Full-Stack Engineer
Company: Useful
Salary: $200 - $5
Posted on: May 31, 2024
Job Description
### What is Useful?
We’re on a mission to bring companies closer to their customers. That’s why
we’re building Useful—AI coaching and deal intelligence for sales managers and
their teams. Useful listens to calls to provide feedback and insights about
conversations with customers, enabling managers and reps to appreciate what
works well, and understand the opportunities to work even better with
customers.
We believe that behind every great player, is a great coach, and that great
coaching helps people become the best version of themselves.
We’re starting with go-to-market teams in our pursuit of making people into
superheroes in every customer-facing role. We’re growing rapidly with
customers and already working closely with some of the fastest-growing
companies in SaaS, including Zip, RudderStack, Embrace, Assembled, Vividly,
and many more – and we’re just getting started!
Founded in 2022, we’re supported by leading investors including Spark Capital,
Unusual Ventures, Comma Capital, and angel investors who were/are founders or
executives of leading companies—including Apple, Meta, Stripe, Datadog,
Notion, Robinhood, Klaviyo, Twilio, Toast, Asana, Braze, Hubspot, Plaid,
Carta, Ramp, and more. The Useful team comprises talented individuals and
startup veterans from top technology companies and universities.
### About the Role
We’re building a product that people love. One that builds trust, helps
companies grow closer to their customers, and unlocks the growth potential of
millions of people in customer-facing roles.
What matters to us is what we enable for others. We focus on the details of
everything we do, so businesses around the world can focus on what’s most
important to them.
Useful is, at its core, an engineering company, intentional about building the
best engineering team. We are looking for a remarkable full-stack engineer who
is excited to be a part of our early story and help us build a world-class
community. We are engineers with a broad set of technical skills and
backgrounds, who are eager to solve a wide range of engineering challenges.
Our ideal candidate has a strong understanding of building backend systems,
sound judgment about tradeoffs, a willingness to contribute full stack, an
extremely strong sense of ownership, and loves delivering customer impact by
owning projects from inception through production.
### What You’ll Do
Ship code to production and impact our users’ lives every day
* Build new product capabilities by breaking down complex projects into bite-sized scopes that are fast and fun to implement
* Continuously improve our engineering processes, tools, and systems that allow us to scale our code, productivity, and team
* Inspire and mentor fellow engineers and interns
* Push the frontier of practical applications of new AI, such as implementing novel use cases and workflows that push the limits of what’s possible with transformer-based models
It’s early in our journey, so you'll have an opportunity to shape not only our
product, but the company itself: how we work together, what makes us stand
out, and who we hire.
### What you Need
* 3+years of professional engineering experience (at least 1 year at a startup)
* Professional experience building a complex web application from the ground up, including some frontend contributions
* Stellar communication skills with a knack for working effectively in a very fast-paced environment
* Strong debugging and performance optimization skills
* An obsession with product performance, meticulousness and end-user experience
* Undergrad CS or technical/STEM degree ## Nice to Haves
* Experience coding in Python, Golang, and/or Typescript
* Experience with AWS services
* Experience with Next.js and React 18
* Experience with a document/no-SQL db
* Knowledge of foundational ML and deep learning ## You’ll be a Great Fit if you…
* Have a need for speed and a bias for impact. You love to get product updates in customers’ hands ASAP.
* Are intellectually curious. You’re not afraid to try new things and have a growth mindset.
* Take pride in your craft but don’t hesitate to ask for help. You operate with integrity and follow through on commitments.
* Enjoy working on complex problems across the stack and building features end-to-end
### How we work and live
With team members in Austin and New York, we regularly gather to connect in
person, solve problems and learn from each other! We are a tight-knit
community bound by our shared curiosity, humility with growth mindsets, humor,
ambition for personal impact, passion for great engineering, and obsession
with our customers’ success.
We use Golang, Python, and Typescript. Github, Linear, and Notion for our
planning, deployment, docs, and collaboration. Our infra primarily runs on
AWS, using Terraform with services like ECS, S3, Dynamo, OpenSearch, SQS, and
Lambdas/Step Functions. We utilize Pinecone’s vector db, Anthropic, OpenAI,
Algolia, and a bleeding edge toolset for ML/AI-related capabilities. We have
to be able to build things quickly to support the fastest growing startups and
platforms in the world, while also being reliable and trustworthy.
We offer wellness stipends, education support, flexible PTO, and more to
support your personal growth and wellbeing!
### What to expect in the interview process
We are grateful and appreciate your willingness to spend time with us so we
can mutually determine that the role is a strong fit for you! We are available
to answer any and all questions throughout the course of our interview
process, outlined below.
**Introduction Call (30min)** : Conversation over Zoom with Carter, co-founder
and co-CEO, to discuss the role and your interests, goals and experience.
**Coding exercises (2 x 60min)** : Two live coding sessions over Zoom–one
backend, one frontend–each with a member of our Engineering team. These are
practical, straightforward opportunities that help us understand how you solve
problems, communicate, your programming proficiency, and your approaches to
abstractions, organizing code, and debugging. Nothing obscure, no gotchas.
**System architecture interview (60min)** : A whiteboard exercise over Zoom to
help us understand your approach to tradeoffs, risks, pragmatism, as well as
knowledge and thought process for distributed systems and application design,
data structures, performance implications, observability, etc. As with the
coding exercises, nothing obscure and no gotchas in the task, or our
discussion. Just practical, real-world engineering considerations. You are not
expected to be an expert in all things.
**Co-CEO 1:1 on experiences, interests and values (45min)** : A conversation
to help us understand what it’s like to work with you as a person. We’ll
discuss topics like how you’ve handled different types of situations in the
past, what kinds of projects you’ve enjoyed (and not) and why, how you work
best, ambitions, motivations, etc.
**References & offer**: Provided it sounds like a strong mutual fit and
opportunity after the interview panel, we ask for 2-3 professional
references—direct teammates or managers from prior roles/projects. These 10-15
minute conversations with your references are the final step enabling us to
send you the formal offer to join our team!
### Compensation and Benefits
The base salary range for this full-time position is between $130,000 and
$160,000. The range displayed in this job posting reflects the minimum and
maximum target for new hire salary for this position. Within the range,
individual pay is determined by various factors, including job-related skills
(as uncovered during the interview process), experience, and relevant
education or training. Please note that the compensation details listed in
this posting reflect the base salary only, and do not include equity,
benefits, or potential performance-related bonuses.
* Competitive salary and benefits. Annual salary range for this role is between $130,000 and $160,000. Equity compensation is between .2% and .6% of shares outstanding.
* Comprehensive medical, dental, vision insurance and 401(k)
* Flexible PTO
* Relocation support to move to Austin
* Monthly wellness stipend