Principal Software Engineer

We are dscout. At our core, we are People Nerds. We empower our customers to meet the people who matter to them in the moments that matter most. Customer-obsessed companies and agencies like Salesforce, Sonos, Groupon, and Best Buy use dscout to build better products and services because of people like you. We are building a smart and driven team, and we would love for you to join us.

our platform
Our web platform is built on React.js frontend and Elixir backend tied together by GraphQL APIs. We make heavy use of PostgreSQL for our storage needs and we host our platform on a mixture of Heroku and AWS. Another core part of our offering are two mobile apps - iOS and Android - written in Swift and Kotlin respectively and a Chrome Extension in React. We also employ WebRTC and WebSockets for live video streaming and use Python for NLP and media processing.

Over ten years and 57K commits later, we've maintained a tidy code base that is well documented and battle tested by tens of thousands of users.

And a few more tech details and challenges we deal with on our backend specifically:

- Our platform relies on a mature GraphQL API built on Absinthe
- We are a video heavy platform with complex video processing and property based testing for verification (we combine multiple video streams, including screen-shares, and we do picture-in-picture generation)
- dscout Live, our real-time video interview product, utilizes WebRTC via Twilio and supports multiple participants
- Research survey design involves skip and knockout logic and we verify question flow using graph traversal approach
- Exporting gigabytes of video data can be a challenge and we use streaming archive generation for that
- We use collaborative workspaces through Phoenix channels and presence
- We make heavy use of background job workflows to compose media processing, for ML models, payments, data ingestion, etc and we rely on Oban for the heavy lifting


you are

 
We’re looking for Principal software engineers with Elixir experience to help us evolve our platform and our engineering practices. You've worked in product development as an engineer for 10+ years, creating and launching new technologies and products across the full stack. You’ve previously held Principal, Staff, or equivalent scope engineering roles (titles aren’t important) where you were responsible for evolving the platform along both product and technical (performance/scalability, security/compliance, devops, etc) axis.


 
You have experience leading technical org improvements and mentoring other devs (collaboration and empathy is a cornerstone of our culture). You feel at home setting your own direction and working with minimal input while staying aligned to the overall org goals.


 
Our team is growing but we’re not a big company. We work collaboratively, move fast (we deploy to production many times a day), and we value technical quality. We’d be looking to you to lead our continued growth and the evolution of our tech. If this sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you!


what you will do

 
Spend 30-50% of your time supporting your product team and self-directing towards leadership tasks, platform improvements, etc for the other 50-70%
 
Drive continuous improvement across the department and on your team
 
Help evolve the org and mentor engineers
 
Be a polyglot engineer ready and willing to work across the stack
 
Lead the long-term evolution for platform scalability, security, and maintainability
 
Apply DevOps mindset to improve the Continuous Delivery pipeline and other operational aspects of our SaaS platform
 
Be involved in security and compliance efforts for the organization (we’re about to start on the SOC 2 and HITRUST certification journey)
 
Be an active member of a cross-functional product development team


what you need to have

 
10+ years experience as a software engineer with some experience in a Principal, Staff, or equivalent scope engineering role (titles aren’t important)
 
Experience with Elixir and its ecosystem (at least 3 years)
 
Strong experience in system architecture (application design, databases, etc) and design trade-offs
 
Desire and a proven track record of leading, mentoring, and growing engineers
 
Strong experience leading agile and/or lean software development process improvements
 
Expertise with cloud-based SaaS architectures and evolutionary design
 
Ability to work across the full stack with expertise in backend development and a strong working knowledge of the frontend
 
At home with agile, devops, CI/CD, and data/metrics based decision making
 
Experience collaborating with security/compliance teams
 
Experience with cloud architectures


We do our best to write realistic, accurate job descriptions, but we also recognize that great talent comes in many forms and from many backgrounds. Not sure if you meet all of the above bullets? Please apply anyway!

About dscout

dscout is a team full of passionate research, sales, technical, marketing, design, success, and operations professionals. We are driven by the power of research—how in-context insights from real people can build products and services that are more people-centric. We value learning, sharing, and building. We deeply value being a diverse and inclusive team and company, and we look for team members who align with that belief. We are proud of what dscout is today, and we are excited to build our future with you. 

It doesn't just stop there. When you join the dscout team, you will get:

* A strong and competitive compensation package with a built-in bonus and equity program.
* An incredible and progressive benefits package (for both you and your dependents) to support work/life balance including flexible PTO, 11 company holidays, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, 401k match, and much more.
* An education stipend to support your growth & development and a remote work stipend.
* A company that is open and transparent with our team. You will know what is happening and why it matters.


dscout is an equal opportunity employer that values diversity. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex, gender identity and expression, age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally-recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law.

If you need reasonable accommodations for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at accommodations@dscout.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. We'll do all we can to ensure you're set up for success during our interview process while upholding your privacy, including accommodation requests. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.

When you apply at dscout, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references, as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. For more information about our privacy practices, please visit our Privacy Policy. 

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