Staff Engineer, Backend
SpotHero is looking for a Staff Engineer Backend to own systems across our engineering department that drive business objectives. You will collaborate with management on vision setting, technology direction, architecture, and best practices. The Staff Engineer will contribute to codebase following set standards and successfully completing stories and have the ability to provide support for any part of the codebase; also able to understand the codebase with minimal direction from others. You will have ownership of code standards, unit and integration testing practices, and technical roadmap. Work with Product Management team to ensure requirements are defined correctly. Ability to successfully architect complex systems and collaborate with more junior engineers to ensure proper implementation of design. You will be an educator who can take the complex and explain it terms that all audiences understand. Your greatest work will be through others, as you help people level up their technical systems.
Who we are: SpotHero is a $118MM-raised Series D company based in Chicago, US whose mobile & web platforms allows users to quickly and easily find off-street parking across North America.
Ranked at #15 for a Consumer Marketplace (The a16z Marketplace 100) SpotHero is a fast-growing market leader disrupting the mobility space. Drivers across North America use the SpotHero mobile app, website, and connected car integrations to reserve convenient, affordable parking. Parking companies (Operators) rely on us to help them reach new customers while optimizing their business through our Business Intelligence Tools. We connect the dots with cutting-edge technology, delivering value to both sides of this exciting, evolving marketplace.
In 2019 we:
- Parked our 30 millionth car
- We hired 97 people, 40 in Engineering alone
- Added more than 1,300 new parking facilities, exceeding 7,000 facilities across North America
- Added 200 new airport parking facilities serving 61 airports, and launched new partnerships with The Parking Spot, Toronto Pearson International Airport, and The South Terminal at Austin Bergstrom International Airport
- Added 300+ new events and venue partners, including the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks; PPG Paints Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins; Fiserv Forum, home of the Milwaukee Bucks; and the American Airlines Arena, home of the Miami Heat
Our Stack is: Monolith using Django/Python, the Frontend is React. We are starting to extract specific domains to Services currently using Java, Kotlin and Go. Our Database is Postgres and Redis for caching. We also use Docker, Kubernetes and Kafka.
What kind of person are you?
- Curious and a hungry learner
- A Problem Solver
- Tenacious
- Ability to collaborate
- You own your work
- You are a technical educator not a technical dictator
What you will be doing:
- Identify, design, develop, test, and release high quality functionality as efficiently as possible.
- You will be an educator, a mentor and coach. People will come to you for advice because you are approachable and you are able to convey your points in a language that they understand.
- Build and maintain tools and services related to product/engineering squad’s goals.
- Work collaboratively with the rest of the team to deliver quality products with a focus on speed, security, and analytics.
- Independently identify areas for improvement and innovation within the squad ecosystem, and lead the charge on making those changes.
- Be a key hands-on contributor to the design and implementation of new products and features through the entire stack.
- Ownership of codebase, maintaining it and ensuring it runs consistently.
- Collaborate with all senior and staff level engineers to explore options and help define architecture and design across the engineering organization.
- Ability to move between squads to devise architecture and assist projects in moving forward.
- Train engineers to work with new architecture.
- Function as a leader within the engineering department, providing mentoring and training to all levels of engineering team members.
- Function as internal expert for technology speciality and educate team on new and changing technologies.
- Be an industry thought leader, participating in public speaking events and meetups to showcase SpotHero as a leader in technology.
- Secure and safeguard data to preserve its integrity, reliability, and availability and ensure appropriate access levels are maintained.
- Write relevant and clearly understood tests.
- Write clear documentation for areas of complexity.
- Ensure there is observability into your work for both Engineering and Product.
The following experience is relevant to us:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent with 12+ years experience as an engineer across multiple environments.
- Multiple projects that demonstrate prowess in designing, implementing, and operating large scale, high throughput, low latency distributed systems and/or client facing applications.
- Ability to work in all areas of the tech stack, including infrastructure through the application layer to client libraries.
- Demonstrated leadership and mentorship skills.
- Experience with open source contributions to major projects is a plus.
- Presentation & Public Speaking Skills
What we are offering:
- Career game changer – A truly unique experience to work for a fast-growing startup in a role with unlimited potential for growth.
- Excellent benefits – We cover up to 90% of Medical Premiums, 50% of Dental & Vision Premiums, and offer company sponsored Life Insurance.
- Flexible PTO policy, generous parental leave, 401k retirement savings plan + matching, and great work/life balance – We value and support each individual team member.
- Fun perks like snacks, catered lunches, happy hours, wellness programs, and SpotHero swag.
- Annual parking stipend (duh – we're a parking company!).
- The opportunity to collaborate with fun, innovative, and passionate people in a casual, yet highly productive atmosphere.
- A workplace recognized by Time Magazine as one of the Top 50 Most Genius Companies of 2018, ranked on Built In Chicago’s 100 Best Places To Work In Chicago in 2020 & 50 Companies With The Best Benefits In Chicago In 2020 , plus our Diversity & Inclusion initiatives!
PLEASE NOTE:
- This position is ineligible for visa sponsorship. To be considered for this role, you must be legally authorized to work in the US and not require sponsorship for employment now or in the future.