
They have special flexibility during the summer season for the team based in Spain:
- Monday to Thursday up to 11am (UTC-4) ➡️ up to 5pm CET (Spanish Mainland)
- Friday up to 9am (UTC -4) ➡️ up to 3pm CET (Spanish Mainland)
Día laborable
Jornada completa
Vacaciones
22 días
Jornada laboral
Flexible¿Dónde trabajarás?
Remoto
GrayHair Software is a 100% REMOTE company!
The headquarters are in Florida, USA. However, they are looking for someone to join the team they have based in Spain. Here they strongly believe in the advantages of working remotely and in work-life balance, so you might have colleagues from all over the country :)
¿Con quién trabajarás?
Right now there are about 50 people in the GrayHair, 7 of which are in the engineering team, although it is likely that by the time you join the team there will be a few more. Let us introduce you to some of your potential future team mates who you will interact the most with in your day-to-day work:
- Robert Prescott (Head of Development) - Robert has been with the company for almost 7 years, starting out as a Senior Software Engineer and working his way up to the Head of Development. He will be the guy you’ll have to win over on your first contact with GrayHair 😜
- Johnny Napoline (Junior Software Engineer) - Johnny has been with the company for about two years now. He is a musician on the side and very knowledgeable about nearly all of their products/technologies. A great go-to guy!
- John Hiltz (Head of DevOps) - John will make sure you lack for nothing during the initial onboarding from account setup, as well as helping with permissions and general access for any IT related issues. Where there's a John, there's a way!
They all work remotely, but they do a company offsite once a year, where all full-time employees are flown to the USA for a 3-day company retreat. Here are some pics from their most recent get-together in Florida:
¿Qué piden?
One deal-breaker is that you must be able to communicate in English language with ease in order to join the team.
As for the technical requirements for this position, here they are:
- Experience working with Java version 8 or higher.
- Experience working with Spring Boot Framework
- Experience working with AWS including EC2, Lambda, S3, ECS. They also value experience with other cloud providers
- Experience with testing, good command of JUnit.
- Familiarity with Docker
Tecnologías
Innegociable
Java
Avanzado 
Spring Boot
Avanzado 
AWS
Avanzado
Otras habilidades
Innegociable
Tolerancia a la incertidumbre
Adaptabilidad al cambio
Comunicación verbal
Estaría bien
Aprendizaje Continuo
Trabajo en equipo
Capacidad de presentación
Suma puntos
Gestión de equipo
Capacidad de mentorización
Idiomas
What the FAQ?
You are only eligible for this position if you are a Spanish resident.
- There'll be an initial meeting with Robert, the Head of Development, so you can get to know each other and find out more about the company.
- The second phase would be a technical QA based on your experience and knowledge.
- This next step only applies to Mid/Senior developers: Solution Architect interview where you’ll get an abstract problem and will talk about how you would handle the solution.
- Then comes the HR meeting. This meeting will be mainly to talk about employee benefits and to resolve any questions you may still have.
NO. The team is spread over many different locations throughout Spain and the US.
They organize a fun company offsite once a year, where all full-time employees are flown to the USA for a 3-day company retreat. Although attendance is not mandatory, I wouldn’t want to miss it if I were you!😜
Of course, they'll cover the cost of these trips for those who are overseas :)