Software Engineer (Ruby on Rails, APIs)

✨ One platform, a whole world of opportunity

The best jobs have always clustered in a handful of the world's wealthiest cities. But talent is everywhere. Oyster set out to close that gap - building a global employment platform that lets companies hire, pay, and care for brilliant people anywhere.

We're proof that a high-performing culture doesn't need an office. Distributed across 60+ countries since 2020, we've built something the industry keeps noticing:

• Ranked #10 of 250 on TIME and Statista's 2026 list of America's Top WorkTech Companies

• Named one of America's Greatest Startup Workplaces 2026 by Newsweek

• A G2 Spring 2026 Leader across Employer of Record, Global Employment, Multi-country Payroll, and HR Compliance

• The only B Corp-certified global employment platform ~ independently verified since 2023

Two of those rankings measured our business impact from the outside. One measured how our own people feel about working here. They landed in the same place ~ because at Oyster, culture and performance aren't separate conversations. They're the same one.

And we're just getting started. If you want to do the best work of your career alongside people who care as much as you do, we'd love for you to apply.

The Opportunity

Our team owns Oyster’s APIs, connected architecture (including Model Context Protocol services) and identity and access management systems. In this role you’ll build and maintain the Ruby on Rails APIs that help our internal teams get work done more effectively.

You’ll partner directly with colleagues across the business to understand how they work, find where an API can remove manual effort, clarify requirements and deliver real productivity improvements. You’ll take well-scoped projects from design through release, with the team’s support on design choices and on unfamiliar or higher-risk areas. Along the way, you’ll grow your ownership of projects within the team.

What You’ll Build & Own- Internal API use cases, from discovery to delivery. Work with internal stakeholders to understand their workflow, define acceptance criteria and break the work into manageable increments.

• Production Rails APIs. Design, implement, test, review and release changes within established architecture and security practices, raising dependencies and risks early.

• Secure, careful code. Handle authentication, authorization and sensitive data carefully, and seek review for unfamiliar access-control or integration changes.

• Reliable, maintainable systems. Troubleshoot defects and API failures using evidence, add regression coverage and contribute to maintainability improvements.

• Measurable impact. Evaluate delivered workflows with stakeholders to confirm adoption and productivity gains.

• A strong team culture. Contribute to domain modeling and design discussions with Product and senior engineers. Give constructive code reviews, document API behavior and decisions for async collaboration, support less-experienced colleagues and help simplify unnecessary process.

What You’ll BringEssential

• 3+ years of professional software development experience with a focus on Ruby.

• Proven experience developing and maintaining Ruby on Rails applications. You can explain your API implementation choices and use Git effectively.

• The ability to refine straightforward stakeholder requirements into well-scoped work, and to ask for support when risk or dependencies exceed the agreed scope.

• Strong code quality habits: readable code, automated tests (TDD where appropriate), continuous integration, meaningful reviews and secure coding awareness.

• Fluency with AI-assisted development, including...