Work at TalkJS
Help build chat for products worldwide
At TalkJS, we make it easy for developers to add chat to any product. We’re a small, 100% distributed team with a HQ in Eindhoven, 🇳🇱 the Netherlands. TalkJS is profitable, growing, and not dependent on venture funding.
Open roles
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. To accomplish that vision, we need to make TalkJS fully customizable and still fantastic out of the box.
Our out-of-the-box chat UI components are a unique selling point of TalkJS. It's a great feature, but we're perfectionists, so deep down we know it can be way better still. We're looking to extend the team with someone who can really lift it to another level. Our current frontend stack is primarily React/TypeScript, though it's constantly evolving.
On top of that, we want to make it 10x easier for our customers—developers and designers—to tweak the chat UI exactly the way they want with minimal coding effort. Our humble goal is to ship a product that's super simple to install, fantastic to use immediately, and infinitely customizable. Simple and customizable may seem deeply at odds, but we think we can pull it off. If you're up for the challenge of marrying the two, then this is for you.
We offer tremendous freedom and responsibility, and work in a remarkably decent codebase (for a startup). At TalkJS, we like to think we're good at striking a balance between meticulous code and shipping quickly. If that sounds like your kind of environment, then this is for you.
Our ideal candidate
- has broad technical interests
- deeply understands the web platform
- likes to design great APIs/libraries for other programmers
- has demonstrable experience writing single-page web applications
- knows at least two programming languages well
- likes to work with the team to improve the product across the board
Bonus points if you know mobile tech too (iOS, Android, React Native, or Flutter).
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, show us an app your built (or helped build) and an API/library you designed (on any platform).
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. This means TalkJS has to just work on all mobile platforms and frameworks.
Many of our customers use TalkJS on mobile, and our default chat UX is designed with a mobile-first approach. However, our developer experience on mobile still leaves a lot to be desired, and we want to do better.
We’re looking for an engineer who loves designing consistent, idiomatic APIs for mobile developers across platforms such as iOS, Android, Flutter, React Native, and whatever comes next. If you enjoy SDK design and thinking deeply about Developer Experience (DX), this position is for you. You don’t need to fully understand all—or even many—of these platforms yet; what matters most is a genuine interest in going both broad and deep.
We offer tremendous freedom and responsibility, and we work in a remarkably decent codebase (for a startup). At TalkJS, we like to think we’re good at striking a balance between meticulous code and shipping quickly. If that sounds like your kind of environment, then this is for you.
Our ideal candidate
- has broad technical interests
- deeply understands at least one mobile platform
- has some understanding of the web
- likes to design great APIs and libraries for other programmers
- knows at least two programming languages well
- likes to work with the team to improve the product across the board
Bonus points if you know one or more web frameworks too (such as React, Vue, Svelte, Rails, or Phoenix Liveview).
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, show us an app your built (or helped build) and an API/library you designed (on any platform).
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. To accomplish that vision, we need to make TalkJS highly customizable and still fantastic out of the box.
We're looking to extend the team with someone who has broad front- and backend experience. Our stack includes React, TypeScript, and Elixir, but it's OK if you're not experienced with all of them. Our humble goal is to ship a product that's super simple to install, fantastic to use immediately, and infinitely customizable. Simple and customizable may seem at odds, but we think we can pull it off. If you're up for the challenge of marrying the two, then this is for you.
We offer tremendous freedom and responsibility, and we work in a remarkably decent codebase (for a startup). At TalkJS, we like to think we're good at striking a balance between meticulous code and shipping quickly. If that sounds like your kind of environment, then this is for you.
Our ideal candidate
- has broad technical interests
- likes to design great APIs for other programmers
- has demonstrable experience writing single-page web applications
- has demonstrable experience writing backends
- knows at least three programming languages well
- likes to work with the team to improve the product across the board
Bonus points if you know Elixir.
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, show us an app your built (or helped build) and an API/library you designed (on any platform).
We're continuously adding features to make our backend faster, more scalable, and more developer-friendly for our customers. If scaling a backend at a fast-growing startup sounds like an excellent challenge, then this is for you! We're looking for someone who could be an "architect" or "principal developer" elsewhere but prefers to get their hands dirty within an excellent, experienced team. We offer tremendous freedom and responsibility, and we work in a remarkably decent codebase (for a startup).
At TalkJS, we like to think we're good at striking a balance between meticulous code and shipping quickly. If that sounds like your kind of environment, then this is for you.
Our ideal candidate
- has broad technical interests
- likes to design great APIs for other programmers
- has demonstrable experience scaling backends
- has demonstrable experience coding Elixir (not necessarily professionally)
- knows at least three programming languages well
- likes to work with the team to improve the product across the board
Bonus points if you know some frontend too (JS, HTML, CSS).
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, show us an app your built (or helped build) and an API/library you designed (on any platform).
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. To accomplish that vision, we need to get our chat API in front of as many developers as possible.
To get there, we're looking for someone experienced in building relationships with developers. That means spreading awareness of TalkJS by writing engaging technical content, creating excellent code examples and apps, and building traction in developer communities. We intend to expand this team, so ideally you'd feel comfortable leading the effort, including hiring and managing people.
Our ideal candidate
- has 1–2 years of experience in developer relations or technical writing
- has experience writing technical content (documentation, tutorials, how-tos, etc.)
- is active in developer communities (Twitter, DEV, Hacker News, Discord, etc.)
- would like to participate in developer events and meetups
- has a computer science or information technology degree, or equivalent developer experience
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. Include anything you've written or built—show us a community you're part of, a presentation from a developer meetup, or a fun coding project.
We want TalkJS to be the default tool for developers to build chat features. To accomplish that vision, we need to make TalkJS highly customizable and still fantastic out of the box.
If you don’t perfectly fit any of the other roles we’re advertising, that’s totally fine—TalkJS is a team of generalists, and nobody is confined to a specific role. Our culture revolves around individuals embracing their strengths and working where they’re most useful.
Working at TalkJS will be great if you
- have broad technical interests and a passion for solving problems rather than any one specific technology
- are excited and self-motivated to fix problems as they arise, learning new tech as needed
- are creative with an eye for detail, thinking outside the box to find better solutions
- get frustrated by rigid project management when it gets in the way of improving the product
- benefit from a varied role—spending days deeply focused on a task you can’t stop thinking about, then jumping between tasks, learning new tech, talking to customers, and helping colleagues get unstuck
- wish your job responsibilities were simply “make the product better”
If that sounds like you—if you want to help make TalkJS a success, and you have demonstrable experience building web and/or mobile applications—then we’d love to hear from you.
Salary varies with skills and experience, and is benchmarked to Dutch/Amsterdam norms.
Apply
Apply by emailing to jobs@talkjs.com. If you can, include something you helped build—a website, app, blog, tool, or anything else you’re proud of.
About TalkJS
Product driven
We care tremendously about quality.
We want TalkJS to be what every developer thinks of when building chat features—much like Stripe has become for payments. This means the product has to be excellent on all fronts. To make this happen, we hire great engineers and give them the maximum amount of freedom and trust to ship fantastic SDKs, APIs, and features.
Independent people solving challenging problems
When we say “maximum amount of freedom”, we really mean it. At TalkJS, you’re the “product manager” of your own work and you run it all the way—alone or together—from inception until it’s in our customers’ hands. Work flexible hours, from anywhere. No micromanagers, almost no meetings, and lots of collaboration.
Meetups
Although we’re a fully remote team, we make time to meet in person. Our meetups are usually held somewhere in Europe and happen at least once a year, often twice. These gatherings give us a chance to connect face-to-face, share ideas, and have some fun together outside of screens.
Key culture highlights
Because you can't ship great stuff when you're tired and overworked
Because only constructive feedback makes the product better.
Every team member proactively proposes and ships improvements, which lets us skip a lot of project management overhead.
Because a few fast movers can get as much done as four layers of management with hundreds of bureaucracy-shackled team members.
A no-nonsense working culture
To learn more about our culture, here are a couple of blog posts you might be interested in:
Learn more about how we work
Some more background that might interest you:
TalkJS is structured as a typical client-server application. We like new technology and we like to balance it out with proven technology. This is what we use right now, but it's always changing, and we're happy for you to learn on the job.
Core TalkJS Backend infrastructure
- Elixir
- Phoenix Framework
- PostgreSQL
Frontend (prebuilt UI + JavaScript SDK)
- TypeScript (+ a little bit JS left)
- React
- A little bit of NodeJS to prerender the prebuilt UI for faster loading
Website
- NextJS
- Tailwind CSS
Infra/devops
- Elixir/Erlang’s parallel processing keeps our server setup simple—just Docker (Compose) and GitHub Actions.
- Test releases spin up automatically by adding a label to a PR.
- Production and staging use automated blue-green deployments via GitHub Actions.
- SDK updates are automatic, as our NPM package dynamically loads JS from our site (with guaranteed backwards compatibility).
- We don’t do continuous deployment, but we release often—usually a few times a week, sometimes multiple times a day.
- Extensive monitoring with Datadog, AppSignal, LogDNA, Uptime.com, and Erlang’s Observer.
Key tooling
- TalkJS → support via a TalkJS chat widget + custom Slack integration
- GitHub → feature branch/PR workflow, issues for bugs, Discussions for specs/architecture
- Slack → main comms tool (feel free to mute for focus); Huddles for quick calls
- Notion → wiki, docs, drafts, and our jobs page
- Figma → design work
- Gmail & Google Calendar → minimal email use (mostly with customers)