👩💻 Backend Product Engineer
Ecostars is a B2B startup transforming the sustainability hospitality industry. We have a product customer-first vision, and an amazing technical challenge in front of us.
- 🌱 Startup
- 🎯 Product
- 🚀 Technical challenge
- 🏠 Hybrid (Madrid, 1-2 office days/week)
- 🕐 Flexible hours with overlapping time frame (10:00 - 15:00)
- 💰 40-55k + equity
NOTE: Engineer: a practitioner of engineering, professional who invents, designs, analyzes, builds and tests machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the limitations imposed by practicality, regulation, safety and cost. We believe engineering is a mindset, not a diploma.
💚 About Ecostars
Founded in 2021, Ecostars is on a mission to democratize access to hotel sustainability, enabling hotels and chains of all sizes—regardless of prior knowledge—to take action toward a more sustainable future.
We leverage technology and AI to deliver an intuitive SaaS solution that simplifies ESG certification, measurement, continuous improvement and regulatory compliance.
Ecostars empowers its users to:
- Achieve certification: A fully automated, data-driven process—free of charge, unbiased, globally scalable, and 95% faster than any other solution in the market.
- Consolidate and manage data: Through invoice analysis, third-party integrations, IoT, and more.
- Drive continuous improvement: With personalized action plans tailored to each hotel’s needs.
- Ensure seamless reporting and compliance: Including hassle-free CSRD reporting.
Our team has extensive experience in building great products and companies. We know success, we know failure; we have built platforms from scratch, we have dealt with large legacy systems. We genuinely care about each team member and the products and services we bring to life.
As a purpose-driven and lean team, we passionately embrace:
- Transparency and trust
- Flat organization
- Diverse team
- Collaborative culture: your opinion counts
- Lean and customer-centric
- Innovative environment
- Flexibility and async work
- Professional growth
🫵 About you
We believe that education can be acquired in many ways, not just through a degree. That’s why we don’t require specific formal education, but we do expect you to have experience on the following areas:
- +4 years of experience building complex web applications. Experience in a specific programming language is not important, but most of our codebase is Typescript / NodeJS. We are not tied to anything, but we expect you to adapt and learn on the job.
- Have the ability to create fast, easy-to-use, production-ready applications, and develop and evolve (or discard) prototypes quickly.
- Organize yourself and coordinate with the rest of the team to plan, execute and deliver solutions to complex software engineering problems.
- Design and integrating RESTful APIs
- Handle data in SQL and noSQL databases
- Stay up to date on emerging technologies. For example, have some experience with LLM-based generative models
- Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail
1️⃣ In the first month, you will:
- Meet the whole team
- Learn our data model and architecture and deeply understand the problem domain
- Implement your first change, create a pull request and deploy it
- Review other team members’ code and start contributing to our engineering culture
3️⃣ Within the first 3 months, you will:
- Take ownership defining and implementing new functionalities
- Improve the process to how we code, review, and ship to improve quality all around
6️⃣ Within the first 6 months, you will:
- Become the most knowledgeable person on multiple key features
- Know every major component within our system and be able to troubleshoot complex issues
- Spearhead initiatives initiatives to improve the code base and infrastructure
- Identify bottlenecks, employ profiling techniques, and propose enhancements to optimize performance
- Help other engineers join the team by leading their onboarding process.
⚙️ How we work
Rhythm: Lean Software Development We work in very short cycles, where work takes as long as it takes, but we try to simplify every iteration, release early, test and learn.
What about epics/longer projects? Kickoff summary during the steerco so we are all on the same page Heartbeats: after every “packet” of work, you summarize what is done and we agree on
Asynchronous (focus days) + synchronous (office days) You should collaborate as though most things you ask of others will get an answer eventually, but not necessarily right this second. Your first choice of action should be to post a message, a todo, or a document about what you need to explain or need to know. Then others can read it on their schedule, when the natural lulls of the day allow it, rather than being interrupted right in their peak flow time
- No dailies
- Focus and quality time to work
- Synchronous meetings: there will be times when you do need to tightly collaborate with someone in real time, but those cases should be infrequent. We have pings, video calls, screen-sharing, or even in-person collaboration for when async isn’t efficient.
Ownership and proactivity: managers of one Setting your own direction when one isn’t detailed; determining what needs to be done, and doing it, without waiting for someone to tell you to.
Communication Since we work asynchronously and remotely, it’s important to radiate information about what we’re working on. We use slack channels profusely.
Steering committee (steerco) Once per week we hold a company-wide meeting where we sync about our ongoing projects, needs and thoughts. Everybody is welcome and decisions are made (mostly) by consensus. We intend to keep doing this as long as it is manageable, because we believe it is the best way to avoid confusion and noise.
Balance We believe in the value of a balanced life, which is why we maintain a 40-hour work week. Keeping working hours reasonable helps us focus on what truly matters and ensures that our time and energy are spent effectively. Rest, good sleep, and a fulfilling life outside of work are essential for long-term success and well-being.
Occasionally, off-hours work may be required for on-call duties, maintenance, or emergencies. However, these instances should not extend your total working hours. We trust you to take the necessary time off to recover and balance any extra efforts during the week.
💻 The stack
We use these tools because we think they’re the best fit for tackling our product challenges. Got a different take? Reach out! Our tech stack is a team decision.
More details at https://stackshare.io/companies/ecostars
👥 The team
We are a super small team (<10 plus Bola the greyhound) for now.
Meet Bola the greyhound
📝 The hiring process
Send us an email with your CV to careers@ecostars.org and let us know what’s driving you to join Ecostars.
The interview will be handled by our Tech and Product team:
- An initial video call with our CTO and CPO
- A second, more technical interview with our CTO. We’ll dive into your experience and how we do things at Ecostars. Don’t stress – we won’t be throwing complex algorithms or quizzing you on manhole covers.
- A brief chat with Jose Luis, our CEO
- A last meet-the-team breakfast (online or in person)
Either way, we’ll provide feedback and keep you in the loop after each interview regarding the status of the process.
📦 What we offer
- Competitive and honest salary. We are starting out but we want to pay you the best we can. 40.000 - 55.000 euros (gross annual salary) with annual reviews
- Permanent contract
- Hybrid (Madrid): 1-2 office days/week
- Flexible hours with overlapping time frame (10:00 - 15:00)
- Office in downtown Madrid (Salamanca District - Chamartín/Plaza de Castilla)
- Competitive equity (phantom shares) in a fast-growing startup
- 23 days of paid leave
- Refresh weeks: the whole company stops some days every few months to recharge
- Work environment that promotes autonomy and flexibility
- Your opinion matters: culture of a consensus-driven decision-making process.
⚠️ If this opportunity sparks your interest and you believe you have what it takes to make a significant impact, we want to hear from you! Don’t hesitate to reach out, even if you don’t check all the boxes. If you think you can fit in and contribute, we encourage you to apply.
Ecostars is committed to equal opportunities, regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, family or parental situation, gender identity, disability, or any other protected status. The company values your energy, skills, and desire to be part of the team above all else.