Senior Backend Software Engineer, Circle
Infra
$130-140k
+ Equity and bonus potential
Community platform for creators & brands
Job no longer available
Community platform for creators & brands
201-500 employees
Job no longer available
$130-140k
+ Equity and bonus potential
201-500 employees
Company mission
To help organizations bring together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat, events, and memberships — all in one place, all under their own brand.
Role
Who you are
- Strong alignment with our values (find our values on our career page if you haven’t read up on them yet)
- You are proficient in English (spoken, written, and reading) at a CEFR Level C2 / ILR Level 5
- Deep expertise with Ruby on Rails, with an emphasis on infrastructure and architectural improvements
- Solid experience working with MySQL and/or Postgres
- A strong track record of improving performance, scalability, and system reliability
- 5+ years of experience in a back-end engineering role, ideally focused on infrastructure or platform systems
Desirable
- You’ve helped scale an early-stage product to 1M+ monthly active users
- Experience with front-end technologies (especially React)
- You’ve built internal tooling or SDKs for use across engineering teams
- Experience reducing infrastructure or tooling costs through in-house solutions
What the job involves
- You'll help shape internal tooling, reduce third-party dependencies, and ensure our infrastructure is ready for the next stage of growth
- Maintain and modernize our Rails stack, including dependency upgrades, performance optimization and security enhancement
- Build internal tools, SDKs, and libraries to improve developer experience and infrastructure scalability
- Partner with your front-end counter-parts and SREs to support observability, performance, and reliability initiatives
- Identify opportunities to build in-house systems that reduce reliance on costly third-party services
- Contribute to architectural decisions that improve the performance, security and cost-efficiency of our platform
Our take
The influencer market is nearly twice the size it was globally back in 2019. With more creators flocking to the digital space to grow and engage with their followers, cracks in the existing platforms’ relationship to their content creators are showing. Circle is one of a number of content creator platforms rising up to meet the demand for change.
Its community platform allows users to create and engage with their own groups, for a small subscription fee established by the creators. This direct ownership and community engagement is proving something of a silver bullet for companies looking to tempt creators off of incumbent giants like TikTok and Youtube. Companies like Substack, Patreon, and Pico have all seen remarkable success with this strategy, suggesting that Circle’s foray into establishing something similar for a creator hub is playing to an eager market.
The company's ultimate aim is to pull together all creator tools like newsletter publishing, merch sales, and podcasting under a single Circle umbrella. This is ambitious - but Circle is growing alongside the creator economy at an impressive pace. For instance, in 2026, it launched Eclipse, its largest product update so far, which transforms its community platform into a five-pronged ecosystem for businesses. With the inclusion of an AI assistant, creator marketplace and a messaging and communication hub among its facets, the release of Eclipse indicates that Circle is keeping pace with the demand of the creator economy.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Dec 2021
$24.7m
SERIES A
Feb 2021
$4m
SEED
Total funding: $30.2m
Company benefits
- Medical coverage & reimbursements: Depending on your location, you will either be offered a full medical plan for you & your family, or offered generous monthly reimbursements to help with medical costs
- Equity package: We offer an equity package to every person that works at Circle
- Paid time off: We offer 35-days of PTO per year based on your hire date. Up to 50% can carry over to the next year
- Work from home, or anywhere: All of our employees are 100% remote!
- Learning & development stipend: Take advantage of up to $500 USD per year to help you level up your professional skills
- Home office stipend: New joiners receive $2,150 USD on their first paycheck to help outfit their home office, with a refresh every three years
- Company offsites: Twice a year, the Circle team gets together for a fully paid company retreat in incredible places around the world!
- Annual bonus: Roles that don't already receive variable income or commission are eligible to earn up to an extra 5% of their annual earnings as a yearly bonus based on overall company performance
- U.S.-benchmarked compensation, no matter where you are in the world
- Paid sabbatical: After 3 years of employment, team members earn a paid 1-month sabbatical to decompress and unwind
- Parental leave for parents expanding their family, or just starting one
- 401k with employer match: U.S. employees can partake in a 401k plan that has a 5% match, dollar-for-dollar 🇺🇸
Company HQ
Midtown Manhattan, New York, NY
Leadership
Sid Yadav
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously founded Rev2.org, and wrote for VentureBeat, before moving on to work on design and front-end engineering both freelance and with Wizpert. Prior to Circle, worked in various senior product roles at Teachable.
Andrew Guttormsen
(Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer)Previously an equities trader and analyst with SMB Capital, who moved on to found visitor engagement games design company, Exploreous. Subsequently held various senior roles in growth and marketing at Teachable.
Rudy Santino
(Co-Founder & Head of Design)Has 20+ years experience as a designer, and spent time at Teachable + Gumroad working closely with dozens of top creators.
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