Backend Engineer - API
We have a simple mission at Calm: To make the world a happier and healthier place.
The heart of Calm is digital but the brand is expanding offline into a variety of products and services that bring more peace, clarity and perspective into people’s busy lives. We are building Calm into the Nike of the Mind. We believe Calm can become one of the most valuable and meaningful brands in the world.
Over 50 Million people have downloaded the app and we are growing by 85,000 new downloads a day. The company is profitable and headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
Calm was co-founded by Alex Tew (Million Dollar Homepage) and Michael Acton Smith (Mind Candy, Moshi Monsters, Firebox).
Calm is a small team of engineers solving large scale challenges. The Backend team is the heart of the Calm infrastructure. It powers everything from content display to subscriptions. We are constantly developing new features and experiences that help our users get the most out of Calm. This role is incredibly important.
You’ll design and build API endpoints and services to support our mobile and web applications. You’ll be working closely with our frontend application developers to bring Calm to millions of people all around the world.
Come join a small, fast moving team that is tackling some of the most fun engineering problems out there.
What you'll do:
- Design, develop, and operate new features and components that will take our product to the next level
- Focus on the expansion and stability of our core API
- Develop models and business logic
- Improve the Calm experience by driving enhancements that address network latency and performance.
- Utilize the vast data set in Calm to bring new personalized features to our users
- Collaborate with other engineers, product owners, and designers to identify and solve challenging problems
- Provide technical leadership and experience to a growing team of engineers
- Lead by example with well designed, factored, and tested code
Things that make you a stand out candidate
- Have strong CS fundamentals
- 4+ years experience in production deployed environments
- Deep interest and experience in designing, building elegant APIs for mobile and web apps
- Experience building services for systems at scale
- We do not hold strong ties to any specific coding language. We believe we should choose the right tool for the right job. Understanding the fundamentals is imperative to making informed decisions in new environments. Our current backend languages include: golang, nodejs, python, bash, php.
- Our current frontend clients’ languages include: swift, kotlin, java, objective c, react.
- Desire to tackle complex analytical and algorithmic challenges
- Strong network understanding
- Implementation ownership
- We are a small team that seamlessly meshes through mutual respect and trust. Test your code and make conscious design decisions
- Flexibility - Calm is a fast moving start-up. We regularly try new things to see what our users love. Balancing implementation speed and perfect code is key to our business success
- Humility - We A/B test a vast majority of new ideas. Being wrong is inevitable. By designing features in a way to more deeply understand our customers we are able to make better informed decisions in the future
- Mission - We’re here to make the world happier and healthier with more Calm. We hope you are inspired by what we are accomplishing!
Benefits
- Competitive salary and equity
- Take what you need PTO
- We pay your medical, dental, & vision insurance premiums
- 401K
- Commuter benefits
- Life insurance and disability benefits
- Apple equipment
- Fun, energetic work environment, and daily perks - snacks, drinks, catered lunch twice a week
- Opportunity to work with a product focused on making the world happier and healthier
And much more!