Backend Engineer

📍 Location: Remote

ReadMe is looking for a strong Backend Engineer who enjoys working in a collaborative team environment. Our teams are full of curious, creative, and committed people who love what they’re building. If that sounds like you, you’ll be right at home at ReadMe!

We’ve got some exciting projects on our roadmap. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of the things you might be involved in:

• Bi-Directional Sync: We’re building the ability to sync to and from Git. Whether pushing code from their Git repos or making changes in our WYSIWYG editor – customers make changes from either and everything stays updated. The backend team is implementing a git-backed source of truth "DB" for our docs repos. 

• Branching: This feature allows multiple users at the same company to work on changes to the docs at the same time. Individual admins can work on their discrete parts, which can then be reviewed and merged into a single push.

• AI Search: Our chatbot, lovingly called Owlbot AI, allows developers to ask questions about a product and instantly receive an answer within their ReadMe hubs.

We’re a small team of humans (and one owl) working together to do big things, and we’re growing fast! That’s where you come in. Since we’re a startup, you’ll make a big impact on ReadMe both in the daily responsibilities of your role and beyond.

🦉 What we do

ReadMe helps more than 5,000 leading startups and tech companies build beautiful, personalized, and interactive developer hubs. If you’ve ever visited the developer docs for Webflow, Notion, or Nvidia, you’ve used ReadMe!

We love what we do because it’s so much more than just documentation. We’re providing tools for teams to build a better developer experience and make their products and APIs easier to use. We’ve got great support from our investors at Accel who led our Series A, and our interview process reflects the open, caring, and whimsical culture we want to maintain as we scale.

✅ What you’ll do here

• Own major feature development. We give our engineers a broad range to figure out how features should be built. 

• Guide architectural planning decisions and liaise with product and design to determine what is technically feasible.

• Implement coding best practices. We want a code base that everyone is happy to work in and makes things faster for other developers.

• Creative problem solving. Help us figure out how to prioritize issues, push through bottlenecks, and cut the right corners to get things shipped.

• Support other engineers’ growth on the team by knowledge sharing, pair programming, and mentoring.

💙 You’ll love this job if you are...

• Proficient in JavaScript/TypeScript and knowledgeable about Git.

• Product-focused: Building a better documentation and developer experience platform for all is something that inherently excites you.

• Not a perfectionist: You take risks, learn from your mistakes, and succeed beautifully every so often.

• Excited to take ownership: We believe the way to learn is to take things on and own them. You’re even welcome to take on passion projects and be the change you seek to drive change.

• Collaborative: Your code reviews and pull requests are detailed, you’re always happy to share knowledge, and you love a good pairing session.

🌱 How you’ll grow within one month

• Get to know the team:

  • Join a variety of programming sessions with engineers across the team.

  • Meet your onboarding buddy who will shepherd you through the first few months.

• Sink your teeth into a substantial project: 

  • We hire folks who we trust to do great work, and they’re given the freedom to hit the ground running.

  • Within their first few months, we’ve had Engineering team members redesign aspects of our metrics API, compose extendable components for our UI library, and remedy significant performance issues.

🪴 Within three months, you’ll...

• Get to know the broader team via: 

  • Donuts 🍩; you’ll get paired randomly with teammates across ReadMe, just to get to know who they are beyond work!

  • Offsite retreats (recent locations include Cape Cod, Honolulu, and Tahoe).

• Get to know the product roadmap and development cycle:

  • We set the roadmap and decide what to prioritize and ship as a team. 

  • You’ll learn how the company operates, our business model, and how the engineering team fits into our plans as a company.

🌳 Within six months, you’ll... 

• Share knowledge and mentor peers:

  • We intentionally hire for different skill sets and passions; we believe that everyone has their brand of genius to share!

• Own a part of the product you’re interested in:

  • Where you spend your time on the projects on our roadmap is flexible based on what you’re interested in and where your career goals lie.

• Have a portfolio of awesome things that you’ve shipped throughout the year:

  • We’re constantly iterating and shipping new things out, so be prepared to have a large impact on the product.

🛣️ What’s the hiring process like?

1. We can’t wait to read your resume and (hopefully personality-filled) cover letter! Let us know what excites you about full-stack engineering, and help us get to know you better!

2. If we think we might be a good fit for you, we’ll set up a 1-hour phone chat with Moses, a Back End Engineer on the team! He’ll tell you more about the role, and get a chance to hear about your experiences.

3. Next will be a second 30-minute phone interview with Laura, our VP of Engineering, where we’ll dive a bit more into your background.

4. We’ll then do a technical assessment with a couple of ReadMe engineers.

5. Finally, we’ll invite you to an "onsite" interview conducted over Zoom! These usually take 3.5 to 5 hours including an hour break in between. We are able to be flexible with the schedule and split it up over two days if that works best for you! We start with a 15-minute get-to-know-you with the people you’ll be interviewing with, and then have you talk with people one-on-one later on.

6. We’ll let you know how things went within a week! If it still seems like a good fit all around, we’ll extend you an offer! If not, we will update you to let you know so you aren’t left hanging.

✨ Our benefits include…

• Unlimited PTO with a three-week minimum. 🏝

• Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for you, and your dependents. 🩺

• A One Medical membership. 🧑‍⚕️

• A wellness stipend for therapy of up to $350 per month for up to 6 months. 😌

• A wellness stipend of up to $150 per month. 🏋️

• One-to-one donation matching of up to $1,000 per year. 💸

• Twelve weeks of paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child. 🐣

• Work from home office stipend of $500. 🖥️

• Three offsite retreats per year to get together with coworkers and plan for the quarter ahead. ✈️

• Take a look at our handbook for more information on our benefits! 📘

At ReadMe, we’re committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive workplace. We welcome people of all backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and perspectives. We are an equal opportunity employer and a pleasant and supportive place to work. We’d love to have you come join us here!