We hire people who will operate it.
Building a system you never have to run teaches you almost nothing. Everyone here has been on the other end of a platform failing at the worst possible hour, and it shows in what they build.
Nothing is open right now. We would rather say that than list a role we are not actually hiring for.
Open applications are still read, by an engineer, and answered. If you have built and operated something at real scale — or want to — write to ask@madsoftech.com with something you built and what broke in it.
Four things, none of them a stack.
- 01You have operated something you built, at a time when it broke, and can describe what you learned from that rather than who was at fault.
- 02You write for the engineer who inherits the system, not for the reviewer who approves the pull request.
- 03You will say a deadline is not achievable while it is still early enough to matter.
- 04You can sit with an operator for a full shift and come back with requirements nobody wrote down.
Four steps, and an answer either way.
01
A conversation, not a screen
The first call is with an engineer who does the work, not a recruiter reading a checklist. Forty-five minutes, about what you have built and what went wrong in it.
02
A paid exercise on real ground
A scoped problem resembling something we have actually shipped, with a fixed budget of your time. We pay for it. Asking for a weekend of unpaid work is a way of finding out who can afford to give one.
03
A session on your own work
You walk two of us through the exercise, or through something you built previously. We argue with the decisions. How that argument goes is most of the signal.
04
An answer either way
Within five working days of the last session, with the reason. Nobody is left waiting on silence, including the people we do not hire.
Where the work happens
Brusubi, with remote arrangements for engineers within a few hours of GMT. Some engagements need presence on site during discovery and go-live — that is the nature of systems whose users are standing at a gate.
What we will not ask of you
Unpaid trial work, an on-call rota without compensation, or a promise you cannot keep to a client. If an engagement is going badly we say so to the client rather than asking the team to absorb it in evenings.
How you grow
By owning a system end to end, including its operation, which is the only way the judgement in this work is actually acquired. We would rather one engineer understand a platform completely than five understand a fifth of it.
Start here
Bring us the problem
nobody has solved.
A 30-minute technical briefing. We will tell you what we would build, roughly what it costs, and honestly whether we are the right people for it.