Sr. Backend Software Engineer

About Firework

Firework is the world’s largest video commerce solution for brands, retailers, and publishers. We bring interaction and community engagement to a brand’s digital storefront through livestream and shoppable video. Firework enables organizations to bring new levels of authenticity and connection to online video experiences, speaking to digital natives in the language they understand and taking control of their own customer data. We are customer-centric and inspired to win together offering total solutions with endless possibilities to help our customers increase purchases and conversions using the power of video. At the heart, we are a global and diverse team of “SuperSpark” creators, entrepreneurs, life-long learners, and data geeks driven by the future of authenticity to transform commerce. Firework has raised over $235M to date, with its latest Series B round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Come reimagine the online customer experience with us.

Summary

Our engineering team is growing! We’re looking for a talented Sr. Backend Engineer to join a small global team who will bring technical expertise and leadership along with hands-on development of backend software development and SaaS solutions. 

What you’ll be doing

• Work closely with product managers, designers, and the rest of the engineering team to design, spec, and build elegant and scalable solutions across multiple platforms
• Design and create new API's in the Elixir Phoenix framework to be used in our core products
• Writing optimized PostgresQL and Cassandra queries and creating high performance indices
• Working with in-memory data stores, such as Redis, to improve scalability and responsiveness
• Debug issues across the entire stack using logging and monitoring tools 
• Review code by your peers, offering help and insight from your experience
• Improve engineering standards, tooling, and processes
• Ensure coherence of all aspects of projects as an integrated system and uphold overall technical quality
• Strategize and develop ideas for new programs, products, or features by monitoring industry developments and trends
• Define all aspects of development from appropriate technology and workflow to coding standards

We’ll be excited if you have

• Bachelor’s degree in computer programming, computer science, or a related field; advanced degree is a plus
• 6+ years of experience with Elixir designing and building high-performance RESTful web services serving billions of requests per day
• High-level experience with SQL infrastructure and data modeling
• Comfortable with change: ability to demonstrate comfort with ambiguity, adapt quickly and be effective in new situations in a highly dynamic setting
• Data-driven but also imaginative and intuitive in coming up with ideas and solutions
• Must possess a start-up mindset: hunger to learn quickly and the ability to balance multiple priorities in a fast-paced team environment 

A BIG PLUS if you have

• Expertise with video streaming libraries such as FFmpeg or GStreamer
• Experience working with video/audio codecs
• Experience working with live streaming encoders and WebRTC
• Experience working with AI/ML models and applications
• Experience in building large-scale applications with Python
• Experience writing GraphQL queries and mutations

As a hybrid office-centric company, we are looking for candidates in the Bay Area. Candidates outside the location are encouraged to apply though must be willing to relocate.

The following represents the expected range of compensation for this role: The estimated pay range for this role is $170,000 - $180,000. Other factors that impact compensation may include stock options. The posted pay range represents the anticipated low and high end of the compensation for this position and is subject to change based on business need. To determine a successful candidate’s starting pay, we carefully consider a variety of factors, including primary work location, an evaluation of the candidate’s skills and experience, market demands, and internal parity. Candidates may receive more information from the talent partner.

Don’t hold back

We understand some candidates may see the above and not apply because they don’t meet all the qualifications. We encourage you to apply anyway; we often find talented candidates that fit many other opportunities we have and look for potential too, not just what you did in the past. As an equal employment opportunity employer, we are a diverse team that strives for an inclusive environment for all. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.