How to Apply to Elpassion

About Elpassion

Elpassion is a Krakow-headquartered software development boutique founded in 2014 by Andrzej Krzywda and Robert Pankowecki, two well-known figures in the Polish Ruby community. Krzywda is also a cofounder of Arkency and a long-time advocate of Domain-Driven Design, Rails Event Store, and modular Rails monoliths, and his fingerprints are visible across Elpassion's engineering culture: opinionated craftsmanship, written communication, and a preference for senior-heavy teams over body-shop scaling. The company sits in the upper-quality tier of Poland's services market alongside Netguru, Codest, Polcode, Selleo, and Monterail, but it has deliberately stayed smaller, hovering around 150 employees rather than chasing the 500-1,000 headcount that some competitors pursue. The core practice is Ruby on Rails consulting for product companies, with a strong secondary practice in machine learning and applied AI delivered primarily in Python. Elpassion has shipped projects for fintech, healthtech, marketplaces, and SaaS clients across Western Europe and the United States, often acting as the lead engineering team for venture-backed startups that lack in-house capacity. Typical engagement shape is a small embedded squad of three to seven engineers, sometimes with a designer or product manager attached, working as the de facto product team for a client whose own headcount has not yet caught up to ambition. Contracts often run for a year or longer, which means engineers see real consequences of their decisions rather than rotating off before technical debt comes due. In 2024 and 2025 the firm leaned visibly into the generative AI services wave, packaging LLM evaluation, RAG pipelines, agent design, and product-side AI integrations as a distinct offering rather than a side hustle. Engineers joining today should expect a meaningful share of work to involve OpenAI, Anthropic, vector databases, and Python ML stacks alongside the traditional Rails roadmap, and several recent role postings have been explicit about wanting candidates who can move fluidly between a Rails monolith and a Python service that wraps an LLM. The company is remote-first by design. The Krakow office exists and is used for occasional in-person work, retreats, and onboarding moments, but the default mode is fully distributed, with engineers spread across Poland and, to a smaller extent, the wider European time zone. Working language is English, including internal Slack, documentation, and most code review, because client engagements are almost entirely English-speaking. Polish is common socially but is not the operating language, and that is worth taking seriously: candidates whose written English is meaningfully weaker than their spoken English tend to struggle in async-heavy client channels even if they do well in interviews. Compensation is competitive within the Polish IT services market and in line with peer boutiques such as Netguru and Codest, but candidates should set expectations honestly: rates are generally below what Warsaw-based investment banks, hyperscalers, or US-headquartered remote employers pay for equivalent seniority. The trade is the work itself, the autonomy, the strong engineering culture, and exposure to interesting product problems rather than maintenance-mode enterprise IT. Elpassion publishes openings on its careers site, which is powered by Lever, and the same Lever board is the canonical source of truth for active roles, salary bands when listed, and required skills. For candidates evaluating where to spend the next two or three years of their career, the honest comparison is not Elpassion versus FAANG; it is Elpassion versus other senior-heavy Polish boutiques. Against Netguru, Elpassion is smaller, more Ruby-centric, and closer to its founders. Against Codest, it has a deeper ML and AI bench in 2026. Against Polcode and Selleo, it tends to attract more product-style work and fewer pure staff-augmentation engagements. Against Arkency, the founders' other firm, it is the larger and more diversified house. None of these are bad choices; the differences are about culture, project mix, and the kind of clients you want to spend your week thinking about.

Application Process

1
Apply through the Elpassion careers page, which routes to Lever (jobs
Apply through the Elpassion careers page, which routes to Lever (jobs.lever.co/elpassion). Use the Lever form rather than emailing recruiters cold, because all candidates are tracked centrally and out-of-band CVs tend to get re-routed back to Lever anyway.
2
Submit a tailored CV in English with explicit Ruby on Rails or Python ML experie
Submit a tailored CV in English with explicit Ruby on Rails or Python ML experience called out near the top. Generic full-stack CVs that bury the relevant stack at the bottom underperform.
3
Include a short cover note in the Lever 'additional information' field
Include a short cover note in the Lever 'additional information' field. One paragraph is enough: which role, why Elpassion specifically, and one concrete project you would want to bring your experience to.
4
Expect an initial recruiter screen within roughly a week of applying
Expect an initial recruiter screen within roughly a week of applying. This is a 30-minute conversation in English covering motivation, English fluency, expected compensation in PLN, notice period, and remote setup.
5
Complete a take-home or live technical task
Complete a take-home or live technical task. For Rails roles this is typically a small but realistic refactor or feature addition; for ML/AI roles it is closer to a model integration, evaluation, or prompt engineering exercise. Allocate a focused evening rather than a full weekend.
6
Attend a technical interview with two engineers
Attend a technical interview with two engineers. Expect code review of your take-home, follow-up architecture questions, and discussion of trade-offs you made. This stage filters hard on engineering judgment, not trivia.
7
Attend a culture and project-fit conversation with a team lead or partner
Attend a culture and project-fit conversation with a team lead or partner. This stage explores how you handle ambiguity, client communication, and remote async work, and whether your seniority claims match your behavior.
8
Receive a written offer with rate, contract type (B2B is standard in Poland, emp
Receive a written offer with rate, contract type (B2B is standard in Poland, employment contracts are negotiable), start date, and onboarding plan. Decisions usually land within a few days of the final stage.

Resume Tips for Elpassion

recommended

Lead with the relevant stack

Lead with the relevant stack. If you are applying for a Rails role, Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, RSpec, and any DDD or event sourcing experience should be visible in the first half page. For ML roles, lead with Python, PyTorch or TensorFlow, LLM tooling, and evaluation frameworks.

recommended

Quantify outcomes, not tickets

Quantify outcomes, not tickets. 'Reduced p95 checkout latency from 1.4s to 380ms by replacing N+1 queries and adding a read replica' beats 'worked on performance.' Elpassion engineers review CVs critically and reward concrete impact.

recommended

Be explicit about English level

Be explicit about English level. State it plainly (for example, C1, fluent professional) and back it up with evidence such as past English-speaking clients, conference talks, or open-source collaboration.

recommended

Show open-source or community work where it exists

Show open-source or community work where it exists. Contributions to Rails, dry-rb, ROM, Hanami, Rails Event Store, or relevant Python ML repos are noticed, especially given the founders' deep ties to the Ruby community.

recommended

Avoid skill bars and rated proficiency charts

Avoid skill bars and rated proficiency charts. They are treated as noise. A clean, single-column, ATS-friendly CV with clear section headers parses well in Lever and reads well to humans.

recommended

Tailor the experience section to consultancy work

Tailor the experience section to consultancy work. Multi-client engagements, discovery workshops, scoping, estimation, and stakeholder communication are valued more than long single-employer tenures with no client exposure.

recommended

Include a short link block: GitHub, LinkedIn, and a personal site or blog if you

Include a short link block: GitHub, LinkedIn, and a personal site or blog if you have one. Elpassion's culture rewards engineers who write, and a public writing trail is a real signal.

recommended

Keep the CV to two pages for senior candidates and one page for mid-level

Keep the CV to two pages for senior candidates and one page for mid-level. Long CVs with a wall of every technology you have ever touched dilute the signal that gets you to the screen.

ATS System: Lever

Elpassion uses Lever as its applicant tracking system. Roles are posted at jobs.lever.co/elpassion and applications are submitted through Lever's hosted forms. Lever parses uploaded CVs into structured fields, so a clean PDF generated from a text-based source (not a scanned image) is essential for accurate parsing of name, contact details, work history, and skills.

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Interview Culture

Elpassion's interview culture reflects its founders' values: written, deliberate, and senior-coded.

Interviewers are practicing engineers and team leads, not professional interviewers, and they treat the conversation as a two-way evaluation rather than a gauntlet. Expect to be asked to explain decisions, defend trade-offs, and acknowledge what you would do differently in hindsight. Performative confidence without substance is read negatively; thoughtful uncertainty backed by reasoning is read positively. The interviewers are paying attention to how you handle being wrong, not whether you can avoid it. Technical stages focus on real code and real systems. For Rails candidates, that means model design, query performance, background jobs, testing strategy, and how you reason about coupling between modules or bounded contexts. Familiarity with Domain-Driven Design vocabulary helps, given the founders' background, but dogma is not required. Expect questions about how you would split a fat model, how you would introduce an event-sourced bounded context into an existing monolith without a rewrite, and how you would test a Sidekiq worker that talks to a flaky third-party API. For ML and AI candidates, expect questions about evaluation, prompt design, retrieval quality, latency and cost trade-offs, and how you would integrate a model into a production Rails or Python service rather than a notebook. Familiarity with offline evaluation, golden datasets, and basic observability for LLM features (token usage, error rates, hallucination flags) is increasingly assumed for senior AI roles in 2025 and 2026. The culture-fit stage centers on remote async work, client communication, and ownership. Elpassion engineers often own client relationships directly, so discomfort with writing, with disagreeing in writing, or with running a client conversation is a real signal. The interviewers will probe for honesty about gaps and for evidence that you can be trusted alone with a client account. Process is calm and respectful; trick questions and pressure theatrics are not part of the playbook. Candidates report decisions arriving quickly after the final stage, with rejections delivered honestly rather than ghosted.

What Elpassion Looks For

Strong Ruby on Rails fundamentals or strong applied Python ML fundamentals, with depth in at least one and curiosity about the other.
Engineering judgment under ambiguity: candidates who can name the trade-off they made and the alternative they rejected.
Written English fluency at a level that allows direct, unsupervised client communication in Slack, email, and documentation.
Comfort with remote-first, async-default work, including writing decisions down rather than relying on hallway conversations.
Consultancy mindset: scoping, estimation, pushback on bad requirements, and the ability to translate business goals into technical plans.
Test discipline. RSpec, request specs, and a sane testing pyramid for Rails; evaluation harnesses and reproducibility for ML.
Interest in or experience with generative AI integration work, given the firm's 2024-2025 expansion into LLM-based services.
Cultural alignment with craftsmanship values: code review as a learning tool, refactoring as a habit, and shipping as a discipline rather than a one-time event.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Elpassion fully remote or do I need to be in Krakow?

Elpassion is remote-first. The Krakow office is used for occasional in-person work and team gatherings, but day-to-day work is distributed. Most roles are open to candidates anywhere in Poland and, depending on the role, across the wider European time zone.

What contract type does Elpassion offer?

B2B (self-employed contractor) is the standard arrangement in Poland and is the default at Elpassion. Employment contracts (umowa o pracę) can sometimes be negotiated, but B2B is more common and typically results in a higher gross rate.

Do I need to speak Polish to work at Elpassion?

No. The operating language is English because clients, documentation, and most internal communication are in English. Polish is widely spoken socially but is not required for any role.

What is the typical seniority Elpassion hires?

Hiring skews mid to senior. Junior hires happen but are less frequent and often via internships or referrals. Most open roles assume two to three years of relevant experience at minimum, and many assume more.

How long does the interview process take?

From application to offer typically takes two to four weeks, depending on scheduling and the take-home turnaround. The recruiter screen usually happens within a week of applying.

Is the take-home assignment paid?

Take-home tasks are generally unpaid and time-bounded to keep the load reasonable. Expect a focused evening of work rather than a full weekend project. If you are asked for something significantly larger, push back and ask for scope or compensation clarity.

What does compensation look like compared to Warsaw or US remote roles?

Compensation is competitive against other Polish boutiques such as Netguru, Codest, and Polcode, but typically below Warsaw investment banking IT and below top US-headquartered remote employers paying in dollars. The trade is the engineering culture and project quality.

How important is open-source work?

It is a real signal but not a hard requirement. Given the founders' Ruby community ties, contributions to Rails, dry-rb, Hanami, Rails Event Store, or comparable Python ML libraries are noticed and discussed in interviews.

Does Elpassion still hire Ruby on Rails engineers in 2026?

Yes. Rails remains the core practice and the dominant stack for client work. The ML and generative AI practice is additive rather than a replacement, and many engineers work across both worlds over time.

What is the office culture like for the few in-person days?

Krakow gatherings are informal and engineering-led: workshops, retros, occasional client-facing meetings, and team retreats. They are valued but optional for most roles, and the company does not run a hybrid attendance mandate.

Open Positions

Elpassion currently has 14 open positions.

Related Resources

Career Guides for Elpassion Roles

Similar Companies

Sources

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How to Apply to Elpassion

Key Takeaways

About Elpassion

Application Process

Resume Tips for Elpassion

Lead with the relevant stack

Quantify outcomes, not tickets

Be explicit about English level

Show open-source or community work where it exists

Avoid skill bars and rated proficiency charts

Tailor the experience section to consultancy work

Include a short link block: GitHub, LinkedIn, and a personal site or blog if you

Keep the CV to two pages for senior candidates and one page for mid-level

ATS System: Lever

Interview Culture

What Elpassion Looks For

Frequently Asked Questions

Open Positions

Related Resources

Career Guides for Elpassion Roles

Similar Companies

Related Articles

Sources