Hi! We’re xyflow and we build open source node-based UI libraries like React Flow and Svelte Flow, which are used by thousands of developers. We’re looking for someone to join our team of five to help us provide support to our users and subscribers.
Our current situation
Our Pro subscribers pay us monthly to get up to 1 hour of email support each month. They are usually developers working at a company, who have stumbled into something so difficult, they need to call for back-up. Our team gets to the most common challenges that people run into, as well as the complex use cases that people are solving with React Flow, and we find a way to get them up and running again. Ideally, if a problem comes up enough times, we can address it at its core by improving our docs.
We get about 1-5 emails like this per day, and context-switching between these requests and our longer-term project work is difficult. We currently don’t have a system for triage, escalation, or tracking of these issues, and we’d be happy to create this process together.
Your experience
We are not necessarily looking for an expert in React or React Flow, but someone who is interested in learning it, as well as interested in presenting solutions to our users. If you could answer 20% of the support requests as you join the team (simple stuff like “which license does React Flow have?” or “can I use it without React?”) and then learn along the way, that would work for us. A base knowledge of development would help, so that you know what are the right sort of questions to ask. We expect more complex questions (like “why is my implementation of React Flow slow?” or “how can I implement an animated box along an edge?”), while other more experienced folks can cover those cases at the start.
Do you have any doubt about your level of experience? Apply anyway!! We’d love to talk to you.
What we expect from this role
- Reading, solving, triaging and answering technical support requests from our paying subscribers about using React Flow
- When you can’t solve a request yourself, asking for help or assigning another team member
- Tracking that each customer gets (around) 1 hour of support per month max
- Responding to non-technical support requests (about subscription plans, quote requests, startups/students asking for free access)
- Co-creating a system with us to triage support requests
- Keeping the full team informed on recurring issues, trends, or insights from support requests
This role could include…
- Co-writing pitches to work on in the next cycle based on your findings. Like a new tutorial, Pro example, or improvement to the docs.
- Writing and improving documentation for repeat issues
- Automating responses to non-technical support requests
- Responding to community questions in Discord and Github discussions
- User research / surveys
- Help set-up our monthly community calls or in-person meet-ups
What we can offer
- Help from the maintainers to get an in-depth understanding of React Flow
- Part time / Full time, could be fixed hours or billed hourly
- Berlin preferred, Remote or Hybrid possible
- € 40-80k (full-time employed salary, based on soft/hard skills and responsibilities)
Language
Our language of support is English, native proficiency is not required (Grammarly 😌💕)
About xyflow
Our team’s working rhythm
We currently work in 3-week cycles followed by 1-week cool-down period. During the cool-down week, we create “pitches” of new ideas, features, edits, or improvements. At the end of our cool-down week, as a team we decide (through conversation) which we’ll work on in the 3-week cycle. We work on some pitches collaboratively, some alone. At the end of the cycle, we share and talk through how the cycle was for us, and show what we worked on.
We are currently a 5-person team, we all work less than 40-hours per week, 4 of us are in Berlin (we have an office in Kreuzberg), 1 of us is in the UK. We all meet up in-person about twice a year. We communicate with Discord, and have one weekly synchronous call.
Who is xyflow?
Christopher (he/him) and Moritz (he/him) are the core maintainers of React Flow, and have been doing development work together for a decade (their past work). Hayleigh (she/her) does development work for the library’s ecosystem, and has lots of experience with developer communities. Peter (he/him) is the force behind Svelte Flow. John (he/him) does communications and writes a lot, like this, right now.
Company ethics
We don’t accept money from people like the military or agencies who conduct mass surveillance. Our core product is MIT Licensed, which translates to a core principle of how we try to be transparent about our work. We do make money from our Pro subscriptions, and we are not seeking investor funding. We are anti-hustle culture.
Should I apply?
If you don’t fit everything we wrote above or need some on-the-job skill-building, but you feel excited about the position, we would love to hear from you! We prioritize your excitement and interests over things like hard coding skills. We also have a flexible schedule, which can work well with any responsibilities you may have during the week such as student obligations or family / medical needs.
Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us. We are open to discussions about how to make xyflow a more inclusive space for you, and if we can make it easier/more accessible for you to apply for this position in any way, please reach out to us.
How to apply
Send us two things:
- Send us the answer to these questions with a paragraph or two of text (no more than 300 words) or a video / loom / audio clip (no more than 2 minutes):
- What is most interesting to you about this job posting?
- What past experience do you have that is relevant to this position?
- Your past working experience in any format (can be a CV, Linkedin profile, a bullet-point list, PDF, etc.).
Send this along with your first name and preferred pronouns (if you’d like) to
[email protected], and we’ll get back to you 2 weeks after the application closes, hopefully sooner!
Hiring process
- we anonymize your application as much as possible to remove any demographic information (last name, pronouns, etc.)
- Our team goes through each application
- We de-anonymize the applications and contact the applicants who we thought were best fit for the position, and invite them for an interview.
- After this round of interviews, we will make a decision if we need another round of interviews, or to ask those who are a fit to complete a task relevant to the job (for which we can offer compensation).
We estimate the time between closing this job ad to hiring someone would take less than 6 weeks. We make sure to contact every applicant through every stage of the process (no ghosting).
We will no longer be accepting applications for this position after
18. August 2024. If you need an extension for any reason, send an email at
[email protected] and we will do our best to extend the deadline for you.