Principal Ruby on Rails Engineer at Arist (S20) $180K - $220K • 0.10% - 0.50% Deliver effective learning at scale US / Remote (US) Full-time US citizen/visa only 6+ years About Arist Backed by Y Combinator, Acadian Ventures, and Soma Capital, Arist is a text message learning platform helping Fortune 500 companies and large organizations — including DuPont, GE, and the State of California — create, deploy, and assess text message courses. Our long-term vision is to deliver critical knowledge and training to anyone in the world, regardless of traditional learning barriers, one text message at a time. What's a text message course? A series of texts, images/GIFs, and interactive exercises/questions delivered over 5 to 30 days via SMS or WhatsApp. Backed by research from Stanford and Harvard, text message courses see ~10x the completion and satisfaction rates of other learning mediums. In fact, we view text message courses as a brand-new content medium, with a variety of impactful use cases ranging from preventing misinformation to COVID-19 training in refugee camps to DEI training for startups. Why text messages? A majority of the world's population — including frontline employees, distributed teams, and remote audiences — has access to SMS and WhatsApp. Meanwhile, internet access is limited globally, making video courses inaccessible to over 3 billion people, including 30 million Americans. As well, it can also take months to build a traditional workshop or video course, while text message courses can be built and deployed in a day — by one person — ensuring frictionless transfer of knowledge. Writers have to get to the point, so learners get the most valuable insights, concepts, and case studies. The best part? 95% of people read a text within 3 minutes. As a result, we help create and deliver content employees love in a way that they will actually read and engage with. Don't take our word for it — try a text message course about text message courses here. About the role Skills: Ruby on Rails Arist is an enterprise platform transforming how the world’s largest organizations deliver training and enablement — all through conversational, AI-powered learning experiences. Fortune 500 companies like HP, Pfizer, Novartis, and Intuit use Arist to drive measurable behavior change in minutes, not months. We’re looking for a Principal Ruby on Rails Engineer to help us scale our core product and pioneer new AI-powered experiences that redefine enterprise learning. You’ll work side-by-side with our founders and product leaders, shaping architecture and guiding development across a platform used by hundreds of thousands of learners globally. What you’ll own Own and evolve our core backend: Drive development of core application features and architecture in Ruby on Rails. Architect for scale and speed: Design systems that power real-time learning delivery across SMS, Teams, and beyond. Collaborate deeply: Partner with product managers, designers, and other engineers to ship features that delight users and align with business impact. Shape new product areas: Contribute to new AI-powered experiences and tools that extend Arist’s impact across the enterprise. Mentor and elevate: Set technical direction, establish best practices, and raise the bar for code quality, scalability, and performance. Stack Ruby on Rails · Vue.js · AWS · PostgreSQL · Sidekiq · Redis · GraphQL Looking for someone with: 8+ years of professional experience in Ruby on Rails (including production-scale systems). Architectural depth: Strong ability to design backend systems that balance flexibility, performance, and maintainability. Product instinct: You think like a product owner — translating goals into elegant, well-scoped solutions. Entrepreneurial mindset: You’ve built or owned products end-to-end, and you thrive in environments with autonomy and accountability. Strong communicator: Able to distill complexity for technical and non-technical audiences. Bias for action: You move fast, iterate confidently, and take pride in shipping meaningful work. Curiosity for AI: Excited about leveraging AI to transform how people learn and work. Why Arist Meaningful ownership in a fast-growing, cashflow positive venture-backed company redefining enterprise learning. Work directly with founders and a small, elite team shaping the future of AI-powered enablement. 100% remote, flexible hours, and a culture built on trust, autonomy, and high standards. Let’s build the future of learning together. Technology Arist runs scalable agentic AI services that integrate both private (Bedrock-hosted Claude, Mistral, Llama) and public (OpenAI, Perplexity) LLMs that drive workflows in a core Ruby on Rails/Vue.js product with real-time messaging and event-driven processing on cloud-native AWS infrastructure. Interview Process Screening Interview with co-founder and CPO Technical interview with with CTO 20hr paid project (if feasible) Peer interview with 2 engineers Final interview with 2 co-founders