The Role

DockYard is seeking a Senior Elixir Engineer with extensive experience in Elixir and Phoenix, as well as strong performance tuning and systems thinking skills.

In this role, you will work closely with client teams to diagnose and resolve complex performance challenges, particularly those related to distributed systems, network communication patterns (e.g., GraphQL), and large-scale Elixir/Phoenix applications.

The ideal candidate is curious, hands-on, and thrives on solving hard technical problems in collaboration with others.

Responsibilities

• Diagnose and resolve performance bottlenecks in Elixir/Phoenix applications, including network-level and application-level optimizations.
• Analyze and improve system communication patterns (GraphQL, REST, distributed Elixir/Erlang) with a focus on async design and minimizing blocking operations.
• Work independently and alongside client engineers and stakeholders to prioritize performance improvements.
• Instrument applications with Telemetry, tracing, and observability tools to enable data-driven decision-making.
• Contribute to project scoping, estimation, and planning, especially around refactoring and system-level improvements.
• Participate actively in code reviews, pair programming, and knowledge sharing.

Must Haves

• Proven experience shipping Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView applications to production.
• Strong understanding of application performance optimization, including async design, process architecture, and observability.
• Experience using Telemetry, OpenTelemetry, or other tracing/monitoring tools.
• Experience working with GraphQL or similar API technologies, and understanding their performance characteristics.
• Comfort with distributed systems concepts
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to Haves

• Familiarity with Erlang tooling, like observer.
• Frontend experience (HTML, JavaScript, Tailwind CSS).
• Prior client services, consulting, or freelancing experience.
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools (Copilot, Cursor, etc.)

Employment Type

• Contract (Up to 40hrs/wk)

Location

Remote (must be able to work U.S. Eastern Business Hours)

Even if you don’t feel you’re a 100% fit, we’d still love to hear from you!

DockYard is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against based on race, color, religion, national origin, veteran status, sex, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, political affiliation, personal appearance, pregnancy, family responsibilities, matriculation, or any other characteristic protected under federal, state, or local law.\

This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.