Senior Software Engineer, Automattic
$70-170k
Work from anywhere, and make the web a better place for everyone, everywhere.
Job no longer available
Work from anywhere, and make the web a better place for everyone, everywhere.
1001+ employees
Job no longer available
$70-170k
1001+ employees
Company mission
To democratize publishing and commerce so that anyone with a story can tell it, and anyone with a product can sell it, regardless of income, gender, politics, language, or where they live in the world.
Role
Who you are
- Production experience with one or more programming languages. We mostly use JavaScript/TypeScript and PHP; you should either be familiar with them already or the idea of using them every day should not be a blocker for you
- Experience working with a large-scale system to make it faster, more scalable, and more fault-tolerant
- Highly collaborative, with a strong enthusiasm for participating in code reviews and discussions about architecture, technical design, and solving customer problems
- Knowledgeable about design patterns and testability; experience testing frameworks, performance testing, and unit testing is very welcome
- Customer-focused mindset, with good instincts on product design and user experience
Desirable
- Experience with enterprise-scale products
- Building things using: WordPress, Gutenberg / Block Editor, APIs, React, decoupled architectures, Python (Django)
- Real-world experience with security: incident response, threat modeling, working on bug bounty programs, hardening systems, etc
- Skilled in working with data: visualizing data, analyzing data, building data pipelines, Applied AI/ML, etc
- Open source contributions or contributions to programs designed to help underrepresented people enter the tech field
What the job involves
- We’re looking for talented engineers to help us push the boundaries of what’s possible with WordPress and the web
- You’ll play an essential role in designing, building, and evolving products that impact the lives of development and content teams working at some of the most high-profile, high-traffic sites on the web. Our recent projects have explored areas like:
- Data and analytics: building a metrics warehouse; detecting anomalies on application health data; integrating with Google Search Console
- Security: building an in-house authentication and MFA system to meet complex compliance requirements
- Content collaboration: publishing workflows; real-time multiplayer editing
- Composable experiences: blending local and remote data in the WordPress Block Editor
- AI: improving content workflows using LLMs
- If you love solving interesting problems in a highly collaborative environment, come join us!
- Discovery work and writing technical design proposals and documentation
- Building, debugging, and testing products—including writing automated tests and doing manual testing
- Participating in release planning and roll-outs
- Measuring impact and iterating
- Work across the stack, from the user experience layer to the backend services layer and the underlying orchestration system
- Collaborate with product managers, designers, and other stakeholders
- Implement monitoring, alerting, and automation to improve the observability, reliability, and security of our products
- Perform on-call duties on a rotating basis as part of a globally distributed team, including troubleshooting failed actions and fixing underlying issues in services
Our take
At a time when companies like Facebook, Apple, and Google were turning into monopolistic market leaders, Automattic was building its open-source infrastructure on a distributed, volunteer-run workforce. Since its launch in 2005, the company has continued to evolve and expand as it built its new web empire.
Automattic is the company behind WordPress (which powers roughly 42% of all websites), Jetpack, Tumblr, Simplenote, WooCommerce (which is believed to run more than a quarter of all online storefronts), Longreads, Crowdsignal, Atavist, Day One, and more.
The company’s “Five for the Future” initiative allocates 5% of its resources to further the development of WordPress, and many other companies that utilize Automattic’s communities follow some version of the initiative, contributing back code and time to support the community. Still spinning out new projects such as an anti-spam filter and online identity safeguards, the unicorn company is a powerhouse that is well set to continue its path to long-lasting growth.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
Few candidates hear
back within 2 weeks
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Feb 2021
$288m
LATE VC
Sep 2019
$300m
SERIES D
Total funding: $778.6m
Company benefits
- Professional Development · “I will never stop learning” is part of our company creed. From leadership development to improving your writing skills, we have a comprehensive list of programs and resources available to everyone, and we’re also happy to pay for any hardware, software, books, or conferences that promote continued learning.
- Career Coaching · Coaching sessions to help you set and achieve professional goals are available for all Automatticians – team members and team leads. This benefit resets each calendar year.
- Time off · Our open vacation policy (no set number of days per year) is designed to help you to be at your best! There is no minimum or maximum, but we encourage you to take at least 25 days of time off per year.
- Home Office · We offer home office setup and coworking allowances. Working from a coffee shop? You can use your coworking allowance for the requisite latte!
- Wellness · We offer mental wellness benefits including an Employee Assistance Program, a monthly subscription to a mindfulness app (including Calm, Headspace, Ten Percent Happier, Waking up, and Insight timer), and virtual ergonomic consultations and access to a wealth of virtual ergonomic tips, stretch videos and yoga exercises.
- Parental leave · Open parental leave (including maternity, paternity, LGBTQ+, and adoption for all parents). If you’ve been with Automattic for 12 months, your leave up to 6 months is fully paid.
- Anniversary Awards · Paid three-month sabbatical encouraged every five years and other cool anniversary surprises.
- Automattic Stock · Check out Buying and selling Automattic Stock!
- Life Insurance · Company-sponsored life insurance.
- Compensation · We attract talent around the world and pay global salary ranges. We prioritize internal equity and review your pay every 12-18 months.
- Sabbatical · Working at Automattic provides numerous opportunities to learn new skills, grow in your career, and have a significant and positive impact on the lives of millions. It also offers the rare (and juicy!) benefit of a paid, three-month sabbatical every five years.
Company values
- We are passionate advocates for our customers and the open web community.
- We build our business sustainably, through passionate and loyal customers.
- We never stop learning.
- We don’t just work on things that are assigned to us.
- We know there’s no such thing as a status quo.
- We never pass up the opportunity to help out a colleague.
- We are motivated by impact, and we know that open source is one of the most powerful ideas of our generation.
- We are in a marathon, not a sprint. No matter how far away the goal may be, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day.
- Given time, there is no problem that’s insurmountable.
- We communicate as much as possible, because it’s the oxygen of a distributed company.
Company HQ
Bernal Heights, San Francisco, CA
Articles
Leadership
Matt Mullenweg
(CEO)Former President at Automattic. Current Lead Developer at WordPress, and Board Member at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and ecoAmerica. Former Board Member at Grist, and GitLab Inc. Previous Senior Product Manager at CNET Networks.
People progressing
Design Director/UX Ninja Jetpack. Strategic UX/Product Design leader with over 19 years of experience in Product Design, User Experience & User Research methodologies & Product Management.
Head of Communications. Writer, editor, communicator, producer. Their first WordPress site was a self-hosted tech blog called effinnerds.com that she built in 2008. Speaks English, Khmer, and Spanish.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Automattic
- We are committed to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: https://automattic.com/diversity-and-inclusion/ A diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace comprises people of many identities and abilities. It invites community members to share their opinions and ideas, which it then uses to improve the company. It celebrates employees’ various cultures and heritages; it plans team- and company-wide meetups that are accessible to all; it invites people to effect change within the company; it provides an array of tools and methods to help its employees become experts in their positions; and it encourages individualized successes, which benefit the company at large. Automattic is a Most Loved Company (https://mostlovedworkplace.com/companies/automattic-inc/) and Disability Confident Committed (https://disabilityconfident.campaign.gov.uk/).
Share this job
View 25 more jobs at Automattic