Senior Software Engineer, Column

$180k

Plus a meaningful equity stake

TypeScript

Node.js

Sentry

Firebase

Datadog

Senior and Expert level

Remote from Canada, US

More information about location

Collaborative public notice platform

Job no longer available

Collaborative public notice platform

21-100 employees

B2BPublishingContentDigital MediaSaaSSocial Impact

Job no longer available

$180k

Plus a meaningful equity stake

TypeScript

Node.js

Sentry

Firebase

Datadog

Senior and Expert level

Remote from Canada, US

More information about location

21-100 employees

B2BPublishingContentDigital MediaSaaSSocial Impact

Company mission

Column's mission is to improve the utility of public interest information and support the distribution of that information by journalists that serve their communities.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

You're looking for a remote-first role working with wildly talented people who care about their impact on local communities
You have experience managing serverless architectures (preferably Firebase)
You have experience leading projects focused on DevOps, CI/CD, observability, and monitoring (DataDog / Sentry / CircleCI power user
You have 2+ years of writing production react code as a senior SWE at a company with less than 100 software engineers
You are opinionated about NoSQL data model patterns, Node / Typescript standards, and testing strategies
You are passionate about expanding areas of expertise, learning new ways to do things, and understanding why things are the way they are; you love to get to the root of the problem, no matter where the problem leads. Resourceful and creative when executing solutions
You enjoy mentorship (incl. providing regular feedback, code reviewing, and career advice)
You have a strong desire to exemplify our operating principles — be worthy of trust, do work that matters, never stop learning, intentionally build community, and tell a better story
You have grit and really want to work with us — if you do not resemble our ideal candidate, tell us why you'd still be a great fit for this role in an optional cover letter

What the job involves

Column is looking to hire a Senior Software Engineer to lead high-impact technical projects, mentor junior engineers and up-level our engineering practices
They will be responsible for executing against our product roadmap, identifying & addressing large-scale architectural issues, and strengthening the quality of our engineering organization as a whole
Report directly to Kevin McGillivray
First Week: Learn about Column's mission and vision and seek to understand our existing product. You will have set initial 1:1s with teammates who will inform your understanding of our market, customers, and current projects. We're a small company that's growing quickly, so interpersonal rapport matters
First Month: Participate in your first project cycle and make your first commits to our codebase
First Six Months: Take on the role of tech lead for one of our services and act as the lead engineer in our project cycles. Start participating in our on-call rotation and contribute to incident response efforts
First Year: Take on the role of a leader within our engineering team, mentoring your colleagues both formally via processes like code review and knowledge-sharing sessions and informally as a respected member of the team

Our take

One of the lesser known ways that newspapers generate money is through public notices i.e. legally required government updates on things like municipal budgets, foreclosures, and public meetings. As advertising revenue dwindles, public notices have become critical, particularly for local papers, but the communication lines between publishers and governments have long been fraught with inefficiency.

In a bid to solve this issue, Column offers a collaborative platform for officials to draft, order, and pay for public notices, and for reporters to easily access them. Though only founded in 2020, the startup has made rapid progress, and works with hundreds of papers across the US, including The Washington Post.

Founder Jake Seaton, whose family has run Kansas-based local newspaper The Manhattan Mercury for five generations, was able to tap into his relatives’ network of news media leaders to help launch the company and grow quickly.

The fact that many of this network, including Nancy Gibbs, the faculty director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media, and David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance, work in an advisory capacity – and in Gibb’s case at board level – suggests that Column could grow into a company of great importance over the next few years.

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

Glassdoor (4.7)

Company

Funding (2 rounds)

Aug 2022

$30m

SERIES A

Sep 2020

$3.3m

SEED

Total funding: $33.3m

Company benefits

Remote-first company with team members on multiple continents
Equity
Unlimited PTO
Wellness stipend, gym memberships, mental health therapy, student loan repayment, and more
Health, Dental & Vision Insurance
Productivity stipend to invest in an office set-up

Company HQ

Wynwood Art District, Miami, FL

Leadership

Jake Seaton

(CEO)

Forbes 30 under 30. Former Google Software Engineer. Was on the founding team at Quorum Analytics, a public affairs software platform.

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