We work exclusively with AWS. No other cloud platforms, no on-premises or co-located infrastructure. Life’s too short to be expert at everything. Specialising in AWS means that we’ve been able to invest our learning time in developing deep expertise in that one ecosystem.

We work in a number of different ways. As we get to know you, your skills, and interests, we’ll find you the types of work you’re best suited to and enthused by.

We expect everyone to take part in these core activities:

• Customer project work
• Ad-hoc advice to supported customers within business hours
• Delivering our productised solutions

But you can also get involved in the following activities:

• Creating and delivering technical training materials
• Creating content for our blog or speaking at conferences (public reputation)
• Improving our productised solutions or creating new ones (R&D)
• Joining the optional out of hours emergency support rota
• Improving our internal systems and procedures
• Hiring process (i.e. interviewing new candidates)

Customer Project Work

We work closely with our customers’ technical teams helping them design, build, and operate their SaaS solutions on AWS.

Most projects start with a collaborative design workshop, where we dive deep into business goals with the customer, and work backwards from there to an appropriate technical plan. This usually involves two consultants, with a senior consultant taking the lead. One consultant might run some smaller or simpler projects. Then we either augment or support the customer’s team to get hands-on and deliver against that plan.

As an example, here are some recent projects we’ve worked on that you might lead:

• Adapt the IaC of a multi-tenant SaaS business to create a single tenant stack in a new AWS Account
• Implement one of our standardised solutions to allow vending of new AWS accounts or reliable cross account backups
• Fixing the high risk items found in a Well-Architected Review
• Implementation of CI/CD pipelines to automatically build, test, and deploy containers to ECS

And here are some of the projects you might work on as part of a team:

• Building provisioning tools to perform a hands-off deployment of a customer’s complex SaaS platform into their enterprise clients’ own AWS accounts
• Migrating existing web apps from a third party hosting provider to a customer’s Kubernetes platform in AWS
• Bringing a serverless solution for taking card payments up to PCI DSS Level 1 compliance
• Load testing and performance tuning a SaaS platform ready for go-live
• Architecture and design for taking an existing software product and turning it into a SaaS platform

Consulting Packages

Some of our project activities are repeatable, and so we build them into standard consultancy offerings with senior consultants designing, defining, and documenting how these are delivered.

Our main product in this area is our B2B SaaS Foundations offering, which provides a multi-account AWS deployment managed centrally with Control Tower. It follows practices recommended by AWS and refined by us through working with hundreds of SaaS businesses.

Support Services

As well as project work like this, we have ongoing support relationships with some customers. We don’t operate their infrastructure for them or respond to their alerts.

Within business hours we offer guidance and advice over Slack/Zoom to unblock clients. Very rarely we are used as an escalation point in an emergency. This is a hands-on solution that is available to our clients 24/7, but joining the out of hours support rota is optional and compensated.

This includes building and delivering training courses on AWS and related topics to upskill our clients team’s over time.

The base salary for this role is tbc There are opportunities to earn more by contributing to value-add activities such as project leadership, public speaking and business change initiatives.

If you can contribute to internal projects around your client work, gather a client’s requirements while managing their expectations, and understand how technology affects their business, you’ll be able to justify a higher salary.

Salary reviews take place twice a year in April and October. Reviews will take into account your progression through our career framework and any new responsibilities you’ve taken on.

As a consultant you should have the following skills:

• Hands on experience with AWS and Linux workloads
• Hands on experience with Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.)
• The ability to continuously learn new skills and technologies
• Work directly with clients and colleagues, showing empathy, working collaboratively, and communicating clearly
• Manage the time spent on client work, internal projects, and personal development effectively
• Great communication in spoken and written English

If you are unsure if you meet these requirements, consider applying anyway. Some of our best candidates were the ones that were humble enough they thought they shouldn’t apply. The first step is just a quick Zoom call, so the downside is low.

Being able to demonstrate any of the following would be advantageous:

A good understanding of some of the core AWS services:

• VPCs/Networking
• IAM
• A compute service (e.g. EC2, containers, serverless)

Experience working with the suite of DevOps tools:

• Monitoring/Observability tools (CloudWatch, Prometheus, DataDog, etc.)
• CI/CD tools (CodePipeline/CodeBuild, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.)
• IaC tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, Serverless Framework)
• Containers and orchestration tools (Docker, ECS, Kubernetes)

Being able to demonstrate non-technical skills:

• Linking technical outcomes to business outcomes
• Explaining complex technical concepts and best practises simply
• Troubleshooting and researching problems independently
• Can handle questions in areas outside your expertise, accurately explaining the limits of your current understanding, and suggesting next steps
• Prioritising work according to the client’s goals and resources

Who isn’t a Suitable Candidate?

Sometimes it’s easier to define what isn’t right. If you meet some of the following this might not be the right role for you:

• Less than a year of experience actively working with AWS
• No experience of infrastructure as code
• Does not want to interact directly with customers
• Want to work for a product company (not a consultancy)

We operate in a high trust environment, hire smart people, and let them get on with it. Although you’ll be working in a team with a project manager, you’ll need to be able to manage your own time effectively, making space for personal development and team activities around the needs of client facing work.

Not sure if you have all the skills we’re looking for? Please apply anyway, and we’ll help you figure that out.

To be able to work successfully, you’ll need a fast, reliable, low latency internet connection (20Mbps at an absolute minimum) that you can use for video meetings on Zoom.

We have a page describing the benefits of working with us but a quick summary:

• The Scale Factory was a remote-first business before the pandemic and will continue to be so
• Genuinely flexible working
• Optional fortnightly chances to meet your colleagues in person at co-working days
• Exposure to many tools, business models, and ways of working
• Rapid growth in valuable, useful, technical and people skills.

Here’s how our hiring process works. At every stage you’ll be speaking with people from The Scale Factory. We don’t use external recruiters as part of this process.

Different people from our team are involved at each stage. We find that a multiple stage process is less intensive, and makes it easier for people to fit their interviewing around their non-work commitments. We’ll give you the opportunity to interview outside of your regular office hours so that you don’t need to take time out of your existing job to speak with us.

We’ll do our best to move you through this process as quickly as possible.

Stage 1: Application

If you’re interested in working with us, you’ll fill out an application form, and provide a copy of your CV.

We’ll review your work history and your cover letter, to see if it looks like you have the sort of experience we’re looking for.

If your CV looks good, you’ll move on to the next stage.

Unfortunately we can’t currently sponsor work visas, so we’ll immediately disqualify you if you’re not legally eligible to work in one of our supported countries.

Stage 2: Video Call

We’ll invite you to join a 30 minute video call where you’ll have an informal chat with one of our consultants - these folks do the job you’re applying for, so you’ll be able to ask any questions you have about the role. At this stage we’ll be making sure you’re friendly and personable, and that you have some relevant experience.

If this chat goes well, we’ll invite you to participate in a technical assessment.

Stage 3: Technical Assessment

This will take place over 60 minutes on Zoom, and you’ll have access to an AWS account. You’ll play the role of a consultant who’s been asked to investigate a customer’s AWS infrastructure and provide recommendations on architecture and approach. This is representative of the type of work we do with customers in real engagements.

If we’re impressed with your technical assessment, we’ll invite you to a more formal interview.

If you don’t make it past this stage, we’ll offer you constructive feedback on your performance.

Stage 4: Formal Interview

You’ll join a call for about 90 minutes with a larger group of people from the leadership team.

In this conversation we’ll dig more deeply into your AWS experience, and ask some “tell me about a time when” style questions. We’ll also give you a customer brief and ask you to sketch a design for an AWS architecture to meet that brief, testing your architectural skills and your ability to communicate ideas in a whiteboard format. Of course you’ll also be able to ask us any questions you have at that point too.

If you’re successful, we’ll contact you after the interview with a job offer.

If not, we’ll offer you some detailed feedback on why we didn’t think you’d be a good fit.

Here’s what you can expect in your first 90 days as a Scale Factory Consultant.

Your job offer

After your successful interview, we’ll send you a formal job offer, a contract, our employee handbook, and some other policy docs.

You’ll return your signed contract, to indicate your acceptance of our job offer.

We’ll check your references, and ask you to show us some official documents showing your right to work.

Before you start

At some point ahead of your contracted start date, we’ll get a laptop sent to you so that you have this available for day one.

Day One

You’ll work with an “onboarding buddy” from the team on getting you set up with access to Google G-Suite, Zoom, and Slack so that you can meet your new colleagues on Slack for a warm Scale Factory welcome.

You’ll have access to our documentation to learn how everything works.

From your first day, you’ll have access to holiday and development day benefits, and our Employee Assistance Program.

Week One

You’ll join your delivery team, and participate in their standups and other weekly gatherings.

There’ll be at least one social event you can attend to get to know some more of your colleagues.

You’ll spend an hour with Jon, the CEO, who’ll take you through some of our company history.

You’ll write a “personal README” about yourself sharing information about yourself, your preferred working style, and your typical work schedule with the rest of the team, and you’ll have access to your colleagues’ README documents to learn more about them.

You’ll have your first formal 1:1 and establish that relationship with your manager.

Month One

Within the first month we’ll try and get you up and running on a client project, alongside other colleagues. Depending on your level of experience, we might bill the customer for your time, or we might not. Customers you work with will be made aware that you’re a new member of the team.

If you don’t yet have your Solutions Architect Professional AWS certification, you’ll start working towards that, with a view to your having passed the exam by the end of your probation period.

At some point, you’ll join a customer AWS Well-Architected review as an observer, to understand how that process works.

Month Three

The first three months act as a probation period. You’ll get regular feedback on your performance and progress over that time, and if we’re impressed with your work we may choose to pass your probation early.

At the end of month three, if you haven’t yet passed probation we may choose to extend it for another three months to give you the opportunity to prove yourself.

Once you’ve passed your probation, the full obligations of your contract come into effect (including your notice period of 3 months) and we’ll start the rest of your employee benefits at this point.