Product Engineer; Ruby on Rails

About Search Api

Search Api is a real‑time SERP API delivering structured data from 100+ search engines and sources, including Google Search, Google Shopping, Google Jobs, Bing, Baidu, You Tube, Amazon, and many more. We power production workloads for Fortune 500 companies and fast‑moving startups who need reliable search data ’re a lean, profitable, bootstrapped team. No VC pressure, no bloat. Just engineers shipping real products to real customers.

• Own the product. You’ll work across the entire codebase – billing, API, dashboard, enterprise features, internal tools. Everything.
• High trust, high impact. The CEO/CTO currently reviews the hardest PRs. You’ll take that over.
• Shape the technical direction. Introduce better patterns, raise code quality, build compounding systems.
• Work directly with the CEO/CTO. No layers. Direct collaboration on product and technical decisions.
• Bootstrapped & profitable. We answer to customers, not investors.

• We do everything the Rails Way. If you don’t like DHH’s style, this may not be the place for you.
• We embrace the one‑person framework.
• We hire Managers of One. We trust you to figure it out.
• Remote‑only. Async‑first. Results‑driven.
• Transparency. No politics.

• Ruby on Rails 8.1
• Ruby 3.4
• Hotwire (Stimulus.
  
  JS + Turbo)
• Tailwind
  
  CSS (Tailwind
  
  UI components)
• PostgreSQL
• Redis
• Sidekiq
• Stripe
• Terraform + AWS

• Own the hardest PRs – complex features, tricky refactors, performance‑critical code. The stuff that requires senior judgment.
• Review other engineers’ PRs. Raise the bar. Catch issues before they ship. Mentor through code review.
• Build enterprise features – SAML, SCIM, audit logs, permissions. Whatever enterprise customers need.
• Work on billing and payments – Stripe integrations, subscription logic, usage‑based billing.
• Create and iterate on product features – API playground, dashboard improvements, developer experience.
• Develop in‑house algorithms. We build custom solutions. You’ll design and implement them.
• Debug and optimize performance – memory profiling, CPU profiling, query optimization. Find the bottleneck and fix it.
• Work with native gems and low‑level bindings when needed – different architectures, compilation issues, C extensions.
• Ship frontend with good design sense – we use Tailwind
  
  UI. Build clean, functional UI.
• Maintain security standards – understand common vulnerabilities. Review code with a security mindset.
• Stay current with Rails and AI – know what’s new, adopt what makes sense, always look for compounding benefits.

• Oversee other engineers’ work.
• Make architectural decisions.
• Potentially gain production access and work with Terraform.
• Lead new projects or pivots.

• Broad scope – you touch everything: billing, auth, API, frontend, infra.
• High bar – your code must be excellent. You set the standard.
• Ambiguity – sometimes you decide what to build, not just how.
• Responsibility – when you ship something you own the outcome. No one else to blame.
• Fast pace – we ship daily. We expect results, not activity.

• Many years of Ruby on Rails experience. This is not a mid‑level role. You’ve built and shipped production Rails apps.
• Proven track record – point to systems you built, problems you solved, code you’re proud of.
• Stripe experience – required. You’ve worked with Stripe billing, subscriptions, webhooks.
• Product thinker – you build what customers need, not just what’s asked.
• Good design sense – ship clean UI with Tailwind
  
  CSS. Functional and polished, not pixel‑perfect.
• Security‑minded – grasp authentication, authorization, common vulnerabilities.
• Up to date – follow Rails releases, Ruby updates, AI developments. Curious about the next.
• Compounding mindset – look for improvements that pay dividends over time, not just quick fixes.
• Comfortable with performance debugging – memory profiling, flame graphs, query analysis. Optimized slow systems before.
• Great writer – PRs, docs, code comments. Clear communication matters.
• Self‑directed – you don’t need daily stand‑ups to stay productive.
• Fluent in English, written and spoken.
• BSc or higher in CS or equivalent technical field.

• Terraform experience.
• AWS…