Backend Engineer, Wattpad

Payment and Ads Platforms

$110-130k

PHP
Docker
Kubernetes
Go
Terraform
Ansible
Mid and Senior level
Remote in Canada, US
Toronto

More information about location

Wattpad

Platform for sharing original writing

Open for applications

Wattpad

Platform for sharing original writing

1001+ employees

B2CPublishingContentEntertainmentSaaSCommunity

Open for applications

$110-130k

PHP
Docker
Kubernetes
Go
Terraform
Ansible
Mid and Senior level
Remote in Canada, US
Toronto

More information about location

1001+ employees

B2CPublishingContentEntertainmentSaaSCommunity

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

  • 3+ years of experience in a prior software development role
  • You are skilled in Go
  • You know PHP or are willing to work with it
  • You enjoy building and maintaining complex back-end systems that operate 24/7 at high scale
  • 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)
  • You are comfortable in both static and dynamic languages and don’t mind switching between them
  • You love learning and applying your knowledge in novel ways
  • Nothing makes you happier than a hard problem solved well (with “just enough” documentation)

Desirable

  • You have integration experience with 3rd party payment systems like Stripe, Square or equivalent services
  • You’ve worked with Ads Platform tools or APIs like Kevel or Google Adsense for Platform (AFP)
  • You have a knowledge of Docker
  • You’ve used container orchestration tools like Kubernetes or ECS
  • You have exposure to Infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform & Ansible

What the job involves

  • On the Payment and Ads Platforms team, you’ll build and maintain scalable, extensible, secure and observable payment services that power our paywalls and subscription offerings
  • In the Ads domain, you’ll be working to consolidate ads logic as a backend platform that provides a single source of truth to our AN, iOS and web clients
  • The code you work on will have a direct impact on Wattpad’s users and bottom line
  • As part of the team, you’ll share ownership of our success and the direction of payment services that support our 35M+ monthly engaged users
  • Designing, building, and maintaining functionality on a large scale distributed system serving millions of people per day
  • Building new product features in Go and PHP
  • Improving reliability and performance of core components and existing systems
  • Configuring and maintaining the infrastructure that runs those systems
  • Writing unit and service tests for all your code
  • Researching and implementing new technology to solve tomorrow’s scaling issues

Our take

Content is king and Wattpad has managed to turn 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.

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Freddie

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks

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 values

  • UserObsessed- We make every decision by stepping into our users’ shoes
  • Inclusive - We help everyone belong
  • Trailblazer - We push ourselves on how we think and how we act
  • BuildItForward - We’re always building a foundation for tomorrow
  • PlayToWin - We’re driven to lead the pack
  • Resourceful -We make the most of every minute and every dollar
  • TeamWork - We do what’s best for the greater good

Company HQ

St. Lawrence, Toronto, ON

Leadership

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.

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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