Senior Software Engineer (Python)

Sitting at the intersection of social networking and gaming, we empower creativity and connection in a digital world. Our mission is to build deep, rich virtual worlds where everyone belongs.

To build creative worlds where you belong.

You will be working on the engineering team, reporting to Jimmy Xu. (Please note that if you reach out to Jimmy, they may not reply due to the volume of messages received.)

As a Senior Software Engineer, your main responsibility will be working on backend services for Highrise. You will be building and maintaining the underlying systems and infrastructure that support the application, which has over 2 million monthly active users. You will work on a variety of projects for the 2D (and soon also 3D) virtual environment. From a technical standpoint, the projects may include authentication systems, messaging and notifications, search and discovery mechanisms, payment processing, content moderation, analytics, and more.

The purpose of this role is to develop and maintain a strong and efficient infrastructure that supports the functionality and performance of Highrise.

Key Indicators of Success

• You quickly establish yourself as the go-to person and technical leader for the most challenging questions about the backend system.
• After completing the onboarding process, you are able to take on any project within the backend team.
• You share knowledge with other members of the engineering team and proactively drive the technical growth of the team, all within the first 6 months.
• You accurately estimate a timeframe to complete projects based on the team's structure and deliver on those estimates.
• You have a vision of the path we can take to 10x our backend systems. You’re also able to lead on the execution of that vision.
• You establish a reputation for high level of technical excellence amongst the engineering team.

What You Will Do

• You will solve a variety of unique backend technical challenges for Highrise.
• You will be responsible for building complex and reliable high-scale systems.
• You will be a technical bar-raiser for high code quality, architectural designs, and long-term approaches.
• You will mentor and develop fellow engineers on the team.
• You will design systems and services that are scalable, efficient, and resilient.

What You Can Expect in the First 30 Days

• You will deliver at least one significant feature as well as the first few major pull requests.
• You will start collaborating with other team members on ongoing projects and will get up to speed on the work that has already been done.
• You will receive regular feedback on your work and will have the opportunity to provide feedback to others.

Who You Are

• You are able to take a nebulous project, architect a solution, split it up into tasks, and ultimately get it done quickly and efficiently.
• You know how to earn the respect and trust of other engineers within the company as a strong technical leader and mentor for others.
• You have a reputation for launching quality, turbulence-free code and projects.
• You have experience in taking leadership of a project or a team.
• You have excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• You are self-driven and require little direction to do your best work.
• You excel in start-up and fast-paced environments, in which you may wear many hats.

Must Have’s

• You have very good Python programming skills with at least 8 years of backend software experience.
• You’ve built and maintained a product with at least 100,000 daily active users
• You have strong knowledge of distributed systems. You have knowledge of AWS, Kubernetes, and Docker, or other similar infrastructure platforms and tools.
• You have experience with designing systems and monitoring metrics.
• You have experience architecting, designing, and implementing a wide array of software products.

Nice to Have’s

• You are a technical visionary, and you can chart a path to 10x our current scale.
• You have already worked on consumer social or gaming products.
• You have made significant contributions to open-source projects.
• You are passionate about gaming.

Life as a Software Engineer

• Engineering team values: Be Responsible. Focus on impact. Be agile. Open to change.
• Regular meetings: monthly retrospective, weekly Sprint Planning with backlog grooming, daily stand-ups, and bi-weekly 1:1.
• Working hours: Each person has the freedom to set their own schedule. We focus on result-based work, but everyone should be available for scheduled meetings. Meetings for the entire engineering team usually take place in the afternoons in Europe and in the mornings in North America.
• Engineering Team Size: 18 full-time team members including (6 engineers in the Unity team, 2 Web engineers, 3 Server engineers, 1 Data engineer, and 4 QAs).
• Locations: The current team members are based in the USA, Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, the Netherlands, Brazil and Bosnia.

Benefits

• Meaningful equity in an extremely fast-growing startup.
• Equipment allowance so you can choose whatever you need to work comfortably.
• Company-sponsored medical and dental insurance.
• Unlimited Vacation policy. We know how important taking time off is and we encourage it. Our team takes about 20 days off on average every year.
• Education stipend. We deeply believe in learning and self-improvement. We've set aside a budget for every employee to learn additional skills and grow.
• Monthly Fitness Allowance to stay active and take care of your physical health.

Perks

• Working with a diverse team with people in over 15 countries.
• You have a voice! We love hearing ideas and want to embrace you for them.
• Extremely low turnover environment. Over 20% of our team has been here for over 3 years!
• Coworking space stipend in whichever location you want.
• Monthly team building budget to get to know your team.
• Team retreats to meet face-to-face and deepen connection.
• Bring your pet to work everyday! We love seeing your furry loved ones.

We are a global team of nearly 100 people right now and rapidly growing. We feel a sense of ownership over our work and take great pride in what we do. We are not afraid to make, and most importantly, admit our mistakes — that allows us to show up authentically and build relationships of trust across the board. We are the scrappy kind, so we try to do more with less, and we love that! If you were to ask our team to describe our culture, they would probably say we are a passionate group of peeps trying to impact the next revolution of the internet.

Dream big, then make it real.

Be an owner, make a difference.

Build with humility.

Fast is better than slow.

Keep it scrappy.

Always be learning.