Coins.ph is a mobile blockchain wallet that is leading the digital revolution in SouthEast Asia. Established in 2014 by Ron Hose, the crypto giant has blazed a trail for mobile payments in the Philippines. It allows people without a bank account to use their mobiles to pay their bills, transfer money, purchase goods at more than 10,000 retail stores and shop online at over 100,000 merchants who accept digital currency.
The aim of Coins.ph is to increase financial inclusion by making it easy for people to trade, send money home, play games through the app and buy credit.
Earlier this year, Coins.ph partnered with TraXion’s charitable crowdfunding service GavaGives to allow people without a bank account to donate to charities. This is one of many ways the company is helping to improve people’s lives with blockchain technology and as the organization grows, so does its capacity to provide much-needed services to more people.
In June, Coins.ph announced that their user base had increased from 1.5 million to five million, and this increase occurred during a market correction. Part of the success of Coins.ph has been due to its expansion to other markets like Thailand and Malaysia and its ability to enlist the help of talented professionals from all over the world.
While the company has certainly seen its fair share of successes, one of its challenges has been to build a global team of borderless superstars that are not restricted by location.
Colin Goltra, Head of Cryptocurrency Program Coins.ph said: “There are obvious things we screen for with our remote hires, like communication skills and ability to work autonomously, these generally are the things most people screen especially hard for when building a remote team. That said once those boxes are checked, the biggest challenge of building a remote development team is getting everyone on the same page culturally.
“For a mission-drive organization whose product is regionally-focused, it can be hard for colleagues from other countries to fully grasp what we’re building, why it’s important, who we’re serving, and what the values the rest of the non-technical team hold. To remedy this, we have our remote team spend time in our home market, something like 1 trip a year, so that our devs understand what the culture of our onsite team is like and so they can try the products they are building in live action.”
One of the aims of Coins.ph is to reach a wider customer base and to be the key driving force of cryptocurrency solutions in Asia. To achieve this, having the flexibility to extend the development team beyond the limited scope of the Philippines is crucial.
Mr. Goltra added: “While we would love to hire a larger local team here in the Philippines, most emerging markets lack any existing large-scale deployments, so it can be incredibly difficult sourcing talented devs who have the technical scaling experience that we specifically need at this stage of our growth. By hiring remote developers as part of our team, we are able to source talent from more experienced markets and accelerate our growth even faster.”
However, Coins.ph isn’t the only group to reap the benefits of remote working. Talented cryptocurrency professionals also get the advantage of working from home and having the flexibility to fit their job around their lifestyle. But perhaps the biggest benefit of working remotely for a company such as Coins.ph is the ability to take more ownership around their projects and workflows.
“In addition to making sure that remote members of our team have sufficient cultural context about our organization and market, we make sure that remote team members are empowered to make decisions and own projects.” Gotra added: “To do this, we try to split projects into workflows that can be done by only one or two senior developers at a time, so that remote devs can own larger stretches of the workflow without having to report in constantly with the local team.”
If working remotely for a startup company that is offering a new level of financial empowerment to unbanked communities across Asia sounds good to you, the great news is there are a number of positions they are currently hiring for.
These include:
Sr. Software Engineer
Data Engineer
Database Administrator
Security Engineer
To apply for any of the above positions, get in touch with us at Synapse International, an established startup recruitment agency that takes pride in matching blockchain talent with inspirational and exciting career opportunities. Email us at info@synapseint.com.