Backend Engineer, Wattpad
Wattpad
$110-130k
More information about location
Platform for sharing original writing
Job no longer available
Platform for sharing original writing
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$110-130k
More information about location
1001+ employees
Company mission
Wattpad's mission is to create a world where everyone's story can be heard, and anyone can belong.
Role
Who you are
- If you have a passion for high-impact engineering, this is the place to be
- 3+ years of experience in a prior SaaS engineering role
- You’ve worked with cloud platforms as a service (AWS, GCP, etc.) for at least 3 years
- You are skilled in Go or PHP
- You know how to use Docker
- You’re an excellent communicator
- You love learning and applying your knowledge in novel ways
- You enjoy working with a team but have no problem working independently
- You write clean, readable code that communicates its intents and methods clearly to future engineers (but you can also deal with code that isn’t and doesn’t)
- Nothing makes you happier than a hard problem solved well (and has “just the right” amount of documentation)
Desirable
- You have worked with AWS
- You have experience with monitoring distributed systems at scale
- You have exposure to Infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform & Ansible
- You have a deep knowledge of Docker, Kubernetes or ECS
- You have worked with REST APIs and/or gRPC
- You have worked with Kafka
- You have worked with CI systems such as TravisCI
- You have or are currently mentoring other engineers
What the job involves
- You will be joining the Core Platforms team
- You'll get the opportunity to create and work on the backend platforms that power Wattpad
- You will be asked to create a robust set of centralized systems that engineers can use to implement secure, performant, consistent code quickly to increase the productivity and happiness of Wattpad engineers
- These systems will need reliable, resilient, secure, easy to operate, and cost-efficient
- You will also help drive initiatives to extend how our platform will work for the future; enabling our 30M+ users to create and enjoy new stories
- Designing, building, and maintaining functionality on a large-scale distributed system serving millions of people per day
- Building new features, tools and services in PHP and Go
- Improving reliability and performance of core components and existing systems
- Writing tests for all your work
- Defining best practices and providing mentorship and support to other engineers
- Researching and implementing new technology to solve tomorrow’s scaling issues
- Advocating for the adoption of best practices, systems and tools across the engineering org
Application process
- Wattpad is conducting all interviews in a distributed manner using applicable third party software where needed and using visual interface tools such as Google Hangouts and Zoom
Our take
Content is king and Wattpad has managed to create a platform that aggregates the most loved original writing content in the world, turning the traditional publishing industry on its head.
Where authors used to submit drafts to dozens of publishing houses in the hope of getting some eyeballs on their work, Wattpad opened up the process to millions of young authors by letting them easily submit their work, and fostering a community around their software that offers feedback and help.
The e-reading platform is now looking to double down on its strategy of taking its user-generated fiction and turning it into successful intellectual property upon which original series and movies can be based. However a significant challenge for Wattpad is in producing original, marketable content from its platform given the popularity of fanfiction, stories which are based on existing intellectual property.
Another challenge for Wattpad is the current economic conditions which have affected much of the tech sector and are not sparing digital publishing. Having shelved bold plans for the future it also laid off 15% of its workforce in March 2023. Having realigned for its current business needs however, it is now well placed to weather the current market downturn.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
3% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 4 rounds)
Jan 2018
$51m
LATE VC
Apr 2014
$46m
SERIES C
Total funding: $117.8m
Company benefits
- Full health benefits
- Career development & Mentorship opportunities
- RRSP matching
- Generous parental Leave top-up
- Flexible hours
- Regular hackathons
- Healthy snacks & drinks
- Your choice of hardware
- Monthly work-from-home allowance
- Beautiful offices in Toronto and Halifax
- Easy access to transit
Company HQ
St. Lawrence, Toronto, ON
Leadership
Allen lau
(CEO)Lau attended University of Toronto where he earned his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering followed by a master's in the same subject. Thereafter he briefly worked as a software engineer for Brightspark before founding his first notable company, Tira Wireless, a mobile development startup. He is also the co-founder of Two Small Fish Ventures, a fund that invests in Toronto and Waterloo-based early-stage internet companies with strong network effects.
Ivan Yuen
(CSO)Prior to Wattpad, Ivan co-founded FeedM8 and served as the company’s CTO. Before that he was one of the first employees of Tira Wireless, where he helped grow the technical team and developed new and emerging wireless technologies. Ivan graduated from the University of Waterloo with a degree in Computer Engineering and also earned an MBA from the Rotman School of Management.
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