At Shoji, we're making private data useful and keeping useful data private.
We’re building the data sharing infrastructure of tomorrow to help businesses safely unlock the value of their most sensitive digital assets. The Shoji platform lets multiple teams or organisations solve problems, generate insights and even perform machine learning on private datasets, without ever moving or exposing the raw data.
We’re motivated by what we enable for others. By unlocking access to data previously beyond reach, there’s no limit to the use-cases made possible. Whether it’s banks being able to improve access to credit, doctors being able to make better diagnosis predictions or governments being able to more effectively allocate resources, we passionately believe that by protecting privacy, we can power the innovations that are most important to society.
Founded in March 2021 by a team of statistical machine learning PhD students from Imperial College, we’ve already received over £1.5m of backing from Entrepreneur First and a leading VC.
We’re obsessed with technological progress, but only when it respects privacy. This dependency defines the way that we work. We value ambition, curiosity and proactivity, without compromising on transparency, integrity and humanity.
We’re looking for people who constantly strive for improvement, in their own work and others’; people who prioritise product, with a bias for action; people with a hunger for solving hard and important problems, fast; people who are always looking to learn, not to be taught.
We steer clear of rigid requirements because we want to hire the best people for the role, regardless of their background, and that’s impossible to define on paper. It doesn’t matter if you’re fresh out of university, or if you’ve honed your technical skills without pursuing further education.
We love our people T-shaped. As long as you’re a fast learner and brilliant engineer, we generally don’t care about experience with specific technologies.
You don’t have to be a privacy enthusiast right now, but we’ll bet you that soon after you join, you’ll become one!
As one of the early software engineers, you’ll have the opportunity to play a key role in the success of Shoji. Your responsibilities will evolve with the business, but here are just some of the things we’ll need you for:
- Designing and building core components of the Shoji ecosystem, including
- the APIs that power the interface for privacy-preserving data partnerships for our first customers.
- the back-end of the interface that our customers use to onboard their data, grant federated access and configure privacy settings.
- microservices for crucial foundational data operations and communications.
- Building in-house tools for monitoring the status and key metrics of the platform.
- Optimising code to make sure our components are fast AF.
- Working closely with the CTO and other lead engineers to define the development roadmap and hire future devs.
- Longer term, you’ll be expected to mentor and coach the more junior members of the team as we grow.
At Shoji, we're looking for people with drive, grit and initiative. You're encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn't precisely match the job description – it may even set you apart. It should take us 2 weeks to go through the hiring process and reach a decision.
- Simple first step: send us your CV and an optional cover letter. Bonus points for providing your GitHub profile, or alternatively, including summaries and your involvement capacity in a few recent technical projects. [under 5 mins]
- Meet and greet call: let’s get to know each other. This is an opportunity for us to learn a bit about you, and for you to learn about Shoji. [30 min call]
- Technical interview: no brain teasers or rare-CS-algo-that-you’ll-never-use questions here. These questions will be practical and relevant to the role. This is an opportunity for us all to learn what it’s like to work together. [1 hour remote interview]
- Take-home task: at our discretion. We’ll reimburse you for your time, which should be no more than 2–3 hours. This is an opportunity for us to get a better understanding of how you work and what your work looks like with less pressure than the technical interview. [2–3 hours in your own time]
- Discussion interview: we’ll go over the technical interview (and take-home task if necessary) and also discuss all the non-technical parts we’re interested in hearing about, including past projects. [30 mins – 1 hour call]
- Final Interview: you’re almost there! Having already demonstrated outstanding technical competency, this interview will be more behavioural. Duration will be correlated with your level of experience, in separate sessions if appropriate. [1–3 hours worth of calls]
- Final decision: we make you an offer if we’re convinced you’re the right person.
At Shoji, we’re ridiculously passionate about what we do, and are firm believers in our success being dependent on our people. We're fully committed to creating a diverse team of exceptional people. We embrace differences and hire purely based on merit, giving equal consideration to all applications, regardless of gender, background, race or any other characteristic that has absolutely nothing to do with competency.
