Work

About Sokanu

Sokanu is an advanced technology company operating at scale and motivated by social purpose. Our online career discovery and advancement tools put cutting-edge technologies and data science to work to help people navigate the rapidly changing world of work. Our CareerExplorer platform blends psychometrics and machine learning to help millions of people learn how their personal traits, talents, interests, and values align with thousands of different career roles and degree programs. We served over 10 million users last year and are already on track for a further 50% growth this year.

We recognize the deep-rooted issues of homogeneity in the tech industry and highly encourage people of all backgrounds and life experiences to apply. We're striving to build a product that's accessible and useful for everyone, and firmly believe that diversity within our team is important in that pursuit.

Engineering at Sokanu

We're a small team with a modern and well-maintained tech stack looking to grow as we enter a new stage for the company. We’d prefer hiring on-site in Vancouver, BC (remote during the pandemic) but are open to remote hires within Canada for the right fit. See our core values to learn more about what it means to be an engineer at Sokanu.

Currently open positions

Software Engineer (Infrastructure / DevOps)

The Role

Sokanu is looking to hire a software engineer to help facilitate the development and maintenance of our infrastructure system while advancing our DevOps culture. We are seeking an experienced software engineer with experience in AWS, Terraform, DevOps and CI/CD. The ideal candidate would be curious, comfortable working autonomously, able to help shape the direction of our infrastructure system and capable of implementing changes across our entire stack. You'd work closely with the rest of our engineering team to help us create a more robust, resilient and flexible system.

Responsibilities

  • Help plan and build improvements to our existing AWS system
  • Develop and extend our existing infrastructure as code solution
  • Help build and maintain our CI/CD pipelines across our various projects
  • Develop monitoring, alerts, and be part of our Pagerduty rotation
  • Architect and execute performance and cost improvements for our AWS cloud resources, such as EC2/RDS/Elasticache/ECS
  • Educate and enable our engineering team to manage infrastructure resources
  • Wear multiple hats on our engineering team and implement changes on both our infrastructure and Django application

Requirements

  • 4+ years of experience working with AWS, infrastructure as code
  • Experience maintaining a CI/CD system (we use CircleCI)
  • Experience working with containerization technologies (we use Docker)
  • Strong communication skills
  • Experience working as a software developer on a web application

Nice to Haves

  • Experience testing infrastructure code
  • Configuration management experience
  • Knowledge of cloud and data security
  • Strong Python skills
  • Previous experience at a startup

Relevant Tools at Sokanu

  • AWS, Docker, Terraform Cloud, Datadog, Grafana, CircleCI, Python

How to Apply

  • Send us your résumé and/or GitHub at hiring@sokanu.com and we'll be in touch if you're a good fit!

Software Engineer (Back-End)

The Role

Sokanu is seeking to expand our back-end engineering team with an experienced engineer capable of taking us to the next level. We have a strong team and a modern stack but are always looking to improve our code quality, expand our test coverage, and explore new approaches to ensuring site reliability. The ideal candidate has experience building and scaling consumer products, and is comfortable taking on a leadership role, helping to guide and scope development projects while mentoring junior engineers.

Responsibilities

  • Work tightly with our design and front-end engineering teams to design, develop, test, and maintain new product features
  • Help maintain and improve the performance of our Django monolith
  • Develop, maintain, and improve our various other microservices
  • Help improve and maintain our back-end toolchain and CI/CD pipeline
  • Collaborate with other engineers to develop OpenAPI specs and versioned APIs
  • Mentor and help develop junior engineers
  • Help our team as we expand our use of type hints in Python and improve our test coverage

Requirements

  • 4+ years of experience in back-end engineering
  • 3+ years experience with Python
  • Strong communication skills
  • Experience working as a software developer on a web application

Nice to Haves

  • Experience working with containerization technologies (we use Docker)
  • Experience maintaining a CI/CD system (we use CircleCI)
  • Experience with typed languages
  • Experience mentoring junior engineers
  • Experience working with and developing OpenAPI/Swagger specifications
  • Experience with OAuth and SSO systems
  • Previous experience at a startup

Relevant Tools at Sokanu

  • Python, Django, Node.js, Postgres, Docker, AWS, CircleCI, Falcon

How to Apply

  • Send us your résumé and/or GitHub at hiring@sokanu.com and we'll be in touch if you're a good fit!

Software Engineer (Front-End)

The Role

Sokanu is seeking to expand our front-end engineering team with an experienced engineer capable of taking us to the next level. We have a strong team and a modern front-end stack but are always looking to improve our code quality, expand our test coverage, and explore new approaches to ensuring site reliability and user delight. The ideal candidate has experience building products focused on SEO, accessibility, and user experience, and is capable of developing and maintaining a front-end toolchain.

Responsibilities

  • Work tightly with our design and back-end engineering teams to design, develop, test, and maintain new product features
  • Build delightful, accessible, user experiences
  • Help develop and deploy our new design system
  • Help improve and maintain our front-end toolchain and CI/CD pipeline
  • Collaborate with back-end engineers to develop API contracts to be consumed by the front-end

Requirements

  • 4+ years experience in front-end engineering
  • 3+ years experience with React/Vue
  • Strong eye for design and a meticulous approach to creating good user experiences
  • Experience building and auditing web products with accessibility in mind
  • Knowledge of technical SEO best-practices

Nice to Haves

  • Experience working across the stack (we use Python/Django primarily on our back-end)
  • Experience with Typescript (or typed languages in general)
  • Previous experience working at a startup
  • Experience and desire to mentor junior engineers
  • A background in UX or HCI
  • Experience working with and developing OpenAPI/Swagger specifications

Relevant Tools at Sokanu

  • Typescript, React, SCSS, PostCSS, Puppeteer, Jest, Webpack, Grunt, CircleCI, Prettier, ESLint, Mixpanel, Python, Django

How to Apply

  • Send us your résumé and/or GitHub at hiring@sokanu.com and we'll be in touch if you're a good fit!

Software Engineer (Growth)

The Role

Sokanu has grown to 10M yearly users almost exclusively through word-of-mouth and a focus on ethical SEO. To help continue and accelerate this growth, we're seeking to hire a full-stack engineer focused on growth. This will be a largely self-directed role, working in close collaboration with our data science, engineering, and marketing teams to develop, test, and optimize new features focused on helping us expand our audience. Our ideal candidate is user-focused, has a background in software development, and is comfortable running and analyzing A/B and multivariate tests.

Responsibilities

  • Identify, implement and optimize traffic growth opportunities and new ways to reach and activate users in our target audience
  • Build top-of-funnel user experiences to drive sign-ups and activate users
  • Modify existing features and add new features to improve conversions, user retention, and satisfaction
  • Investigate launched feature performances by using third-party analytics tools (like Google Analytics or Mixpanel), and iterate on the growth plan according to performance and results
  • Closely monitor core metrics and work closely with our data science team to uncover new insights
  • Report on KPIs at a regular cadence, bringing forth new opportunities and ideas to scale audience growth and conversions

Requirements

  • 3+ years of experience in software engineering, user acquisition marketing, or similar fields
  • Strong experience in writing clean, reliable code (we use Python and Typescript)
  • Deep understanding of the tools that power marketing automation, experimentation, personalization, attribution, and analytics
  • Expertise in implementing third-party tools and integrating them in first-party applications
  • Experience with Mixpanel, Segment, Optimizely, Iterable, Amplitude, Google Analytics, or similar products
  • Understanding of how to manipulate, analyze and interpret highly complex data
  • An analytical mind applying rigour through A/B testing and build/measure/learn cycles
  • A mentality of curiosity, creativity, and never giving up

Nice to Haves

  • Demonstrated self-management skills
  • Previous work at a startup or in bottom-up SaaS growth
  • A background in UX or HCI

Relevant Tools at Sokanu

  • Python, Django, Typescript, React, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Mixpanel, SEO Rank Monitor, SEM Rush, Adwords, Facebook Ads

How to Apply

  • Send us your résumé and/or GitHub at hiring@sokanu.com and we'll be in touch if you're a good fit!