About this job
Hi! We’re xyflow and we build open source node-based UI libraries like React Flow and Svelte Flow, which are used by thousands of developers. We’re looking for someone to join our team of
five to help us out with a few things.
Where we need help
1. Data-driven decision-making
After each 3-week working cycle, our team gathers to discuss „what do we build next.” We often feel that we are missing a longer-term strategy, or we should be making more informed decisions
using customer insights or data that we have available. We would like help with someone who has a focus on our business case, where money is coming from, and the 3-month direction of where
we’re headed. (we’d like someone who is thinking about things like customer retention and where our money is coming from.)
2. Customer communication
What we’re really good at is building a product that people love — thousands of developers use it, FAANG companies subscribe to us, we’re told our documentation is world-class. What we have a
hard time doing is keeping up on communications with our customers. We send an onboarding email and newsletters, and reply to them quickly when they have issues, but we are not proactive
about any further communication. We’re afraid we’re dropping the ball here, and could use help.
About xyflow – our business case
Our core product is open source, so people can use it for free. This gives us a good reputation among developers, and we love the philosophy behind open source (more about how we do
open source here). React Flow’s MIT license means that companies can usually adopt our product without needing to go through their big-org bureaucracy, which gives us a foot in the door if a
company wants to subscribe later on. You can read more about exactly how we make money from subscriptions here.
All of our customers and users find us organically, we don’t do any advertising, and we don’t have a (written) sales funnel. We created our current business model 2 years ago and haven’t
changed much since.
For our team, there is a constant balance between taking care of the free ecosystem, and taking care of our paying subscribers to keep the lights on. We’d like to work with someone who can
sit inside that complex gray area with us, and help us to keep that balance.
About you
This role could be filled by someone with a wealth of experience in the field, or someone who has introductory knowledge of this field and is excited about trying things out. We would hope by
having you on the team, we could have some more confidence about the direction we are headed, and what we decide to spend our time building as a team.
What we expect from this role
- Working with the team to decide on which areas, industries, or ideas to work on next based on data or research you conducted
- Advocate for building things that bring / keep subscribers, and also upholds principles of open source as much as we can
- Looking at our customer data from Stripe, website views, interviews, surveys etc. to help our team make informed decisions on what to build next
- Understand and communicate the metrics that fund our business
- Communicate with our existing (and past) customers — you lead the strategy of when and where that happens
- Challenge our current business model, pricing, and how we make money
- (Co-)Writing pitches with new feature ideas or projects to work on in the next cycle
- Non-technical customer support (e.g. questions about our subscription plans, or requests for a quote)
What this role could include
- Running workshops with the team
- User research or surveys
- Creating dashboards to display customer / industry data
- Publicly sharing our strategies, findings, and insights (e.g. blog posts)
This role is not
- Cold calling
- Sales
- Powerpoint (unless you like powerpoint?)
We can offer
- See your ideas be quickly implemented (small team of talented devs!)
- Part-time, 3-5 days per week. Can be less if you’re a student. Let’s talk about it!
- Berlin or Hybrid (we have an office in Kreuzberg)
- € 40-80k (full-time employed salary, based on soft/hard skills and responsibilities)
Language
Our working language is English
About xyflow
Our team’s working rhythm
We currently we work in 3-week cycles followed by 1-week cool-down period. During the cool-down week, we create „pitches” of new ideas, features, edits, or improvements. At the end of our
cool-down week, as a team we decide (through conversation) which we’ll work on in the 3-week cycle. We work on some pitches collaboratively, some alone. At the end of the cycle, we share and
talk through how the cycle was for us, and show what we worked on.
We are currently a 5-person team, we all work less than 40-hours per week, 4 of us are in Berlin (we have an office in Kreuzberg), 1 of us is in the UK. We all meet up in-person about twice a
year. We communicate with Discord, and have one weekly synchronous call.
Who is xyflow?
Christopher (he/him) and Moritz (he/him) are the core maintainers of React Flow, and have been doing development work together for a decade (their past work). Hayleigh (she/her) does
development work for the library’s ecosystem, and has lots of experience with developer communities. Peter (he/him) is the force behind Svelte Flow. John (he/him) does communications and
writes a lot, like this, right now.
Company ethics
We don’t accept money from people like the military or agencies who conduct mass surveillance. Our core product is MIT Licensed, which translates to a core principle of how we try to be
transparent about our work. We do make money from our Pro subscriptions, and we are not seeking investor funding. We are anti-hustle culture.
Should I apply?
If you don’t fit everything we wrote above or need some on-the-job skill-building, but you feel excited about the position, we would love to hear from you! We prioritize your excitement and
interests over things like hard coding skills. We also have a flexible schedule, which can work well with any responsibilities you may have during the week such as student obligations or
family / medical needs.
Diversity and inclusion are a priority for us. We are open to discussions about how to make xyflow a more inclusive space for you, and if we can make it easier/more accessible for you to
apply for this position in any way, please reach out to us.
How to apply
Send us two things:
- Send us the answer to these questions with a paragraph or two of text (no more than 300 words) or a video / loom / audio clip (no more than 2 minutes):
- What is most interesting to you about this job posting?
- What past experience do you have that is relevant to this position?
- Your past working experience in any format (can be a CV, Linkedin profile, a bullet-point list, PDF, etc.).
Send this along with your first name and preferred pronouns (if you’d like) to jobs@xyflow.com, and we’ll get back to you 2 weeks after the application closes, hopefully
sooner!
Hiring process
- we anonymize your application as much as possible to remove any demographic information (last name, pronouns, etc.)
- Our team goes through each application
- We de-anonymize the applications and contact the applicants who we thought were best fit for the position, and invite them for an interview.
- After this round of interviews, we will make a decision if we need another round of interviews, or to ask those who are a fit to complete a task relevant to the job (for which we can
offer compensation).
We estimate the time between closing this job ad to hiring someone would take less than 6 weeks. We make sure to contact every applicant through every stage of the process (no ghosting).
We will no longer be accepting applications for this position after 18. August 2024. If you need an extension for any reason, send an email at jobs@xyflow.com and we will do
our best to extend the deadline for you.
Send your application to: jobs@xyflow.com