About Rugela

Rugela is an early-stage social app for the Jewish community built on Django with HTMX for fast, progressive interactivity. Tiny team, big surface area—this role is about getting to a lovable, secure MVP quickly and iterating in production.

Role overview

You’ll be a primary developer for Rugela. You will stand up features end-to-end, wire up data models and APIs, craft server-rendered UI with HTMX, and own the path to production (tests, CI/CD, observability). You’ll collaborate with PM/Design, product owner, tech team lead, and other developers as we work together to deliver velocity and quality.

What you’ll do

• Ship quickly: Scope thin slices, deliver value weekly, instrument and iterate based on real usage.
• Build the product: Django models, views, forms, and HTMX interactions.
• Own UX details in a server-first stack: semantic HTML, accessible forms, progressive enhancement, optimistic updates where sensible.
• Core features: auth & profiles, content creation and organization, feeds, notifications, search, media uploads.
• Operational excellence: appropriate testing, enhancing CI/CD.
• Performance & reliability: background jobs (Celery), N+1 avoidance.
• Data & analytics: event logging, funnels, feature flags; help our team convert insights into roadmap tweaks.
• Collaboration and Communication: Issue-based development, effective commit messages, and regular participation in team chat.

Must-have qualifications

• 4+ years professional experience; 3+ with Django.
• Strong Python fundamentals; SQL schema design.
• Building scalable services with caching/queues (e.g., Redis, Celery/RQ, Dramatiq).
• API design, auth (JWT/OAuth), and security best practices (CSRF, XSS).
• Containerization (Docker / Podman), CI/CD.
• Comfortable with modern front-end and CSS systems.
• Strong software hygiene: clear code, disciplined commits, and collaborative ticket practices.

Nice to haves

• HTMX, Tailwind CSS.
• Performance profiling; feature flagging & experimentation.