Senior Backend Software Engineer
WordPress doesn’t try to keep its users inside walled gardens, a rare thing in a world that is dangerously moving away from the open web. Instead, WordPress gives them the freedom to build a business website, an online store, or a personal blog – the way they like it. Big sites or small, using the community-run open source project or Automattic’s WordPress.com, vanilla or customized with hundreds of plugins, WordPress users always get to own and control their data, their expression, and their freedom.
What have we worked on recently?
- Gutenberg is a new block-level editor with clean abstractions for users, too, not just developers.
- Jetpack is a plugin that brings cloud-scale features to self-hosted sites and our latest addition is Rewind, think git for WordPress sites.
- WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform on the web.
- To view more of our recent work, check out our longer product list on Automattic.com.
We are hiring heavily for teams across all of Automattic. Please highlight if you have experience or interests in the following areas: e-commerce, payments, shipping, CMS, website builders, big data, social media applications, DevOps, marketing/advertising, marketplaces, and partner integrations.
We are looking for engineers who have production experience with several programming languages. We fully embrace using PHP and JavaScript (ReactJS specifically) and are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible at scale with both. Interest and excitement in using these languages on a daily basis is essential to success in this role.
Enough about us, let‘s talk more about you. As a Senior Backend Software Engineer you:
- Are passionate about and experienced in backend software development; in particular, advanced PHP knowledge is a plus or interest in building your skills in this area.
- Have experience working on large-scale systems. Making them faster, more scalable, and fault-tolerant.
- Have demonstrated experience and interest in systems architecture.
- Are highly collaborative and love participating in code reviews and discussions about architecture, and/or design.
- Are knowledgeable about design patterns and testability; having experience with testing frameworks, performance and unit testing is very welcome.
Extra credit:
- WordPress programming experience.
- Experience with modern JavaScript.
- Open source contributions.
- Contributions to programs designed to help underrepresented people enter the tech field.
- Experience collecting and using data to help inform product decisions.
- Good user experience instincts and product design opinions.
Speaking of interests and skills, here are some areas in which you can grow and have further impact in the future at the company:
- Leadership – we offer a variety of leadership options to those who have interest, including becoming a team lead and managing releases.
- Learning and development – we have a generous personal development budget and encourage you to grow your skills through courses, books and conferences.
- Architecture – we encourage developers to develop expertise in the systems they work with, guide their evolution and mentor other developers working on them.
- Engineering effectiveness – we believe in helping other developers become more effective through tools, practices, cross-team collaborations, and process improvements.
How do we work?
- We’re kind to each other and our users – we strive to build a positive, supportive, and inclusive culture of cohesive teams focused on delivering value to our customers.
- We work as a global and distributed workforce resulting in a unique way of working built around our creed.
- We offer flexible work arrangements allowing our team members to work when they feel best.
- We open-source! We’re cool with open-sourcing everything except passwords, or secret keys.
- We ship often, deploying many times daily with the help of peer code review, continuous integration, and our global workforce in over 70 countries.
- We welcome collaboration, and you can be involved in any discussion across our many communication channels.
These are exciting times at Automattic and you’ll have a unique opportunity to shape the future of our products. Join us! We look forward to hearing from you.
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion at Automattic
We’re improving diversity in the tech industry. At Automattic, we want people to love their work and show respect and empathy to all. We welcome differences and strive to increase participation from traditionally underrepresented groups. Our DEI committee involves Automatticians across the company and drives grassroots change. For example, this group has helped facilitate private online spaces for affiliated Automatticians to gather and helps run a monthly DEI People Lab series for further learning. DEI is a priority at Automattic, though our dedication influences far more than just Automatticians: We make our products freely available and translate our products into and offer customer support in numerous languages. We require unconscious bias training for our hiring teams and ensure our products are accessible across different bandwidths and devices. Learn more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion and our Employee Resource Groups.
Curious who works in engineering at Automattic? Meet our Code Wranglers – Brandon, Jeremy, Mark, Jennifer, Roy and Kat!
What to Expect
We know applying to jobs can be stressful and we want to ease the stress by giving clear expectations upfront about our process. We’ve outlined everything you need to know here including all of the steps in the process as well as how we approach hiring. We’re always iterating so if you happen to join us in the process, please feel free to offer feedback on what else we can include there!
