Senior Backend Engineer, Tumblr

Job Description

​​Tumblr launched in 2007 with the belief that people need a place to say what they want, be who they want, and connect over their interests. We continue to build Tumblr as a platform for free expression, individuality, and human connection. 

We’re looking for talented engineers worldwide to join Tumblr’s Backend Engineering team, building features and maintaining the platform that is used by millions every day. 

What have we worked on recently?

• Communities are new, dedicated spaces to connect people with shared interests.
• Halloween BOOps were a seasonal play on Boops from April Fools’ Day.
• Tumblr Premium is our monthly subscription for an ad-free dash, increased posting and liking limits, early access to experimental features, and every month one free Blaze and a free item in TumblrMart.
• To view more of our recent work, check out our Changes blog.

How do we work?

• We’re kind to each other and our users. We strive to build a positive, supportive, and inclusive culture of cohesive teams focused on delivering value to our customers.
• As a global and distributed workforce, we enjoy a unique way of working built around our creed. 
• We value autonomy, and trust our team members to make meaningful decisions.
• We offer flexible work arrangements, allowing our team members to work when they feel best.
• We work and live the open-source way. We’re cool with open-sourcing everything except passwords, or secret keys.
• We ship often, deploying many times daily with the help of peer code review, continuous integration, and our global workforce in over 70 countries.
• We welcome collaboration, and you can be involved in any discussion across our many communication channels.
• We preserve Tumblr’s unique culture, encouraging creativity, authenticity, and individuality with everything we do.

Enough about us, let‘s talk more about you. The Tumblr Backend Engineer position might be a good fit if you:

• Have production experience with several programming languages. We mostly use PHP on Tumblr’s backend. You should either be familiar with PHP already or the idea of using PHP on a daily basis should not be a blocker for you.
• Have experience working on a large-scale system, making it faster, more scalable, and more fault-tolerant.
• Know about systems architecture.
• Are highly collaborative, and love participating in code reviews and discussions about architecture or design.
• Are passionate about and experienced in software development; in particular, advanced PHP knowledge is a plus.
• Are knowledgeable about design patterns and testability; having experience with testing frameworks, performance testing, and unit testing is very welcome.
• Are thoughtful about product design, with good user experience instincts.
• Are open and able to travel 3-4 weeks per year to meet up with your teammates in person. 
• Ability to clearly communicate in both long and short form with the entire team in blog posts, pull requests, and slack messages.

Extra credit:

• Familiarity with C, C++, JavaScript/TypeScript, Go, Python, Ruby, Scala, and/or Rust.
• WordPress programming experience.
• Open source contributions or contributions to programs designed to help underrepresented people enter the tech field.
• Experience working on accessibility.
• Data analysis experience, and understanding of how analytics can help with product decisions.
• Knowledge of tooling and build systems.

Speaking of interests and skills, here are some areas in which you can grow and have further impact in the future at the company:

• Leadership—we offer a variety of leadership options to those who have interest, including becoming a team lead or a technical lead of a new project.
• Learning and development—we have a generous personal development budget, and encourage you to grow your skills through courses, books, and conferences.
• Architecture—we encourage engineers to develop expertise in the systems they work with, guide their evolution, and mentor other developers working on them.
• Engineering effectiveness—we believe in helping other developers become more effective through tools, practices, cross-team collaborations, and process improvements.

These are exciting times at Tumblr and Automattic, and you’ll have a unique opportunity to shape the future of our products. Join us! We look forward to hearing from you.

What to Expect:

We know applying to jobs can be stressful and we want to ease the stress by giving clear expectations upfront about our process. We’ve outlined everything you need to know here including all of the steps in the process as well as how we approach hiring. 

Please note that we are paying extra attention to your answers to the questions in the application form. They are a significant part of the hiring process, and we will review them just like we would review any other step of the hiring process. We’re always iterating so if you happen to join us in the process, please feel free to offer feedback on what else we can include there!

Salary range: $70,000-$170,000 USD. Please note that salary ranges are global, regardless of location, and we pay in local currency.

We are searching for high-caliber candidates with the skills and qualities to have a net positive for Automattic. Pay will reflect the potential contribution and the impact you can bring, which may, in some cases, go beyond the range stated for the right candidate.

This isn’t your typical work-from-home job—we are a fully-remote company with an open vacation policy. Read more about our compensation philosophy. To see a full list of benefits by country, consult our Benefits Page. And check out these links to learn more about How We Hire and What We Expect from Ourselves. #LI-Remote