About Ruby Labs
Ruby Labs is a leading tech company that creates and operates innovative consumer products, with opportunities across the health, education, and entertainment industries. Learn more at: https://rubylabs.com/about-us/
We are looking for a disciplined, highly autonomous Middle Next.js Developer to build and ship product features for one of our core D2C subscription products. You will own features end to end across a TypeScript monorepo — a Next.js App Router client, a Fastify + Payload CMS API on PostgreSQL, and Cloudflare Workers at the edge — from the moment you receive a task, through breaking it down, estimating, implementing, testing, and observability, to a clean release to production and confirmation that it works for real users.
This is a hands-on engineering role suited for someone who treats production as the standard, not the finish line. Half-tested code, silent failures, and unverified AI-generated output are not acceptable. The codebase is convention-heavy — a layered Feature-Sliced Design structure with strict import rules — and you are expected to work inside those conventions rather than around them. You are accountable for every task you take on and for every area of the product you touch: if it breaks, regresses, or stays half-finished, that is yours to see through. We expect maximum autonomy and real involvement in the product — you work independently within a sprint, communicate risks before they become blockers, and escalate architectural decisions to senior engineers rather than guessing.
Responsibilities
Feature Development
•Build features across the Next.js client and the Fastify + Payload CMS backend according to product requirements
•Write code that follows the team's Feature-Sliced Design layering, naming, and import conventions
•Ship changes behind feature flags and A/B experiments, fully localized across every supported locale
•Integrate third-party providers — billing, email/CRM, analytics — over REST APIs and webhooks
Quality & Reliability
•Cover functionality with unit, integration, and e2e tests at the level the team expects
•Run a thorough self-review before code review, and review teammates' code with the same rigour
•Fix bugs and perform root-cause analysis for recurring issues
•Optimize page and endpoint performance — rendering and caching strategy, database queries, bundle size
Security & Observability
•Apply secure development practices: schema validation, access control, safe handling of secrets
•Follow observability practices — structured logging, metrics, and alerts — using existing tooling
Collaboration
•Break down, estimate, and ship your own tasks to production within the sprint — and stay accountable for them after release
•Own the areas of the product you work in: their stability, performance, and follow-up fixes
•Surface requirement clarifications, estimate changes, and risks early and in writing
•Escalate complex architectural decisions and critical risks to senior engineers
Requirements
•2+ years of commercial React experience, including 1+ year with Next.js (App Router, Server Components, route handlers, rendering and caching strategies) and solid TypeScript
•Node.js backend experience on a typed HTTP framework (Fastify, Nest, or Express) with PostgreSQL — REST API design, schema migrations, integrations over REST and webhooks (signature verification, idempotency, retries) — plus a working understanding of HTTP/REST, auth mechanisms, and web security fundamentals
•Hands-on with the modern client stack: TanStack Query, Zustand, React Hook Form + Zod, Tailwind CSS, and a React component library such as HeroUI, MUI, or shadcn/ui
•Experience with a code-first headless CMS on PostgreSQL (Payload, Strapi, Directus, or equivalent) — collections, access control, generated types, migrations
•Testing and delivery discipline: e2e tests (Cypress or Playwright) and unit/integration tests (Vitest or Jest), Git flow, code review, working with CI
•Daily use of AI development tools (Claude Code or equivalents), including configuring them for a project — context, instructions, rules, MCP/integrations — with full ownership of the quality, security, and correctness of generated code
•English — B1+
Leadership Attributes
•Owns the outcome — takes a task from requirement to production without waiting to be pushed, and stays accountable for the result and the area it touches
•Maximally autonomous and involved — needs a goal, not step-by-step instructions, and cares how the product performs, not just whether the ticket is closed
•Verifies before trusting — treats AI output, third-party responses, and your own code as unproven until tested
•Structured communicator — surfaces risks, blockers, and estimate changes early, in writing, in a remote team
•Knows the edge of their scope — escalates architectural and security decisions instead of improvising them
•Learns from incidents — fixes the root cause, not just the symptom
Location
Ruby Labs operates within the CET (Central European Time) zone. Applicants from any country are welcome to apply for the position as long as they are located within approximately ± 4 hours of CET. This ensures optimal collaboration and communication during working hours.
Conditions
•Remote Work Environment: freedom to work from anywhere, anytime, promoting a healthy work-life balance
•Unlimited PTO: unlimited paid time off to recharge and prioritize your well-being, without counting days
•Paid National Holidays: paid time off on national holidays to unwind and recharge
•Company-provided MacBook: top-notch Apple MacBooks provided to all employees who need them
•Flexible Independent Contractor Agreement: flexibility, autonomy, and entrepreneurial opportunities, with tax advantages, networking opportunities, reduced employment obligations, and freedom to work from anywhere (details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nkrN76JlZkbKj9WSOhlT1_mni_CZeDkHdwfIjPXVwvk/preview?tab=t.0#heading=h.ndsdl4wapxtt)
Interview Process
After submitting your application, the review typically takes 3 to 5 days, but may occasionally take longer due to the volume of applications received. If there is a potential fit, the next steps are:
•Recruiter Screening (40 minutes)
•Technical Interview (60 minutes)
