Lead Software Engineer

About Glass

Glass is a consumer insights technology and services company that is revolutionizing the way our clients - from large brands to fast-growing startups - conduct research studies. Simply put, we are better, faster, and more cost-effective than our competitors due to a proprietary technology platform that seamlessly connects to 100mm panelists worldwide. This allows Glass to help clients quickly target their ideal audience, run a survey, and view analytics in real-time. The platform also supports our internal professional services team, which is able to help our clients with as little or as much as needed along the way. In short, our platform lets the world's largest brands and fastest-growing startups obtain thousands of results to their most impending questions in minutes.

We are profitable, and plan to bootstrap our growth as opposed to taking additional outside investment. This choice allows us greater autonomy to make decisions we believe are in the best interest of our team and our customers.

We are primarily based out of Atlanta and Chicago but are comfortable with any US-based location for this role. We are remote-first, though we all believe there is value in spending time together in person. So while we'll all usually be working from home, we plan to get together as a company twice a year, and as teammates more frequently than that as needed.

About the Role

As Glass's lead engineer, you will be our most senior technical team member and lead backend engineer. You'll have a high degree of autonomy and ownership over decisions on infrastructure, tooling, development processes, and technical architecture design. Because we are a small team, this is a player-coach role where you can expect to be involved in technical planning, mentoring other engineers, and hands-on development work. As we grow the engineering team, you'll be involved in the hiring process. You'll have the opportunity to put your stamp on the engineering culture of the company, working collaboratively with company leadership to create a place where engineers and other technologists can do their best work.

Importantly, you'll be a partner in building the roadmap with Product and Design - this is a great role for a product-oriented engineer who loves to provide input into the types of features and capabilities we invest in and see the immediate impact of those decisions.

Role Responsibilities

• Evaluate the health of the Glass codebase and make recommendations to improve performance, reliability, and ease of development over time. Be an advocate for reducing tech debt while delivering business value.
• Establish and be an advocate for high standards of quality in our software
• Partner with product to build and refine the product roadmap. Along with the rest of the engineering team, inform the roadmap with estimates on level of effort, complexity, and risk for each project.
• Write, maintain, and update code on all levels of user-facing applications. The expectation is this work will be mostly backend.
• Work with company leadership to develop a hiring plan to expand the engineering team; lead the hiring process for new software engineers and other technical team members
• Own and improve technical infrastructure and advocate for tooling to ensure a modern and scalable tech stack as the company grows
• Help build and refine the engineering delivery process to reliably deliver high quality, dependable code for product features
• Mentor and grow the skillsets of the other software engineers on the team; provide feedback and coaching when necessary

Helpful Experience

• 6+ years experience in software design, development, testing, and implementation, preferably within a smaller, startup environment
• 1+ years in a Tech Lead, Engineering Manager, or other technical leadership role
• JavaScript / TypeScript proficiency
• Experience managing/building Node.js REST API's
• PostgreSQL, including schema definitions and migrations
• Working knowledge of React
• Understanding of the Google Cloud Platform or maintaining core infrastructure in any cloud monitoring service
• Understanding of monitoring deployed applications using tools like Datadog and Sentry

Current Tech Stack

• Google Cloud Platform
• Terraform
• Postgres
• Node.js / Typescript
• React Query
• React

You'll be a great fit it...

• You like to think about an entire tech stack and are comfortable with infrastructure decisions, designing an API, discussing FE frameworks, data pipelines, etc.
• You want to grow into a Head of Engineering role (e.g. VP, CTO, etc) for a larger team, but are comfortable building towards that as you build your team over the next year or two
• You value taking the time to "build things correctly" while still making iterative progress. Because we aren't venture backed and are focused on profitable growth, we plan to be a bit more deliberate in our launch pace. We still want to launch quickly and frequently, but not at the furious pace of some venture-backed companies.
• You love to collaborate across the organization - with your fellow engineers, product and design, our Research team, the CEO, etc. You're curious about the product we're building and how it helps our team and clients create value.
• You like working on analytical problems - there are some fairly advanced statistics embedded in the platform. If you like those sorts of problems, you'll have fun with this tech.
• You want to ship product - we have very, very few barriers standing between us and delivering software. There is no bureaucracy, multiple levels of decision-making, etc.
• You enjoy building software for your teammates along with external users. The software you build will be immediately used by our services team, allowing for quick feedback cycles and instantaneous impact. It is also used by our clients and forms a collaboration layer for our research work.

Benefits

• Health Care Plan (Medical, Dental & Vision)
• Retirement Plan (401k, IRA)
• Untracked PTO: we are a performance-based work environment. We expect you to take the time you need to recharge so you can perform at your best.
• Remote First: there is no requirement you regularly visit an office. However, we do plan to get together in person from time to time for specific purposes, such as working through challenging problems, annual or quarterly planning, etc.