Thank you for your interest in Level 12; while we are currently not actively hiring for these specific positions, we encourage you to submit an application for consideration in the future should opportunities arise that align with your skills and experience.
We have a commitment to transparency and offer a "no surprises experience" throughout the interview and hiring process. We value candor...as evidenced by the length of this job description. :)
Speaking of job descriptions, we don't let HR people write ours. They are written by software devs for software devs.
Our CEO prefers the title CED, Chief Executive Developer. Engineering and operational concerns don't take a back seat when potential sales come to the front door.
We practice and preach sound development practices. You are likely to learn and grow as a developer while working here.
We aren't trying to compete with FAANG compensation. But outside that bubble, we are competitive. See below for specifics on salary and benefits.
You will be working remote with a team that is all working remote and has been for years. Let's make the best use of our time by not commuting.
We have a no-drama office policy. We value and cultivate enjoyable working relationships among team members.
We emphasize work/life balance and adopt policies that make sure our people don't get burnt out. For instance, our PTO/Vacation policies are designed so that you actually use them.
A commitment to Agile Principles while not being enslaved to any particular methodology.
You like building full stack web applications with technologies like Python, React, SQL, etc.
You are committed to automated testing of all the software you write (our apps typically have 92%+ test coverage).
You recognize that there is a lot of idealism in the software development community and are not disenchanted with the the day-to-day realities of programming.
You like working independently but can contribute to a team as needed
If you apply, we guarantee that we will give you a response, whether "yay" or "nay". No black holes here!
Hard requirement: At this time we are only considering candidates who can work in the U.S. without sponsorship and can fit their workday into the 8am-7pm ET range. We are open to international candidates working in similar time zones, so long as your country's laws permit you to work for a U.S. based company on a contract basis.
Our CEO was asked, "What advice do you have for an engineer looking to get hired on your team?" His advice, "The hiring process is difficult...don't fear rejection...the problem might be us."
The full answer given in a podcast is queued up for you in the player below:
Daily responsibilities primarily consist of coding database-driven web applications and other web-related development work. In a typical day, you will likely work mostly with Python based web applications using frameworks like Django or Flask that interact heavily with a database (usually PostgreSQL). In the course of that work, you will have to interact with related technologies like JavaScript, React/Vue, HTML, and CSS/SASS. There's also opportunities for you to be involved in devops work if interested.
This is not a design job. It will require a lot of in-depth programming and database work including the ability to architect maintainable code that gets the job done.
While we do prefer to do most of our back-end work in Python, we will occasionally take projects in other languages if they seem to be a good fit for us and the customer.
Some days you will jump from project to project as issues come up. At other times you may work primarily on one project for weeks, months, or occasionally years.
Our customers have varied needs and so we tend to have varied responsibilities and projects. We have a focus on serving the customer and making software conform to their company rather than making the company conform to software.
Your immediate manager will be a "Team Lead." This is a senior developer, project manager, and team captain all rolled into one. It's also someone whose proven to be talented with both code and people, especially communication. We don't believe non-technical managers bring a lot of value to a development team, so we don't use them. Ditto non-technical project managers. We keep our dev teams small and they usually have a small number of projects so that our team leads don't get overwhelmed. Communication with clients usually involves the team lead and the developers working on the project. We try to avoid the "phone game" whenever possible.
The ability to take ownership for a project, engineer a sound technical solution, and "drive" a project to completion is essential. Your team lead will be a ready and willing resource to help you architect solutions and/or solve problems, but won't micro-manage. If you aren't asking them for help or indicating you have a problem, they will assume you are making good progress on the issues assigned to you during sprint planning, which happens every two weeks.
Our CEO/CED and CTO are both software engineers and heavily involved in the engineering operations of the company. They oversee the health of the development team and projects, help our sales team evaluate opportunities for technical and capacity fit, gather feedback from the devs on what is and isn't working in our tech stack and/or processes, and consider the value that emerging technologies might bring to our organization.
"Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely" (Agile Manifesto principle).
We actively manage every part of our organization through the lens of what is reasonably sustainable. For example, it's why we:
We don't want anyone to burn out. We'd prefer our team to be here and fully engaged for years to come.
The position we have open is for a Mid-Level Developer. Mid-Level Developers usually have 3-6 years relevant experience and meet most of the following requirements:
We appreciate GitLab letting us copy some of their content for the above requirements.
Level 12 is development firm that specializes in building custom software for our customers. We manage the entire process including planning, managing, and building software exactly as the customer needs it.
We serve customers in diverse industries including: non-profit, automotive, manufacturing, logistics, and financial. Our customers range in size from small startups to Fortune 500.
We set ourselves apart by digging into the customer's problem until we can own it and then delivering highly functional software that brings significant value to the customer's organization. That may not sound unique, but the longer we do this, the more we encounter people who have been burned by bad development experiences with other firms. We look for long-term relationships with our customers and have some that go back to 2005.
We may not be changing the world, but we are impacting the lives of our customers and their employees. You don't have to take our word for it, checkout some of our reviews by our customers.
This is a video we often use with our prospective customers to explain our agile/iterative development process (< 2 mins):
Behind the scenes, we are using software development best practices to ensure that the code we deliver is flexible, maintainable, and works well for the user for years to come.
We know what it's like to work in a substandard development environment or culture that accepts or maybe even promotes practices that kill developer productivity and enjoyment. We work hard at promoting development best practices and ingraining them into our culture. If you come work for us, you can look forward to:
If you'd like to learn more about what makes us tick, our Chief Executive Developer (CED) gave a talk on the importance of CI and automation in an agile software development process (embedded video) and has given other talks and presentations on various topics.
Level 12 was founded on biblical principles and has biblically informed Values. See the about page for our Mission, Values, Vision, and Purpose statements.
Due to differing or a lack of religious convictions, we respect that employees may not be able to identify with our faith-based Vision and Purpose. Applicants are not asked questions regarding nor expected to discuss their religious beliefs during the application process or during employment. But, we do expect all applicants and employees to share our Values.
Our Values describe not only who we are as an organization, but also who we are not. They encompass our ethics, principles, and beliefs about our organization and its relationship to the world. They communicate to employees the behaviors that are approved (and rewarded), and by extension those that are not.
porn == entertainment, this is not the job for you!Despite the length of this post, we may have missed something. If you have a question that the job description didn't answer, and you would like it answered before applying, please email us: [email protected]. We usually respond the same or next business day.
Ever send a resume in only to never...hear...anything? We promise we won't do that. If you follow the directions above, you will receive a response from us within a week or so.
If you don't hear anything back from us, double check whether you followed the instructions above (🙂) and then email us for a status update.
If you have read all of the above, carefully, and are interested and qualified, then here are your next steps:
Regarding Authenticity: as you answer these questions, please keep in mind that we prefer candor over flattery and we are under no delusion that this is the perfect position or we are the perfect company. Likewise, we don't believe there are any perfect candidates. We understand that companies and people are made up of both strengths and weaknesses and the better we understand both your strengths and weaknesses the more likely we are to make a wise hiring decision.
Please take time to answer the questions thoughtfully and accurately.
If you don't hear from us, check your SPAM folder. All emails that we send will come from the domain "level12.io".
Our application process is outlined roughly below.
But, before you get there, we want to apologize in advance if this process seems...imposing. We have put considerable thought and refinement into each one of these steps in an effort to make sure our hiring process is as well crafted as our software. And just like software, hiring is a lot more complex than it might seem on the surface. Our hiring process is far from perfect (like our software), we are still learning and tweaking, but we want to assure you that each of these steps gives us crucial information regarding you and your development abilities that is essential for helping us to determine if this is a good match.
Consider this: our entire process is less than a week's worth of effort to make sure that where you spend the next 1-5 years of your life is a good fit. Isn't that worth it? Keep in mind that we have deliberately structured our process so that the earlier stages require less effort. Our hope is that if you make it to the later stages of our process, where the time commitment increases, you will have had a chance to get to know us a bit better so you can decide if the time investment on your part is worth it. We care about your time (and ours) and do our best not to waste it!
If at any step we don't feel like it's a good match, we'll let you know promptly. We ask that you do the same for us.