Software Engineer - Penpot by Kaleidos

About Kaleidos and Penpot

Kaleidos is the company behind Penpot, the first open-source design platform built for design and code teams to work together at the same scale. We're a horizontal organisation, with no traditional hierarchy, and our values are rooted in open-source principles, alongside honesty, feminism, work-life balance, transparency, generosity and joy in what we do.

At Kaleidos, we have a genuine commitment to diversity in all its forms. Our team is made up of more than 50% women, and we'd love to welcome new colleagues who share our values, from whom we can keep learning and with whom we can keep building Penpot.

What will your work be like?

At Penpot, you'll take part in a range of projects and features across the product, with a strong focus on solving real problems identified by our users: improving their experience through new features, tackling pain points and bugs, and delivering quick wins with a direct impact on their day-to-day work.

You'll be able to move across different parts of the product, so you'll quickly get up to speed with the context behind each problem and propose solutions that work for Penpot users worldwide.

We're looking for senior engineers, someone with solid, well-established experience. You'll work within a horizontal team, where autonomy and shared decision-making are part of the role.

What do we need

We believe expertise can be gained in many ways, not just through a formal qualification. That's why we don't require a specific degree, but we do expect experience in the following:

• Interest in or experience with reactive programming (at Penpot we use RxJS).
• A background as a frontend developer (backend-for-frontend), with solid command of JavaScript, browser APIs, HTML and CSS, and experience with JS frameworks (we mainly use React).
• Motivation to build robust, carefully crafted user interfaces.
• Knowledge of, and hands-on experience with, functional programming. Day-to-day work is in ClojureScript, but you don't need to master it from day one: you can learn it as you go, drawing on LLM tools for support.
• Regular use of LLMs (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, OpenCode...) as part of how you work. We've recently introduced agents into our day-to-day, and we keep an open, ongoing conversation about the use of AI.
• Comfortable working in Linux environments.
• Languages: a high level of spoken and written English. You'll need to read and write technical documentation, and speak with fluency and precision, as English is the first language for some kaleiders. You'll also need a functional level of Spanish (spoken and written), as many team meetings take place in this language.

Earn extra points

• Familiarity with Clojure or other functional languages (Scheme, Lisp...).

• Knowledge of JavaScript testing (Jest, Cypress...) and end-to-end tests with Playwright.

• Interest in solving user problems with new languages and frameworks.

• Interest / knowledge in accessibility and responsible development.

• Interest / knowledge in design systems and their integration with product development.

• Previous experience or genuine interest in open-source projects.

• Use of agile methodologies in a professional environment.

• Background of collaboration in diverse teams (design, marketing, backend...).

• Ability to ask the right questions to help product development.

• Care for testing your own code responsibly (unit, integration, and end-to-end tests), to help reduce production incidents.

Who will you be working with?

Meet the product team and your future colleagues at Kaleidos!

What do we offer?

• Salary: €60 - 67k (gross annual salary)

• Permanent contract. We’re looking for someone to stay with us for the long run!

• Flexible hours. Even better! We all work from 10am-2pm CET. You can work the rest of your hours whenever you want. Whether you’re an early bird or a night owl, you’ll be in good company!

• 37,5h/week as part of our plan for creating a better work-life balance.

• 100% remote position. We maintain an office in Madrid (Spain), however, attendance at this location is discretionary. You are welcome to work remotely from any location with a reliable internet connection, provided that we share a time zone CET +/- 1 or you may choose to come to the office as often as you need.

•  23 days of paid leave, plus December 24th and 31st, and the possibility to ask for 10 extra non-paid leave days. We’re super flexible with your dates, you just need to make sure it’s fine with your team.

• Choose the holiday calendar of where you live or from the headquarters (Madrid).

• Continuous learning with internal and external training, conferences, and events (as a general rule we usually cover 100% of the cost). You’re encouraged to experiment with new best practices!

• Language classes on the house (eng & span): classes paid for by the company as part of your work schedule.

• 2 PIWEEKs per year! A PIWEEK is a freeform week-long hackathon where you pause your day-to-day work and focus, either alone or in a team, on a cool project! Penpot was one of the projects born in past PIWEEKs!

• Elevate your workspace. We provide a budget every 3 years to renew the equipment and after 3 years you can keep the “old” computer equipment!

• An environment where your opinion matters. We have a culture of a consensus-driven decision-making process. You’ll quickly find yourself being involved in all Kaleidos’ things.

• An open-source company. Our products are open-source and we support the open source environment as much as we can. We’re fully committed.

• Self-organized teams: we believe that providing autonomy and independence is key for personal and collective accountability. Teams at Kaleidos operate internally with very little hierarchy and enjoy the freedom to better organize themselves.

• Alan’s health insurance through flexible compensation (coverage only in Spain).

What is the process like?

1. First Interview (25 min) with the People Team: We’ll discuss Kaleidos’ principles, the purpose of this role, conditions, benefits, and challenges.

2. You send us your cover letter, which we’ll review along with your CV with the selection committee.

3. Cultural Interview with two colleagues from different departments.

4. Technical Interview, where we’ll assess the knowledge and skills required for the role, and we’ll get to know your experience better.

5. Conversation with our CEO

At each stage, we’ll give you feedback, whether you move forward or not, and we’d love for you to share your thoughts to help us improve our processes. We might take a little time to respond, especially in the early stages, since our team is small, but we want to treat you with care and kindness.

About us

We defend and believe in open-source and proof of this is that our main project, Penpot, reflects that. We’re convinced that technology isn’t neutral. That’s why we like to shake things up and go against the  status quo.

Penpot is the open-source design platform for teams that need scalable collaboration between designers and developers.

Kaleidos is the company boosting Penpot. If you’re interested in getting a deeper sense of our culture and values, have a look at our website  to gain insight into who we are and what we believe in.