The year was 1569, and Gerardus Mercator had just published his “Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigantium Emendate Accommodata” or if you don’t speak Latin, the “New and more complete representation of the terrestrial globe properly adapted for use in navigation”.

OK, basically just a map of the world 🗺

It hadn’t been an easy task; lots of new ideas had been thrown at him or popped up in his brain along the way; a few people disagreed with him, and were set on sticking to old versions, but he persisted, because he knew it would help sailors navigate the globe and improve the lives of everyone on Earth (which he knew is totally round).

But do you think Mercator was happy with his map? Well yes, he was quite proud of it, but he also knew it could be improved upon. He spent many years after this creating smaller, more detailed maps of more focused regional areas.

And this is the crux of the matter: Always. Be. Improving.

Which is where this job ad actually turns into a job ad, because we at Pleo, are looking for a Frontend Platform Engineer who likes to think of themselves as a little like Mercartor.

As a Staff Frontend Platform Engineer, you’ll be helping build a map for the Frontend at Pleo. You’ll join the team that designs, evolves, and maintains the Frontend ecosystem that enables our web development.

We’re looking for engineers with a strong interest in building and owning systems and tools, who love to be at the forefront of all things Frontend, and are not afraid to try new initiatives or to pioneer an innovative new tool.

Our map adapts to the needs of the business and our Frontend engineers, and you’ll need to too, but here are a few projects that we’re thinking about, to give you an idea of what the day to day might be:

Enable incremental improvements to our Frontend tooling and technology stack (we’re currently using and/or looking into tRPC, serverless, AWS Lambdas, Turborepo)
Splitting our web application into smaller maintainable chunks that can be developed and deployed independently (a.k.a. micro-frontends, if you’re into buzzwords (ok, ok, we’re into buzzwords…..))
Take the Pleo user and development experience to the next level (we are currently implementing a backend for frontend (BFF) pattern)

Why is it so important to build such an adaptable frontend map? Well we’re on quite the mission; 1 million empowered users by 2025; taking Pleo into many more European markets in the next two years; new product features continually being launched or improved, and a lot more besides. Here at Pleo we’ve officially made the leap from start up to scale up, but we still stand by the values we built our product on; change the workspaces of tomorrow; trust and autonomy to all employees; decentralisation of decision making; delegation through ownership. We work on painful problems and try to solve them with a touch of magic. No expense reports. No time wasted.

We need someone to join this team of Pleo pioneers who isn’t afraid of the scope of the challenge, who thrives on scaling at pace, and who always has our customers’ needs at the forefront of their minds.

What you’ll do (a few more of the specifics):

Advise product teams at Pleo on Frontend architecture and technologies – you’ll sometimes be embedded in the product teams
Influence and evolve the long term vision of Frontend at Pleo – you’ll innovate and implement at the same time
Improve the development experience of our engineers by enabling fast feedback loops, reliable CI infrastructure, and the promotion of best-practices
Own core functionalities, components, and tools in our Frontend platform that let product teams focus on building great experiences for our customers
Help build and foster a company-wide community of people interested in Frontend engineering

Your colleagues say you:

Work in English with ease (it's our company language)
Remember the world before React (yup, there really was one!)
Care about quality in all aspects of your work
Somehow manage to stay on top the ever-changing modern Frontend ecosystem
Are comfortable venturing outside of the Frontend technologies 😱
Have experience solving complex technical challenges at scale
Coach others to help them develop as engineers
Are motivated by the needs of our users (internally and externally)
Would be a person that they would actually like to have a coffee with (virtual or not)
Find a way to debate the merits of server vs client side rendering in the aforementioned

But most importantly:

Even if you don’t check every box here, you’re committed to investing in new skills to help you be and do your best at work.

Show me the benefits!

Your own Pleo card (no more out-of-pocket spending)*
Ability to work remotely (anywhere between the east coast of the Americas to European timezones)...
...or onsite if you want to (Copenhagen, London, Berlin, or Stockholm)
Trips to somewhere nice, for team camps (both company-wide ones and team-specific ones)
Investment in learning developing (just check with your team for what's reasonable, we don't have set budgets)
A 2500€ annual flex benefits package (maybe you want to buy additional holidays, pay the gym, book a professional coach or pay part of your MBA - completely up to you!)
Paid parental leave - we want to make sure that we're supportive of families and help you feel that you don't have to compromise on the family due to work

And here are some other nice things that we do

Catered lunch when you work from our HQ and London offices
25 days holidays (annual)
Loads of weird and wonderful niche communities to join in the company (we're talking guerrilla gardening, liquids tasting, the Pleo band, learning to code initiatives, Pleo dinners, board games, that type of thing)
Wild enthusiasm and encouragement from us if you want to host MeetUps, events, etc - we'll help (venue, food etc)

Why join us?

Working at Pleo means you're working on something very exciting: the future of work. Through fintech we've seen a way to impact how people work; we think company spending should be delegated to all employees and teams, that it should be as automated as possible, and that it should drive a culture of responsible spending.Based on some pretty amazing Series C-round investment in 2021 we think we're onto something big.

So, in a nutshell, that's Pleo. Today we are a 800+ team, from over 100 nations, sitting in our Copenhagen HQ, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Madrid, Montreal, or Lisbon offices —and quite a few full-time remotes in 35 other countries! Being HQ'd out of Copenhagen means we're inspired by sensible things like a good work-life balance. If you don't work in the office with us we'll help you get up the best remote setup possible and will fly you in for our amazing team camps ✈️

About your application

Please submit your application in English; it’s our company language so you’ll be speaking lots of it if you join 💕
We treat all candidates equally: If you are interested please apply through our application system - any correspondence should come from there! Our lovely support isn't able to pass on any calls/ emails our way - and this makes sure that the candidate experience is smooth and fair to everyone 😊
We’re on a mission to make everyone feel valued at work. That’s only achievable if our team reflects the diversity of the world around us - and that starts with you, hitting apply, even if you are worried you might not tick all the boxes! We embrace and encourage people from all backgrounds to apply - regardless of race/ethnicity, colour, religion, nationality, gender, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, neurodiversity, socio-economic status, culture or beliefs.
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