Senior Software Engineer

Location: Vietnam preferred

Type: Full-time, remote

Salary: USD 4,000–6,000/month, Approx. VND 100M–150M/month

Experience: 6+ years (familiar with Ruby on Rails) 

About Seek Sophie

Seek Sophie is a Singapore-based travel marketplace for handpicked travel experiences across Southeast Asia.

We're a mission-driven company. We believe travel should benefit local communities, protect nature and wildlife, and help travellers experience places more thoughtfully - not just tick off tourist attractions.

We're now building the next stage of our product: making our deep local knowledge easier to capture, structure, search, reuse and show to travellers. This includes intent-based search, AI-assisted listing and content tools, richer listing pages, partner tools, internal ops systems and lightweight dashboards.

We're looking for a genuinely excellent engineer to help us build this.

Why this role is exciting

This is a high-ownership role for someone who wants to build, ship and make a real impact.

You'll work on meaningful product problems, not just tickets: search, recommendations, AI workflows, CMS tools, marketplace operations, availability systems and internal dashboards.

We're a small team, so there are no layers of approval or long corporate processes. If an idea is good, we can build it, test it and improve it quickly.

Your work will directly affect travellers, local hosts, our internal team, and how Seek Sophie wins in the AI/LLM era.

The kind of person we're looking for

We're looking for someone who takes pride in doing excellent work, and who loves coming up with solutions to tricky problems.

When something is difficult, your first response is not not possible. Your first response is:

Let's figure this out.

You don't need perfect instructions to start. You ask good questions, flag risks early, suggest options, and help us think through things we may not have considered.

You are happy to work independently, make tradeoffs, fix bugs, improve UI, and ship useful work - whether the task is a big product feature or a small detail that makes the product better.

About the role

This is a full-stack product engineering role, not a backend-only role.

You'll work mainly with Ruby on Rails, but you must also be comfortable with frontend work, UI tweaks, bug fixes, internal tools and product improvements.

When we ask you to build a feature, we expect you to think about:

• the real goal
• user flow
• edge cases
• missing data
• error states
• performance
• downstream impact
• tracking
• whether there is a simpler or better solution

We do not expect you to read minds. But we do expect you to think beyond the literal instruction.

What you'll work on

You may help build:

• Intent-based customer search
• Product recommendation logic
• Better listing pages
• AI-assisted listing creation
• Magazine CMS / content tools
• Partner availability tools
• Internal support and ops tools
• Demand/supply dashboards
• Repeat customer dashboards
• Frontend fixes, bug fixes and performance improvements

Requirements

• 6+ years software engineering experience
• 4+ years Ruby on Rails experience (This is a bonus, but not mandatory)
• Strong PostgreSQL and database design
• Comfortable with NextJS, ReactJS, Typescript, JavaScript, HTML and CSS
• Experience building production features used by real customers
• Experience with APIs, background jobs, caching and performance
• Experience with Docker, AWS we deploy on docker build on AWS ECS
• Able to debug and fix production issues independently
• Able to build frontend changes from product requirements or Figma
• Clear written English

Your English does not need to be perfect, but you must be able to explain your thinking clearly.

Strong pluses

• AI/LLM product features
• Search, ranking or recommendation logic
• CMS/content systems
• Internal tools or admin workflows
• Marketplaces, ecommerce, travel, booking platforms or SaaS
• Analytics dashboards or commercial reporting
• SEO, structured data or crawlability

Please do not apply if

• You only want to do backend work
• You do not want to touch frontend code
• You think bug fixes or small UI improvements are not your job
• You only build exactly what is written without thinking about the wider product impact
• You point out problems but do not suggest solutions
• You need very detailed tickets before you can start
• You are not comfortable working independently
• You are not willing to complete a 4–5 hour unpaid standalone task before interview

Hiring process

We do not do a screening call at the start.

First, we review your written application. If your background looks relevant, we will send you a standalone technical task.

The task is unpaid and should take 4–5 hours.

It is not connected to Seek Sophie's production app. The task will include both coding and product thinking. We want to see how you understand requirements, ask questions, identify edge cases, prioritise, make tradeoffs, write code and communicate.

If the task is strong, we will invite you to interview.

To apply

Please send your CV && cover letter to [Confidential Information], plus answers to the questions below.

Please start your application with this sentence:

I have read the full job description and understand this is a full-stack product role.

Then answer:

1. Why do you want to leave your current role & join Seek Sophie Honesty welcomed!
2. How many years of Ruby on Rails experience do you have (Good to have but not mandatory)
3. Are you comfortable doing frontend work such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and small UI fixes
4. Are you willing to complete a 4 hour unpaid standalone task before interview
5. What is your expected monthly salary in USD and why
6. Briefly describe one product feature you built end-to-end.
7. Briefly describe one time you flagged a risk, edge case or better solution that was not in the original request.

Applications that do not follow these instructions will not be reviewed. We do not review applications submitted via only LinkedIn.