Software Engineer

Intro

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If you perform well on the Teamups interview, you become eligible for opportunities with all companies in the Teamups network (only complete the interview once).

This role is with our partner company that is actively hiring:
Sparkwise

About the company

Hi, I'm Ari, co-founder and CTO at Sparkwise. I've spent the past 20+ years engineering learning environments for new universities, edtech startups, and academic research, and I'm thrilled to have the chance to leverage these experiences as we build our product at Sparkwise. I'm excited to share a new full-stack senior engineering role on our team. In this role, you'll help design, build, and shape the future of product engineering at Sparkwise.

What we do

We're on a mission to spark brilliance in everyone.

It's hard to achieve both impact AND scale in learning. Solve for scale, and you're left with solo learning (click-click videos, big Zoom calls...) that bores people. Solve for impact, and you need high-touch live workshops or coaching that are costly to scale.

At Sparkwise, we're pioneering a new type of learning to scale a more humane way to learn and grow for life.

We're building an AI-enabled skill-building platform that radically scales live group learning: our tech guides people to solve problems and practice together in tech-powered small groups — without the need for expert facilitation.

Our clients include world-class organizations such as Harvard Business Publishing, Google, top consulting firms, creators with >600K followers, and more.

We are proven operators who bring experiences from McKinsey, Minerva, Google, Teach for America, and more. We're funded by top VCs and angels.

Join us to transform people's lives and careers

Working with us

What you'll do

• You will own core areas of our products and platforms, from tooling to feature prototypes to selecting frameworks and establishing scalable patterns and processes
• You will discover, cross-prioritize, and translate business requirements into engineering decisions
• You will help make architectural decisions across our infrastructure and application stack
• You will communicate engineering decisions, status, and outcomes to broader team
• You will work with leadership, design, and importantly our customers to ensure outstanding product experiences across all touch-points
• You will help establish and foster strong engineering culture, processes, and standards

You will prioritize ruthlessly to focus your attention on the most important work. At the same time, urgent things come up in an early-stage startup. You will have a mix of days that allow for uninterrupted deep focus and other days that... don't.

Who you'll work with

• You'll report to Ari, co-founder and CTO, and you'll also work closely with Sparkwise co-founders Romain and Vince. We bring deep expertise and passion in edtech, Future of Work, and venture building:
  • Ari (CTO) has been building edtech for 20+ years, previously serving as Chief Learning Scientist (and employee #1) at Minerva, CTO at Calbright College, and Chief Learning Architect at Grockit. CS PhD.
  • Romain (COO) was a former People function leader at McKinsey who ran global ops, built top training programs, and coached 100s of consultants. MIT, CentraleSupélec alum.
  • Vince (CEO) helped launch several startups at Polymath Ventures and ran multi-million dollar Future of Work transformations for F500 with McKinsey. Princeton, Harvard alum.
• You'll work closely with engineers Jess and Victor and product designer Adán
• You'll frequently collaborate with other members of our full 12-person team

Find more about our team values on our main Careers page.

How we work

Product engineering at Sparkwise is shaped by our Product Team Operating Model. We organize around strategic projects featuring 6-week engineering builds, and arrange other work around those projects. We also effectively leverage pre-production R&D projects, which we use to explore, inform, and de-risk future strategic projects. We have established a demo culture both in engineering and across the team, with in-progress demos being featured and celebrated on a regular basis.

Among our operating principles, you'll find:

• move fast or die (as this is a startup)
• protect deep-work time
• welcome the disagreement

Read about what we embrace and what we say "no" to on our Careers page.

Our tech stack

Our codebase is a pure Typescript application, with React on the frontend, for REST APIs, and Prisma for interfacing with PostgreSQL. We run containers and other infrastructure on AWS, with Cloudflare's security and performance tools in front and a selection of third-party services playing supporting roles.

Sparkwise is committed to security and privacy. We are proud to be SOC 2 Type II compliant.

Compensation

• Salary is competitive, commensurate with experience. Salary is location-based, anchored on country or region market rate.
• Equity is meaningful. As an early employee, we want you to benefit when we succeed.
• Other benefits include:
  • Health insurance. The specifics vary by country, but we aim to provide coverage or a reimbursement for coverage for all team members.
  • WFH home-office stipend. Expense up to USD $750 per calendar year to enhance work-from-home experience/productivity. (e.g. external monitor, keyboard, mouse, headset, stand-up desk, solo access to co-working space, etc.)
  • Company off-sites. While not a benefit per se, our team off-sites do feel like one. During our offsites, our team congregates for 3+ consecutive days of working together in person. The location varies but the value has been consistent: enhancing trust and empathy, and diving into deeper reflection and planning as a team. We intend to bring each team member to at least one off-site per year.

Requirements

Location & work hours

Sparkwise is a globally-distributed remote team with no central office/headquarters.

• Your regular working hours must include our core collaboration hours: 12pm-4pm US/Eastern.
• You must have authorization to work in the country in which you intend to live.
• Ideally, you live+work somewhere in Americas/American time zones (UTC -7 to UTC -3), but this is not a strict requirement. Sparkwise is a US-based company, but you may live anywhere. Sparkwise does not sponsor visas or relocation.

Mindset & Genius

We care deeply about helping our team members reach their full potential, and believe that this happens best when people are working in their natural "zone of genius." The more of these statements that resonate for you, the better:

• You find it energizing to work in a small and nimble remote team
• You are motivated by the impact of your work, and find satisfaction in exploring, building, and shipping a product users love
• You are a strong communicator and enjoy collaborating with non-technical team members
• You are meticulous in your craft and are take ownership of your code from design through deployment and beyond
• You enjoy problem-solving both alone and as a part of a team effort (either synchronous or asynchronous) as needed, and welcome multiple perspectives as a way to ultimately arrive at better solutions

Technical Experience

• 5+ years of full-time professional experience building full-stack software products
• Experience with AWS (particularly networking- and security-related services)
• Experience with
• Experience with React
• Experience with ORMs and/or query builders
• Experience working with relational databases
• Experience building APIs in Node
• Excited to work in a startup

"Nice-to-haves"

None of these specific experiences are requirements for the role, but they will be relevant and helpful given our tech stack.

• React hooks (e.g., writing custom hooks)
• AWS services: ECS/ECR, CodePipeline/CodeDeploy, RDS
• Troubleshooting production systems
• tRPC
• Prisma
• Building collaborative real-time applications
• Building within a secure SOC 2 compliant environment
• Front-end development skills (Chakra, Tailwind, Material, etc)
• WebRTC and/or web video APIs
• Prior experience working with an early-stage startup

Equal opportunity

Sparkwise is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment including the decision to hire, promote, discipline, or discharge, are based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, ancestry, national origin, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or military and veteran status.

We are committed to providing an inclusive environment of mutual respect where differences are celebrated and supported