Senior Full-Stack Developer - Rugela
Three Tablets is looking for a Senior Full-Stack Developer to help build and improve a Jewish community discussion-oriented platform. This is an ongoing contractor role for someone who can take well-scoped issues from discussion to shipped code, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and work well in a small, async-first team.
You’ll collaborate directly with the founder/architect and another senior engineers.
Role overview
- Hours: Approximately 20 hours/week
- Location: Fully remote
- Work style: Async-first, flexible schedule
- Engagement type: Ongoing independent contractor role
- Compensation: $80–140/hr, depending on experience
- Time zone fit: North America or Europe preferred, or strong comfort communicating across those time zones
We are flexible about when you work. There is one recurring meeting we would prefer you attend, and we generally value people spreading their work across the week rather than compressing everything into a single block.
About Rugela
Rugela is a Jewish community discussion-oriented platform. The goal is simple: to create a place for Jews to be themselves online.
The product is built around connection, safety, thoughtful engagement, and collective growth. The platform emphasizes warmth, calm, delight, and community-oriented design, with interactions that guide users toward thoughtful and positive experiences.
Rugela is a small, founder-led team. This is a good fit for someone who likes meaningful product work. Rugela is not just a profit-optimization project; we are building something intended to support real community, safety, and thoughtful online conversation.
What you’ll do
You’ll ship features and bug fixes from an issue queue, working in small, reviewable pull requests.
Near-term work includes:
- Building out community features, including a staged rollout
- Improving reporting and moderation workflows
- Adding notification functionality
- Supporting better discovery through full-text search
- Shipping smaller fixes and improvements from the issue queue
Tech stack
Our stack is:
- Django
- PostgreSQL
- HTMX
- Native CSS
Strong Django experience is important. Prior HTMX experience is welcome, but not required; we care more about senior engineers who can learn the shape of the stack and make good product and architecture decisions.
What we’re looking for
We’re looking for someone with:
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong Django experience, including ORM and migrations
- Comfort working across backend and frontend concerns
- Good judgment about scope, tradeoffs, maintainability, and user impact
- Clear written and spoken English for async technical collaboration
- Experience writing small, reviewable pull requests
- Comfort collaborating through issues, pull requests, chat, and occasional videoconferences
Nice to have
These are helpful, but not required:
- Prior HTMX experience
- Experience shipping forum or community-platform features
- PostgreSQL experience beyond basic ORM use, such as query plans, indexing, or full-text search
- Open-source contributor or maintainer experience
- Familiarity with small-batch, WIP-limited, pull-system workflows
- Interest in or experience with Jewish content, communities, or topics
Working environment
Rugela is a small, founder-led team. We work async by default and value consistency, thoughtful communication, and deliberate pace over sprints, crunches, or urgency theater.
You should be comfortable working independently, communicating clearly, and helping move product work forward without needing a lot of ceremony.
Helpful application materials
Please send your resume or CV. You are also welcome to include any materials that help us understand how you work, such as:
- GitHub/Gitlab/Codeberg profile
- Free/Open-source contributions
- Examples of shipped product work
- Technical writing
- A short note about relevant experience
Hiring process
Our hiring process may include:
- Application review
- Intro conversation
- Technical/product conversation
- Final conversation
How to apply
Send your application to jobs@threetablets.com with your resume/CV and any other relevant materials you want us to know about you as a candidate for this role.