Kiln Fire is a modern billing and studio management platform built specifically for community pottery studios. Today, more than 200 studios rely on Kiln Fire to manage memberships, classes, billing, retail sales, firing fees, reservations, inventory, and more.
We’re a small, focused team that believes in building thoughtful software that genuinely makes our customers’ lives easier. As our platform continues to grow, we’re looking for an experienced developer to help improve reliability, build new functionality, and strengthen the internal tools that support both our customers and our team.
About the Role
We’re looking for a capable full stack web developer who enjoys solving real-world problems and working across both backend and frontend systems.
You’ll work directly with our lead developer while collaborating closely with our Customer Success team to implement improvements, and build features that make Kiln Fire even better.
This is a hands-on development role with a wide variety of projects—from performance improvements, bug fixes, and API integrations, customer-facing features and internal administrative tools.
Responsibilities
- Improve platform reliability, performance, and maintainability
- Diagnose and resolve bugs reported by customers and the Customer Success team
- Build and enhance internal tools used by our staff
- Develop new features across our Laravel and Vue.js application
- Work with Stripe APIs for billing, payments, subscriptions, and connected accounts
- Participate in code reviews and architectural discussions
- Help identify technical improvements and opportunities to simplify the codebase
- Collaborate in planning and prioritizing upcoming development work
Technical Requirements
Required experience:
- PHP
- Laravel
- Vue.js (Options API)
- JavaScript
- HTML & CSS
- MySQL
- REST APIs
- Git
Experience with any of the following is a plus:
- Stripe API
- DigitalOcean
- Tailwind CSS
What We’re Looking For
The ideal candidate:
- Has several years of professional Laravel development experience
- Writes clean, maintainable, and well-tested code
- Can troubleshoot complex issues independently
- Communicates clearly with both technical and non-technical teammates
- Is comfortable working in a small, fast-moving team
- Takes ownership of projects from start to finish
- Enjoys improving existing systems as much as building new ones
- Strong engineering fundamentals. We’re looking for someone who can reason through unfamiliar code, trace bugs, understand existing systems, and develop solutions—not simply generate code from a prompt.
Position Details:
- Part-time (Flexible hours, 15-20 hours a week)
- Some daytime hours available (Ideally 1-2 hours a day)
- 1-2 hours of weekend availability would be expected
- Work from home (Fully remote)
- Contract Role (Starting at $80/hour)
- Independent contractor (1099)
Use of AI Development Tools:
We are open to and encourage the thoughtful use of AI-assisted development tools when they improve productivity. However, AI should be used as a tool—not as a substitute for understanding the code being written.
Developers are expected to:
- Understand the code they submit and be able to explain how and why it works.
- Be comfortable modifying, debugging, and extending code without relying on AI to do so.
- Independently investigate problems and determine appropriate solutions.
- Review AI-generated code carefully rather than assuming it is correct or appropriate for our codebase.
- Thoroughly test their work, including edge cases and potential regressions, before submitting it for review.
- Take full responsibility for the quality, security, and maintainability of any code they submit, regardless of whether AI tools were involved in creating it.
AI-generated code is welcome. AI-generated code that hasn’t been understood, reviewed, and tested is not.
Why Join Kiln Fire?
You’ll have a direct impact on software used by hundreds of small businesses and thousands of artists every day. Because we’re a small team, your work won’t disappear into a backlog—you’ll see features you build quickly make a difference for real customers.
If you enjoy building practical software, solving interesting technical challenges, and working closely with a small team that values quality over bureaucracy, we’d love to hear from you. Submit a resume or list of experience to [email protected].
