Posted almost 4 years ago
We build “You Need a Budget”, the best budgeting software around. (But people in the know call us YNAB, which is pronounced “why-nab”.) For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives. Google us, and you’ll see what we mean. We love building something that has a huge positive impact on people’s lives.
YNAB is growing, and so is our product team. Our software ecosystem includes personal budgeting apps for web, iOS, and Android. We have some big plans for our Android app, and that’s where you might come in.
Requirements (these are real, actual requirements):
But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. Let’s talk about life at YNAB and then we’ll go into detail about who we’re looking for.
We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our Core Value Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’ll probably fit right in, in which case, we can’t wait to hear from you!
Our developer team is about 20 people strong, and we frequently work in cross-functional teams, so you'll get to work with awesome people in all different roles in the company.
Regardless of their varied interests, all of our developers have one thing in common: they are a joy to work with. You won’t find heated arguments, big egos, and raised voices here. We save our competitive spirit for YNAB’s competitors (or the occasional spirited board game session), but internally we build up our teammates and celebrate their successes. We all love to program and solve problems in clever ways, and we regularly take time to geek out and show each other something cool we built or found to make our lives easier.
And of course, as a developer, you’ll get to work closely with our designers, who are amazing. They have the awards (including at least one actual Emmy) to prove they’re good at designing stuff, but there are plenty of skilled designers out there. More importantly, they are welcoming of feedback and suggestions during the design/development process, and are technically savvy enough to continuously improve our development workflow. For example, check out this post that Emily wrote describing how we handle semantic colors across all of our apps.
We work really hard to make working at YNAB an amazing experience (we’ve even been named one of Fortune’s Best Small Companies to Work For) and have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:
We’re a fully remote team, so you can live and work just about wherever you want, as long as it’s somewhere between the Pacific Time Zone (UTC-8) and the Central European Time Zone (UTC+1). Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.
We have only worked more than 40 hours per week in extremely rare circumstances. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul; no need to go crazy on the hours.
We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for Holiday break). It’s important to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your vacation in our #office_wall Slack channel.
We get everyone together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding! So far, we’ve done Costa Rica, a gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently, Laguna Beach. We play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.
We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, online courses and subscriptions, dedicated time away to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing in their craft.
If you are Stateside, we’ll set you up as a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be set up as a contractor. (We are spread all over the world: Switzerland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States.)
For our US employees, we offer fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. (No need to check your vision, you read that right, 100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, we’ve got you covered!)
We also have a Traditional and Roth 401k option. YNAB contributes three percent whether you choose to throw any money in there or not. It vests immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)
If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now I want to talk about you. You will play a big, big part in helping YNAB users gain control of their money. You will change lives.
You're a software developer with over 5 years of professional experience, with most of those being spent working on Android. You know how to write easy-to-maintain software while still keeping an eye on the roadmap.
You'll help us write and maintain features in our Android app. We believe in the power of native user interfaces on each platform, and are incredibly excited about Jetpack Compose, but we’re also the sort of folks who get excited about elegantly sharing business logic across all our platforms. To that end, we have a home-built shared library based on Typescript and SQLite that uses the V8 engine. You don't have to be an expert on TypeScript or SQL, but being curious about how things work on that layer definitely helps.
We’re already spiking on integrating Kotlin Multiplatform as well, and have some exciting proof-of-concept code committed to all of our platforms, so this is also a great time to get in at the start of a big Kotlin push.
Some technologies we use on Android:
YNAB is an equal opportunity employer. We believe a diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences to be critical to our success and are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who love working together to build something that matters.
P.S. If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!