Want to work in Aptoma?

We are looking for a full-stack developer to join our team of developers.

The team focuses on automating editorial workflows for media enterprises, allowing journalists and editors to focus on pure value creation, and giving them the option to override all automations manually.

The team you'll join provides tools for well-known Nordic and German media brands.

We have reimagined printed media production using the browser, making the print version a technological foundation for creating digital editions as well. The daily editions account for more than 50% of revenue at most media companies and will remain a business critical media product.

Our teams also work daily on perfecting automation for web front pages, article content production, and more.

Depending on your strengths and the challenges we face when you join, your role will involve writing and maintaining Node.js apps to orchestrate headless browsers, contributing to our React-based frontend, working with AWS services for efficient scheduling and resource allocation, or creating serverless functions or Docker microservices to connect various components.

Your skillset must include:

Back-end development — APIs, and document- and relational databases.
Front-end development — JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
UX — a basic level of interest and abilities is needed to thrive around us, even as a backend developer.

Basically, you should be an experienced back-end developer capable of front-end work as well.

We're not dogmatic about which technologies you have experience with, and we expect that you are not, too. We do have a set of preferred tools and services you'd need to be open to using. These include Node.js, React, JavaScript, MongoDB, MySQL, and Amazon Web Services.

To Apply

Send your application and resumé to geir@aptoma.com
Subject: Application – Full-stack developer
Applications can be submitted in Norwegian, Swedish and English.
Applications are reviewed on an ongoing basis.

What It's Like to Work in Aptoma

What we expect from you

Tabs and semicolons (we had to decide something to avoid this whole situation)
End-to-end responsibility: You'll usually be responsible for tasks from start to finish — that is, from requirements phase and during tech. specs, UX specs, development, deployment, bug fixing and direct communciation with customers on support tickets relating to your features. We try not to do any handovers during feature development.
Tech and UX development: While we expect decent UX and tech solutions from you, you will have colleagues interested in reviewing your pull reqests and UX proposals as part of our QA process.
Talk to customers: When required to solve the task, you'll engage with the customer without any mediation.
Autonomy: We have no full-time managers (and probably never will have), so sometimes your manager will be busy developing and not following up on you. You'll have to raise relevant questions and concerns yourself.
Integrity: If you have enough on your plate and we're trying to give you another task, you need to make it explicitly clear that you'll need to offload other tasks to accomodate more work.
Criticism: At the core of our productivity with a small team is our ability to reveal why something shouldn't be done — we expect you to point to problems and potential problems whenever you see them.

What we don't expect from you

We don't expect you to thrive on multitasking — we know multitasking can reduce productivity for many. We include that in our cost/benefit considerations.
We expect you not to say yes to any meeting — it's appropriate to require a reason for your attendance to a meeting.
We don't expect you to be extrovert — while you should be able to communicate when needed, we usually prefer silent get-shit-done-productivity when there's nothing of importance to discuss.

What we can provide

Interesting and challenging development tasks with a clear purpose.
Seniors on first line of support — you won't be called after hours with mundane questions.
A desk, a computer and free coffee
Productive silence at the office.
Flexitime outside core hours 09-15.
Ad hoc use of home office.
Competitive salary and pension arrangements.
Shower at the office and a safe place to stash your bike.
A yearly company trip — nothing fancy, though.
The odd skiing trip, boat trip, and trip to the beach.
A monthly-ish snack and drink with colleagues.

What we can't provide

Hand holding — to get help, you'll usually have to ask for it.
A safe place to hide — there is not always backlog to pull tasks from nor a ticket system with ready todo tech tasks. Sometimes we all have to reach out to people to figure things out.
Glamour — we're craftsmen 99% of the time.
Freedom from legacy tech — while we invest heavily in modernising our tech base, we still have backends developed in PHP etc. Whenever required, we maintain, modify and extend those technologies.
A large organisation — our modestly sized organisation is built around a dozen or so very capable, skilled, strong and autonomous individuals more than anything else.

How Aptoma is Run

We have an all-hands meeting 1-2 times per month, where we discuss any company wide topics.

Each team has a weekly or bi-weekly status and planning meeting (STAPL), where priorities are discussed and decided.

We have a business team run by CEO which is preparing all major product and/or company decisions, but these decisions are all made in the all-hands meeting.

The company is fully owned by the CEO and some of the employees, and everyone has a fair chance to influence and object to decisions.