Staff Engineer

Summary

Join our team as a PHP Staff Engineer and contribute to backend application work and technical leadership. We're a small, fully remote team, so your work will blend backend, DevOps, data, and frontend tasks depending on the project and your skills. Ideal candidates possess a strong Web SaaS background, extensive web development experience, and deep PHP expertise. You'll be responsible for collaborating on complex web application programming, adhering to coding standards, and making informed technical decisions. This role offers a competitive salary of $160,000 per year, participation in our ESOP, and a comprehensive benefits package including unlimited PTO, health insurance, and parental leave. We are looking to fill this position as soon as possible.

Requirements

• Building and maintaining Web SaaS products for at least 5 years (12+ is ideal)
• Advanced programming experience in a Web server context, PHP strongly preferred
• Programming experience in Javascript and HTML/CSS
• Advanced SQL query authoring and relational database design constraints
• Working remotely with a cross-functional team & collaborating with other engineers
• Task refinement & scoping, self-organization, and prioritization
• Team-based communication (asking for what they need and conveying challenges and timelines proactively), active listening, and consensus building
• Giving and receiving constructive and well-communicated code review feedback
• Experience with one or more web application frameworks, especially event-driven
• Troubleshooting DNS and web request / server response structures
• Validating code using test automation (unit or functional/integration)
• Controlling major sources of application complexity and managing dependencies thoughtfully

Responsibilities

• Collaboratively plan, document, and execute complex web application programming tasks
• Adhere to team coding standards and architectural principles
• Demonstrate advanced knowledge of one or more relevant programming languages in day-to-day use
• Demonstrate best practices in submitted code
• Make informed decisions about what qualifies as in- and out-of-scope for current tasks and communicate those decisions succinctly and thoroughly
• Raise concerns, questions, and ambiguities for team discussion; lead consensus-building
• Identify risks in current code, environment, and/or process; recommend alternatives
• Add automated low-level tests to code as appropriate
• Troubleshoot existing code for defects, performance issues, or other unwanted behavior
• Take ownership of overall application code base and be accountable for its long-term health, performance, and alignment with team goals
• Take on independent investigations or maintenance projects to enable the rest of the team
• Take a leadership role in overall technical decisions and direction
• Work cross-functionally with Product, Customer Success, and other stakeholders to identify the best outcomes possible given our goals and constraints
• Assist with support and bug triage
• Assist with CI/CD pipeline as necessary
• Assist with E2E tests as necessary
• Improve application observability with logging and automated alerting
• Explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Assist non-senior engineers with their professional growth and learning
• Participate in web application security training
• Assist with hiring engineers as requested
• Investigate new technologies for applicability to current and future engineering challenges
• Monitor the broader technology ecosystem for significant changes and brief team
• Respond to priority support incidents during off-hours in rare business-critical situations

Preferred Qualifications

• Using, designing, documenting, and building REST APIs
• Experience with WordPress (or similar)
• Experience using caching layers to improve web application performance
• Building & improving CI pipelines (we use BitBucket)
• Evaluating application-level security and remediation of flaws
• Evaluating & implementing accessibility requirements
• Experience with ETL pipelines, feed processing, and/or data migrations
• Working with Python (used in our data pipeline), data warehouses, and/or data visualization
• Iterative self-directed learning is second nature to you
• You’ve read resources or books like Will Larson’s Staff Engineer and are thoughtful about the strategic role of the Staff Engineer in an organization

Benefits

• $160,000 annual salary (with annual raise 1 July)
• 4-year vesting stock options
• Unlimited PTO (you must use at least 3 weeks; 4-6 is normal)
• Health insurance (Gold PPO) premium 100% covered for employee & 60% for dependents (Dental 75% for employee & 50% for dependents; Vision 75% for employee)
• 4% 401K contribution (3% full match + 2% half match)
• $600 annual home office stipend
• 12 weeks parental leave (after 1 year)
• Guaranteed remote work policy (there’s no office)