March 30, 2017 at 11:34Bitfury: about the team, requirements for candidates and open vacancies
What BitFury is for the company and what it does, we talked about in a previous post . And today, Anna Mynets, Chief Human Resources Officer ( The BitFury Group ), will talk about our team .
At the beginning of 2017, the company employs 250 people, with 150 of them joining us over the past year. We continue to grow and invest in highly qualified staff. On average, a new employee comes to the BitFury team somewhere in the world every other day.
About 20% of our team are programmers. Soon this percentage will increase: now we are paying more and more attention to software products, the Data Analytics platform, Digital Assets PaaS, Lightning Network (p2p), so we are extremely interested in talented developers. The average age of soft-developers is 28-30 years, in hardware, employees are a little older - closer to 40.
We are engaged in blockchain technology and, of course, we will evaluate if the candidate is already in the subject. But this is still a new area in which very few specialists have "grown" so far and BitFury will not refuse a person just because he knows little about blockchain. It’s good if the candidate understands related topics: cryptography, the specifics of data warehousing, system programming and theory of algorithms.
It so happened that used on most of our developers - MIPT graduates (MIPT), of course, they quickly found a common language and become cool team. We monitor the market and successfully compete for the most talented children from other strong universities: Moscow State University, Baumanka, Taras Shevchenko University and others.
We are always happy for the Olympiad. The numbers speak for themselves: 80% of our technical specialists are winners of the olympiads, 40% are candidates of science. Our team also has a world champion in mathematics - an ambitious company has gathered here.
By the way, about ambition. If they are healthy, we really value them, as does thinking outside the box. For example, one of the candidates attracted the close attention of the HR department by comparing it with ... the picky bride from Martin Gardner ’s famous optimization task, which at one time defended doctoral dissertations. And the other managed with just one comment to stand out from the crowd at the student job fair. He asked: “Is your selection really serious?” And, receiving an affirmative answer, he asked with dignity: “Then be sure to contact me, please.” It was evident that this was not empty self-confidence, but a business approach. We noticed him - and did not fail. A little advice to applicants: if you have imagination and determination, do not be afraid to show them at our interviews.
As for the schedule, no one will calculate the minutes spent at the workplace. No formalism. In creative work it is important to grope your inner ideal rhythm - we understand this. But usually guys come to us who do not need to stand with a stick. At school, they were few in number five, and, having won the national Olympiad, they rushed to the world. When ambitious people gather in one place and they are given an interesting task - there is no need to customize them, on the contrary - you will not stop!
With remote employees the situation is similar, there are tasks, there are responsible for tasks, there are deadlines for tasks. Day or night, in the office or on the beach of Bali - it does not matter where you do your work, the main thing is a cool result and on time.
The world of IT companies over the past few years has accustomed candidates to the fact that a new office is always cookies, buns, table tennis and much more, depending on the ingenuity of the company.
How does it work with us? Convenient spacious offices and workspaces for every taste. Do you often interact with the team? It offers open space with panoramic windows. Want some privacy? There are spacious comfortable rooms. You can upgrade your skills, attend management and public speaking trainings, and learn English with a native speaker. The staff at the office delivers great dinners. And we have the most comprehensive medical insurance.
Without going into details, I will say that travel agents, lawyers, HR, the finance department and team assistants of BitFury do everything so that our children do not need to think about anything other than their immediate tasks.
Tasks are prepared and checked by our developers. They are not very voluminous and will not take much time. Most often, we give the candidate a task on a topic that is familiar to him, but not as good as his immediate area of interest, in order to understand how he is oriented in related areas, whether it is easy to “grasp” the new. We do not specifically formulate tasks in detail to see how the applicant acts with a lack of information - asks additional questions or tries to think out himself. Both options are good in their own way and allow you to learn more about a person’s way of thinking.
The stack of technologies that we are currently using: Rust and Java for one project; Go, btcd, Protobuf, Noise protocol for the second; Docker, Docker compose, Kubernetes, Javascript, Node JS, Angular 2, React - for the third. But these are not all products, so clearly allocating the main stack is still difficult.
Here is an example of one of the test tasks for a fullstack developer: write a graphical blockchain explorer, simple in design and based on btcd, with the ability to display information about any selected transaction, address and block in a readable format.
Or, the implementation of Merkle Tree or Merkle Patricia Tree data structures as a separate library.
We are an international company with offices around the world, so the question of relocation is one of the three most asked. We have official permission for it, but for a long-term relocation very serious reasons are needed - the personal desire of the employee must coincide with the needs of the business.
However, we have very high internal mobility, and business trips around the world are an important part of working at BitFury. The company's specialists attend conferences and presentations in different countries: Bitcoin Expo 2017 has just passed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, our guys took part in the Ernst & Young Blockchain Startup Challenge (London) and won Best Pitch there, after which a promising joint project began.
We have a vacancy that is constantly open, no matter how many people we take for it: we always need smart Rust developers. We are also looking for a strong Java Lead with experience in creating Enterprise solutions.
If you are interested in the world of blockchain and like non-trivial tasks, check out the full list of our vacancies .
Maybe our team is missing you? ;)
At the beginning of 2017, the company employs 250 people, with 150 of them joining us over the past year. We continue to grow and invest in highly qualified staff. On average, a new employee comes to the BitFury team somewhere in the world every other day.Development Team
About 20% of our team are programmers. Soon this percentage will increase: now we are paying more and more attention to software products, the Data Analytics platform, Digital Assets PaaS, Lightning Network (p2p), so we are extremely interested in talented developers. The average age of soft-developers is 28-30 years, in hardware, employees are a little older - closer to 40.
Candidate Requirements
We are engaged in blockchain technology and, of course, we will evaluate if the candidate is already in the subject. But this is still a new area in which very few specialists have "grown" so far and BitFury will not refuse a person just because he knows little about blockchain. It’s good if the candidate understands related topics: cryptography, the specifics of data warehousing, system programming and theory of algorithms.
It so happened that used on most of our developers - MIPT graduates (MIPT), of course, they quickly found a common language and become cool team. We monitor the market and successfully compete for the most talented children from other strong universities: Moscow State University, Baumanka, Taras Shevchenko University and others.
We are always happy for the Olympiad. The numbers speak for themselves: 80% of our technical specialists are winners of the olympiads, 40% are candidates of science. Our team also has a world champion in mathematics - an ambitious company has gathered here.
By the way, about ambition. If they are healthy, we really value them, as does thinking outside the box. For example, one of the candidates attracted the close attention of the HR department by comparing it with ... the picky bride from Martin Gardner ’s famous optimization task, which at one time defended doctoral dissertations. And the other managed with just one comment to stand out from the crowd at the student job fair. He asked: “Is your selection really serious?” And, receiving an affirmative answer, he asked with dignity: “Then be sure to contact me, please.” It was evident that this was not empty self-confidence, but a business approach. We noticed him - and did not fail. A little advice to applicants: if you have imagination and determination, do not be afraid to show them at our interviews.
About the warden’s work schedule and stick
As for the schedule, no one will calculate the minutes spent at the workplace. No formalism. In creative work it is important to grope your inner ideal rhythm - we understand this. But usually guys come to us who do not need to stand with a stick. At school, they were few in number five, and, having won the national Olympiad, they rushed to the world. When ambitious people gather in one place and they are given an interesting task - there is no need to customize them, on the contrary - you will not stop!
With remote employees the situation is similar, there are tasks, there are responsible for tasks, there are deadlines for tasks. Day or night, in the office or on the beach of Bali - it does not matter where you do your work, the main thing is a cool result and on time.
Working conditions and guarantees
The world of IT companies over the past few years has accustomed candidates to the fact that a new office is always cookies, buns, table tennis and much more, depending on the ingenuity of the company.
How does it work with us? Convenient spacious offices and workspaces for every taste. Do you often interact with the team? It offers open space with panoramic windows. Want some privacy? There are spacious comfortable rooms. You can upgrade your skills, attend management and public speaking trainings, and learn English with a native speaker. The staff at the office delivers great dinners. And we have the most comprehensive medical insurance.
Without going into details, I will say that travel agents, lawyers, HR, the finance department and team assistants of BitFury do everything so that our children do not need to think about anything other than their immediate tasks.
Test tasks
Tasks are prepared and checked by our developers. They are not very voluminous and will not take much time. Most often, we give the candidate a task on a topic that is familiar to him, but not as good as his immediate area of interest, in order to understand how he is oriented in related areas, whether it is easy to “grasp” the new. We do not specifically formulate tasks in detail to see how the applicant acts with a lack of information - asks additional questions or tries to think out himself. Both options are good in their own way and allow you to learn more about a person’s way of thinking.
The stack of technologies that we are currently using: Rust and Java for one project; Go, btcd, Protobuf, Noise protocol for the second; Docker, Docker compose, Kubernetes, Javascript, Node JS, Angular 2, React - for the third. But these are not all products, so clearly allocating the main stack is still difficult.
Here is an example of one of the test tasks for a fullstack developer: write a graphical blockchain explorer, simple in design and based on btcd, with the ability to display information about any selected transaction, address and block in a readable format.
Or, the implementation of Merkle Tree or Merkle Patricia Tree data structures as a separate library.
Relocation
We are an international company with offices around the world, so the question of relocation is one of the three most asked. We have official permission for it, but for a long-term relocation very serious reasons are needed - the personal desire of the employee must coincide with the needs of the business.
However, we have very high internal mobility, and business trips around the world are an important part of working at BitFury. The company's specialists attend conferences and presentations in different countries: Bitcoin Expo 2017 has just passed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Recently, our guys took part in the Ernst & Young Blockchain Startup Challenge (London) and won Best Pitch there, after which a promising joint project began.
Open vacancies
We have a vacancy that is constantly open, no matter how many people we take for it: we always need smart Rust developers. We are also looking for a strong Java Lead with experience in creating Enterprise solutions.
If you are interested in the world of blockchain and like non-trivial tasks, check out the full list of our vacancies .
Maybe our team is missing you? ;)