Take on complex programming challenges working on a web-based programming language (work from home)

GuidedTrack is hiring a Full-stack Software Engineer

We're looking for a talented engineer to join our small team and help us build and grow our low-code platform, powered by a bespoke, in-browser programming language. 

Role title

Full-stack Software Engineer

Local or remote?

Fully Remote (the company - Spark Wave - is based in the U.S. - but our team is entirely remote)

Part-time or full-time?

This is a full-time position.

The org and why we think it is impactful

Our mission is to empower an order of magnitude more people to build tools, studies, and software to improve their work, their lives, and the lives of others. More specifically, our aim is to:

• Make complex survey-based research 10x faster
• Tip the incentive structure of research in favor of quality by making it cheaper and faster to conduct high-quality research
• Reduce the cost of creating tools, training programs, and apps to make it feasible for domain experts to build them on their own, allowing them to distribute their knowledge at scale
• Eliminate drudgery by allowing more people to automate away tedious, repeatable work

The platform we're creating has already been used to build digital tools, tests, apps, and training programs aiming to help problems like depression, anxiety, sleep issues, decision-making, financial literacy, charity selection, cognitive biases, political polarization, habit formation, and numerous other topics.

We believe a lot of problems could be solved by leveraging information technology, but end up ignored because the cost of developing software makes solutions built the standard way economically non-viable. We aim to change the economics of software by significantly decreasing its cost. We've made some inroads into solving certain kinds of problems, but we'd like to make GuidedTrack more powerful to cover even more application areas.

Can I try out your product?

Yes, you can try it out here, if you like: https://www.guidedtrack.com

Our tech stack

We use Ruby on Rails on our back-end. The GuidedTrack compiler is also written in Ruby. The GuidedTrack interpreter is mostly CoffeeScript with a good amount of pure JavaScript. Our code editor is a React component.

We use both PostgreSQL and CouchDB to store data, depending on what kind of data we need to store.

Experience with the technologies above is not a requirement to apply – you can learn on the job.

Writing clean code

GuidedTrack is not a simple application – its complexity is far beyond what anyone on our team has seen in other projects. We've developed—and are continually expanding—a completely new programming language, with its own compiler, interpreter, and editor. For our small team to have a chance at handling all of this, we feel we have to obsess over the quality of our code.

We make heavy use of unit testing, code reviews, and end-to-end tests to punch above our weight and build a great product despite the essential complexity of the problems we're solving. If clear, simple, readable, concise, and elegant code makes you happy, this work is great for you

What you'll do

As a member of our small team, you'll have an important role in contributing to all parts of GuidedTrack software development. Here are some example tasks our engineers have tackled recently:

• Allowing users to drag-and-drop images into the editor to automatically upload them to a CDN and use them through a command in our language (*image).
• Adding support for JSON parsing
• Setting up off-site backups of our PostgreSQL database
• Helping a customer use the ChatGPT API to automatically extract structured data from free-form text

Why will this role make a difference on our team?

We have ambitious goals and impactful problems to solve with a very small team. In order to meet the challenges we've set ourselves, we're focusing on figuring out what the crucial things to build are and executing on them quickly, so that our customers can be successful.

Adding a talented engineer like yourself to our team will dramatically increase our capacity to execute. You'll contribute from day one and we'll appreciate you for it.

Why we think you'll like working with us

In this job, you get to work at home with highly flexible hours that you set (our entire team is remote). However, you will be able to get guidance on your work whenever you need it, and we'll have weekly goal setting meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page. You'll also be doing some remote pair programming to help you learn the code base and develop an understanding of our coding style. We also have a company culture that is focused on using reason and evidence, and where everyone is expected to treat everyone else with kindness and respect.

Why you might not like working with us

We're fully distributed and spend 100% of our time working remotely. Some people appreciate being around their team physically, but that's unfortunately not something we can provide.

We can't afford to do much specialization. We try to accommodate people's preferences when we assign work, but that's not always possible given the size of our team. For example, even if you really like front-end work, you'll have to contribute to the back-end and likely do some infrastructure work also.

The way we work requires a high degree of self-organization and self-motivation. We all work from different locations and set our own hours, which is a double-edged sword. While it provides a lot of freedom, it also forces people on the team to either deliver without guidance or explicitly ask for help, which isn't easy for everyone.

We can't afford to pay US market rates for salaries. We do (1) talk to everyone about their needs and accommodate them whenever possible, and (2) focus on growing the company so that we can make our salaries more competitive, but you're unlikely to get FAANG money working with us.

Mentorship

Every feature or bug fix you'll contribute will go through code review. You'll also have pairing sessions scheduled at whatever cadence you prefer with whoever you prefer on the team. You'll have direct access to the project lead and to the CEO of the company.

Should you apply?

You should apply if all of the following apply to you:

• you agree our work can have a positive impact (or you're excited by it)
• you like the idea of trying to take on programming challenges that are often too difficult for the average programmer
• you're able to learn new technologies quickly

We especially hope to hear from you if any of the following apply (though none of these are mandatory): 

• experience with or a strong interest in programming languages or compilers
• Ruby and/or RoR experience
• experience with or a strong interest in how to achieve high scalability in web apps
• experience with or a strong interest in making user interfaces that surprise and delight users

Will you waste our time by applying?

No. If you are excited about the role, we hope you'll apply!

Salary

Our starting salary is $26 per hour (USD), with opportunities for raises.

What does the interview process look like?

To apply, fill out our application and assessment here:

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/uhmr3n7/run?linkID=295813825&jobTitle=SoftwareEngineer&postLocation=na&comp=gt&z=QF2F6E5&lc=none

Make sure you have an uninterrupted block of time in which to do the application. It's designed to be done in one sitting, and some parts of it are timed. No need to submit your resume, but if we ask you to do an interview, we'll need a resume at that point to help guide our interview questions. 

Within 1-3 weeks, you'll receive an email with our decision about whether to move on to the next round. The steps that follow are:

• a take-home programming assignment, and if that goes sufficiently well...
• interviews (usually two – with our CEO and our Head of Engineering), and if that goes sufficiently well...
• a paid workday with our team to assess fit

How to prepare for the interview process?

There's no need for special preparation. We don't ask about obscure algorithms or use Google-style whiteboard questions. We'd like you to be yourself, and, if we're a mutual fit, we'd love to work together.

How long between applying, getting an answer, and starting to work?

We aim to make decisions in about 6 weeks, but there might be significant variation. For example, you'll have as much time as you need to work on your take-home assignment.

Insights from a Spark Wave team member

I joined Spark Wave because I wanted the opportunity to make something great. To this day, what I value most about my work is that we're given the resources to work on impactful projects and the freedom to execute . A decade later, I'm proud of all we've accomplished.

~ Lyudmil, Head of Engineering at GuidedTrack (a Spark Wave company)

How to apply

To apply, fill out our application and assessment here:

https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/uhmr3n7/run?linkID=295813825&jobTitle=SoftwareEngineer&postLocation=na&comp=gt&z=QF2F6E5&lc=none

Make sure you have an uninterrupted block of time in which to do the application. It's designed to be done in one sitting, and some parts of it are timed. No need to submit your resumé, but if we ask you to do an interview, we'll need a resumé at that point to help guide our interview questions.