Senior backend Scala engineer

✍🏽 About Writer

AI your people will love. That's our vision, and it contains multitudes :-)

AI

your people

will love.

We're filling a big need for generative AI built ground-up for the needs of enterprises and embraced by their teams. As generative AI became a board-level initiative almost overnight for most enterprises, our market matured dramatically and we benefit from that tailwind. Our product is highly differentiated, our roadmap is transformative, and our customers are happy and vocal.

🛣 Traction and backing

Writer is deployed widely at leading companies like UnitedHealthcare, Accenture, Intuit, UiPath, HubSpot, Spotify, Hilton, Uber, and Deloitte. We have an NRR of +135% and we're just getting started.

Our inbound funnel is large and growing fast (+3M visitors/month, thousands of weekly ICP trial starts). In late 2021, we received a $21M Series A led by Insight Partners, with participation from Google's Gradient Ventures, GTMFund, and a world-class group of founders, operators, and angels. We're a clear leader in a space receiving significant investor interest, and will be able to make the investments required to maintain that position.

🎯 Why it's the perfect time to join

• We're still only 70 people. There's a lot of room to contribute and grow an enduring SaaS company. You'll have unquestionably made it happen.

• We have strong PMF. We have strong DAUs and deep usage. People spend hours in Writer. The work you'll do will have a direct impact on some of the top companies in the world — and make work more enjoyable for the users who depend on us to meet their goals.

• Build it, nail it, scale it. We're at 'scale it' and are continually learning. If you like helping turn dirt paths into smooth roads, now is the perfect time to join.

🤓 What we're like

• We connect. We bring our whole selves to work. We're a diverse group on multiple dimensions, and we share that with each other.

• We challenge. We're first principles thinkers, and those principles guide our product and GTM decisions. Things you won't hear at Writer include "Because that's what X wants" or "Company Y does it this way." We're all on the same side as we build Writer our own way.

• We own. Building a company that achieves escape velocity is hard work. We take full ownership over our schedules and our outcomes, because we believe that's the purest-energy way to work that hard.

📈 Our operating cadence

• We're a low-meeting (< 4 hours/week for most people) culture, with 1-2 weeks a quarter that are totally meeting-free.

• We've been distributed since day 1, and our distributed processes and rituals are long-engrained.

• There's low overhead, and projects are single-threaded.

• We break down company milestones into quarterly goals and projects, and emphasize by team the one thing that matters the most.

• All of our dashboards and metrics are transparent, live in a single view, and are shared with everyone.

• We're good at communicating async, use DMs and distracting notifications with caution, and respect each other's work hours. And we'd never send you a calendar invite before making sure you're free.

• Weeks are tough, but weekends are sacred.

📐 About this role

With Writer, you'll be working closely with the founders and the engineering team to build, manage, and scale a product that tens of thousands of people rely on every day.

As a senior backend engineer, you’ll take over a key part of the Writer product and work collaboratively to deliver new features and ship strong improvements to existing ones. We’re looking for someone with great product sensibilities who can take an opinionated stance and communicate it clearly. 

 You’ll need solid knowledge of Scala.

 You’ll get to build things the right way: we’re beyond quick hacks. You’ll also own the process end-to-end: our engineers build, deploy, and maintain their code.

🦸🏻‍♀️ Your responsibilities

• Work closely with our product team to design and develop new features

• Contribute to an early, special team and help us build on our strong engineering culture 

• Lead technical discussions and come up with innovative ways to improve the product and our processes

• Troubleshoot issues with product, technologies, and infrastructure (we’re on GCP)

⭐️ Is this you?

• BS in Computer Science, Math, or Engineering

• 4+ years of Scala programming experience

• Deep understanding of microservices and hands-on experience implementing them at scale

• Experience building high capacity, high traffic, high availability applications

• Strong skills in data engineering

And:

• Proactive communication skills, both sync and async

• Set the highest possible bar for what you ship: it’s consumer-grade or bust

• A love for good writing

🍩 Benefits

We don’t spend frivolously, but we do take care of our own. Besides smart, sincere colleagues and a vibrant work environment, we are proud to offer:

• Employer-covered medical plans, dental, vision, and life insurance

• FSA

• Competitive parental leave policy (parents actually work here!)

• Generous PTO

• Company stock options

• 401k plan with employer matching

• Flexible schedules

Writer is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to diversity. We don't make hiring or employment decisions based on race, color, religion, creed, gender, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, sex, gender expression or identity, sexual orientation, citizenship, or any other basis protected by applicable local, state or federal law. Under the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.