Elite Software Automation: CRM / No-code Solutions Builder

Contract

(Remote, Full-Time, Anywhere in the World)
Starting Pay: $45-65K/yr for Advanced Level; $30-40K/yr for Junior Level

Introduction
Elite Software Automation (ESA) is a company that makes custom software solutions for small businesses with complex operational flow in specific niches such as custom manufacturing, concierge medicine, financial services, and other service-intensive industries.

These solutions are composed of internal systems (such as CRM, ERP or other systems heavily customized and extended by us), integrated with the external systems (such as client portals) and various custom backend connections that allow interaction with external parties as needed.

Our solutions are completely custom and consist of:

  • Custom development with well put together custom interfaces as well as robust and comprehensive custom backends, consisting of both our reusable components as well as client-specific custom development;
  • Solution platforms and no-code tools such as:
    • Some products from Zoho platform (Zoho CRM, Desk, Books, Flow) extensively customized and configured for each project;
    • N8N;
    • Customer.io;
    • Baserow, Cal.com, and other open source tools (which we sometimes fork and modify into our own version);
    • Our own products with in built no-code configurators;
    • This list is being increased when we find and extensively vet new platforms excellent for the purposes we need fulfilled;
  • Other platforms to fulfill various functions (e.g., Twilio, Sendgrid, Gravity Forms Stripe, etc.)
The objective of these solutions is to add efficiency to our client’s businesses operation by automating labor intensive processes as well as removing errors, dis-coordination and other inefficiencies in the business processes. These solutions allow our clients to get more done in their business with less labor and fewer errors.

How Our Organization Operates / Our Production Process
Our organization has to operate very efficiently while producing at a far-above-industry quality level. The problems our solutions solve are complex business operational issues and complicated manual processes. We solve them very successfully due to a highly methodical approach that is special to our organization as well as rigorous quality oversight and a high demand for output quality from our staff.
To ensure that our solutions are highly effective both as business solutions, as well as technical solutions, our organization separates the business and technical parts. When approaching a client, our business process experts carry out a thorough business process study and model/simulate an effective business process solution before any technical work begins. This ensures that thorough business decisions are made and that the new business processes are well thought out and consider the necessary scenarios and cases. In turn this also means that before the technical part of our team gets involved, there are very well defined to-be business processes and well documented business requirements that have been thoroughly strategized and reviewed before starting the technical side of the project, which not only allows to focus on producing a good technical solution, but also lowers the need for back and forth requirement changes and all the wasteful rework that that would cause.
The technical side of our team itself works through a rigorous process. The business requirements are analyzed by our technical design experts who decide on the functional processes and features of the technical solution, decide on the technologies to use, and put together a thoroughly documented technical design of the solution, which is thoroughly reviewed along the process by other design expert as well as the business process experts to ensure that the technical solution will be thoroughly figured out and as optimal as possible before building it. Once the designs are finalized and approved in full, the building of the starts, which consists of both full custom code parts as well as no-code setups on the no-code platforms listed above. Elements of the builds are broken up into parts that are distributed between members of the build team. Each part is expected to be thoroughly put together as per the detailed designs previously produced, and it is expected that the person responsible for building self-check it and fix any issues before sending them to QA, which themselves exercise a rigorous inspection and send back the parts when they find issues with them to be fixed. Once the parts in the solution’s release plan are complete and gone through QA one by one, the entire release is tested end-to-end by not only QA, but also the business process experts, and anything in the way of it being a ready-to-go business solution meeting its initially set objectives is identified, documented, and rectified. Once that is satisfied, the release is planned for rollout to the client’s production environment, which once executed is followed up with quick testing on the production environment, and at that point the solution becomes operational within the client’s real day-to-day business. Initially, our team monitors the solution’s operation both to ensure that any technical issues are caught and fixed, as well as to observe the business efficiency of the new processes and measure whether the new solution is actually helping our client’s business as we intended. If any sub-optimalities are found that prevent us from achieving such desired results, our team comes up with the appropriate solutions to them and implements them in quick order.
As can be seen from the description above, our process is very thorough and requires to be executed with a lot of precision and rigor. Unlike many other providers in the industry, we do not hastily short-cut or half-bake our process, and while it imposes a lot of work on our team, it allows us to accomplish excellent results for our clients as evidenced by their testimonials. Being a boutique firm with a flat organization structure and a business owner actively involved in the operation we are able to exercise such a quality standard while also being very efficient and tight in operation.

Role of the CRM / No-code Solutions Builder
Specialist hired for this role will build the No-code parts of our solutions (parts on CRM platform and other no-code platforms listed above). As described in detail above, your responsibility will be to build, set up, configure, etc.. the no-code parts of our solutions to produce functional solutions that will operate as per their designs and meet the business requirements. You will also, when applicable, carry out necessary move-overs and deployment of setups between environments (e.g. from staging to production). The following are the most important qualitative expectations for the parts of solutions that you’ll build:
  • Functionality Detail – the solutions we make here are complex and run complex processes with many scenarios, and it is critical that the functionality is correctly put together, accounting for all the applicable design details and correctly operating in all the defined scenarios – you are expected to pay due attention to them at all times and verify your solutions account for all such details, and outside of occasional misses, we will expect you to be thorough with the details.
  • Quality – we will expect you to thoroughly test your builds before sending to QA, and we expect that your builds will be quite mature with regards to their quality when you turn them in, and while we do expect that QA will find some complex issues from time to time, we do not expect that your builds will result in QA frequently finding issues that you reasonably should have found yourself – if at any point this will become a continuing occurrence, we will seek to replace you.
  • Maintainability / Minimalist Complexity – the solutions created will need to be iterated and maintained as time goes on – as such, you will need to build solutions in a manner that will make likely iterations easy to implement without tearing down and rebuilding everything or making updates for the same thing in many places – you will need to familiarize yourself with the tools you’re using and build your solutions without creating unnecessary complications in them – the platform stack we have selected through years of researching generally allows to make that possible, but you will need to exercise good logic and analysis in your work to make it happen.
  • Usability – the solutions created will quite often feature parts that will be accessible by users of the solution (whether it is our client company’s employees or external participants) – it is important that such parts will be reasonably easy to use for the person who will be interacting with them, and you will need to think about that and take necessary steps in your builds to ensure they account for it – this requirement is particularly expected from Advanced Level specialists.
In addition to the above, if you are joining as an Advanced Level candidate, we will also expect you, upon getting familiarized with our platform stack, to participate in our technical design part of the process, where you will design parts of solutions that are heavy in the no-code platforms as well as simple custom pieces closely related to them, you will work on this with the guidance and review of our Software Design Engineers and Design Experts.

Junior Level vs Advanced Level Expectations
Through this job posting you can apply for either the Junior or the Advanced Level for this position. There are important distinctions in these levels, as outlined below.
 
Junior Level:
  • This is NOT a fresh entry level role, you are expected to have some relevant experience and ability to produce from the beginning: this will be tested for in test assignment and will be expected from Day 1.
  • Expectations of functional detail awareness, and quality of execution will be just as rigorous as for the Advanced Level – those expectations are high, critical, and non-negotiable regardless of the level.
  • We will expect you to produce independently from documented technical designs given to you and to independently check your work and participate in our build process as outlined above, although we do understand that you may need guidance from more experienced members of our organization, and we understand that some high level decisions you may require hands on advice on, however, we expect that you will be proactive about seeking such guidance and that you will learn actively from it, incorporating it into your future work.
  • We will expect you to grow into Advanced Level after some time.
Advanced Level:
  • All above expectations.
  • We will expect you to build solutions very independently and will expect a higher standard particularly on the Maintainability and Usability criteria (the other 2 are expected to be equally pristine for both levels);
  • We will expect you to be able to quickly gain familiarity with new platforms and research their capabilities on your own, to make well informed and reasoned independent decisions on what platforms to use, and to achieve quality outcomes as result of such expertise and proactive awareness.
  • We will expect you to design dedicated parts of solutions (that don’t require difficult custom pieces, as determined by our senior technical design experts) and work directly with business requirements and then leverage your platforms knowledge to design your part of the solutions first, get it reviewed with the design experts and business process experts, and then get it built either yourself, or through delegation to more junior builders, and then assure a quality final product.
  • Possible growth directions: more domain experience with platforms and business domains, management of other builders, more expanded role in the technical design process and/or greater responsibility for project from start to end.

General Expectations of Organization / Work Culture
  • No BS: no useless meetings, no pretentious conduct, no pointless reports to write, no egos to please or to deal with – just focus on output.
  • Set your working hours as you wish: outside of the need to converse with other team members when necessary (in which case you negotiate with them) – all that matters to us is the output you produce.
  • High output expectation: both quality as well as speed are expected to be high, but not at each other’s expense – you will need to be efficient and producing, and this expectation will apply from your first day on the job.
  • A lot of learning opportunity: jobs here are very challenging and difficult, especially compared to many other companies – you will learn a lot and gain very strong practical experience.
  • Small Flat Structure: we are a boutique company with a small headcount of highly specialized experts, there is very small layer of middle management, and the owner of the business is actively involved in the operation as well as in hiring selection, ensuring a high level of efficiency and quality.
  • Initiative is welcome: if you find genuinely good ways to do things better and accomplish better results faster, you will be strongly encouraged to bring them up to senior staff and/or the owner of the business – if they really end up benefiting the business, you will be rewarded for it.
  • Recognition of results: performance is closely watched and assessed on a frequent basis. Result generating performance is rewarded with promotion to higher roles, more responsibility, and pay raises- upon joining you will be told what direction to grow into to get a raise, and your improvement progress will be reviewed frequently and regularly.
  • Expulsion of ineffective and/or non-producing staff: anybody who becomes ineffective or stops producing expected results, will be swiftly warned, and if failing to rectify/improve the situation, can expect to be summarily fired from the company.

Hiring Process
  1. Application Form
  2. Online Logic Test
  3. Short Interview
  4. Practical Test Assignment
    Note: Advanced Level Test Assignment will be bigger and more difficult than the Junior Level Test Assignment)
  5. Evaluation and Offer

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