We here at Jellyvision are the proud parents of ​ALEX® (https://www.jellyvision.com/solutions)​, an interactive employee communications platform that happens to share some DNA (and a sense of humor) with the smash-hit trivia video game YOU DON’T KNOW JACK, created by Jellyvision's founder. ALEX makes navigating tricky decisions—like choosing and using employee benefits or improving your financial wellness—easier, faster, and more helpful, not to mention entertaining.

So what's this job about?

On a day-to-day basis, Support Engineers act as Jellyvision's Level 3 Support team. That means you'll be working with the Jellyfolk who use and implement the tools and products we make, fixing the problems that they have and putting the sunshine back in their day. You'll also be documenting what you see and getting those solutions out there so that the next time an issue pops up, that person can solve it themselves and just keep on rolling.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, though, so you'll also be looking for ways to stop problems before they can crop up. One day, that means pushing for a bug ticket to get fixed before it rears its head in front of users; the next, you're improving the technical documents we give to our customers. That means we're looking for folks with an interest in infrastructure, a desire for documentation, and a broad background of technical experience. When you see an opportunity to make someone's work easier (including your own!) by writing a tool, shoring up a wiki page, or teaching them an easier way, you won't have to wait until a lean sprint to do it — instead, it's literally your team's mission.

Of course, both of these responsibilities will put you in contact with people all over the company. Jellyvision Engineering fosters a strong sense of collaboration, and that doesn't stop with engineers: you'll build close relationships with QA, SRE, account managers, and a lot of other people. Everyone at Jellyvision is smart, but not everyone has a technical background, and you'll need to demonstrate respect for their strengths while complementing them with your own.

How do I know if I'm right for this?

In most job descriptions, we'd list a bunch of languages and frameworks here (and don't worry, that's coming later). But even more important to us in this position is someone who demonstrates:

• Patience and empathy:By the time someone is asking you for help, it's probably the worst day of their week. You'll need to be able to discover and understand not only their problem, but all the context and feelings that come with that problem. Then you'll get back to solid ground and work with them until their problem is solved.
   
• Delight in debugging:On the Support team, you're going to spend a lot of time looking for root causes, so it'll go a lot easier if debugging brings you joy, not frustration. Similarly, thinking of weird places that things could go wrong should lift your spirits rather than dampen them — not least of all because you'll be able to then go on and fix them.
   
• A methodical approach to problem-solving:Every bug has a reproducible cause and every problem has at least one viable solution. To find that cause and deliver that solution, you'll need to plan, consider, and act, rather than just try a bunch of things to see what works. You should be able to sustain yourself on incremental progress rather than waiting for the a-ha moment, working the problem until you find something that fits.
   
• Skilled technical writing:Understanding how a system works is one thing, but we want to see that you can distill that understanding into tutorials, training, and other documentation that's accessible to people at varying levels of technical ability. You should be the kind of person who is beloved by their coworkers for the clarity and usefulness of their comments on tickets, READMEs, and emails.
   
• Curiosity and proactiveness:The flip side of helping people is setting them up to not need help in the first place. Once an issue comes up a few times, you should be looking to stop it from coming up again, whether that's with documentation, a tool, or a configuration change. And we want someone who is curious enough to go looking for ways to improve our ability to help people.
   
• The ability to build bridges:When you're trying to triage the three things on your plate, it helps to have good relationships with the people your decision will affect. You should be a natural at reaching out beyond your team and building trust with people in other departments, so you can lean on them during crunch time.
   
• Power user sense:Not everything you encounter will be a problem with code: sometimes you'll need to clear a cache or check a firewall setting or look at background processes. Because of this, you should have a good idea of where the knobs and levers are for common software like Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari, macOS, iOS, and Windows.

Support engineers need to be generalists, able to poke at every part of the stack. While you don't need to come in the door with extensive knowledge of everything listed here, the more of them you've encountered the better. Anything you don't know, we can train you up on. Here's what you'll be working with, from most important to least:

• JavaScript, HTML, and CSS:Knowing how a webpage works crucial for this role. You should be familiar with what browser devtools are and how to use them, and know what it's like to step through code, inspect elements, and futz with styles. Basically, you should know how to poke at a webpage and what it'll do when you do that.
   
• APIs:The data our webapps depend on come from backend APIs — and so do the tools we build to help ourselves! You should know how to interrogate an API without a webpage doing the work for you, and demonstrate an understanding of how HTTP and JSON work, and how to make them do your bidding.
   
• Databases:We use Postgres and CouchDB (for the most part), but if you know a little bit about traditional RDBMSs, a bit about NoSQL databases, and you've occasionally thought to yourself, "maybe I should just throw this in a JSON file somewhere", you'll be good to go.

ANYTHING ELSE? Yes. We share a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere, so we only hire nice, bright, funny people who are willing to work hard. Our credo is a simple one: be helpful. And we think we can be most helpful if our workforce is as diverse in thought, perspective, and culture as the people who use our products. We are looking to add amazing folks to our team who will bring diversity across many lines, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender identity, sex, and country of origin.

AND HOW DO I APPLY?

We look forward to hearing about you and what you do. Make sure your application includes:

- Your resume

You will receive an auto-reply confirming that we've received your application.

Please know that every single application we receive is read by a real live human being. However, that kind of thoughtful review takes time, so it may take us a little while to get back to you (but we will, we promise). In the meantime, NO FOLLOW UP PHONE CALLS OR EMAILS, PLEASE. It’s not that we don’t love hearing from you. It’s just that time spent responding to follow ups could be spent…well…reading your application. Please rest assured that if you received a confirmation from Recruiting Robot, we’ve got your application, and will get back to you really soon. We knew you’d understand. 

If you still have pressing questions in the meantime, please feel free to check out our handy-dandy FAQ page (https://www.jellyvision.com/about-us/recruiting-process) ! 
 

Thanks for your interest in Jellyvision!