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Staff Software Engineer - Backend
Laurel
Software Engineering
New York, NY, USA · San Francisco, CA, USA · Los Angeles, CA, USA
Posted on Saturday, September 7, 2024
Laurel’s Mission to Return Time:
We’re a team that is connected by time. Life has taught us its true value and finite nature. We value every minute and are on a mission to return time. And we live and breathe that mission in everything we do — from how we build our product that saves our customers time to how we operate as a company.
Come work with a team that’s intelligent yet humble, visionary yet gets things done. A team that’s only getting started at cracking a problem that affects every person who uses a screen to work.
Come build a company that will stand the test of time as we look to understand time itself.
We all waste a staggering amount of time at work (~33%) because we have no idea where we are spending it. Worse yet, we continue to operate in a factory model that simply does not apply to creative work. Our big bet is that by understanding time, we’ll be able to move away from it as a unit of value. In the future knowledge economy (lawyers, accountants, engineers), contributions will be assessed on value added, not the underlying time spent adding it.
Ambitious mission to say the least, so where are we starting? We have created a new market category called Time Automation that automates the timekeeping process for professionals and allows us to collect time data at scale. Before Laurel, professionals had to manually record every six minutes of their day into antiquated timekeeping software. Not anymore. We are moving away from a world in which humans tell a machine what they did at work, to our version of the world in which the machine tells the human.
We are looking for individuals who share our passion of returning time. Come join us on our journey as we spend time solving time. It will be a long road but if we’re even half right, we’ll change the way work is measured and performed forever.
Job Description
(est. reading time: 5 mins)
Our mission is about returning time. To return yours, we’ve gone ahead and provided the answers to the questions we think you should be asking us. For more details, read on.
About Laurel & Roadmap:
Laurel is the first company to apply AI to tracking time.
Company Roadmap:
Phase 1 (today):
- Applying AI to automate timesheets for professional services. Value is: (1) more money for the firm and (2) less time for the user
Phase 2 (2025):
- Aggregating time data and moving pro serv industries from selling time → selling outcomes (rewiring the incentive model for 20% of Global GDP)
Phase 3: (2030):
- Tie outcomes back to the input of time across all digital industries–and leverage our work data set to automate work that does not create leverage
Traction:
Series B ($55M raised from top-tier investors). Rebuilt platform E2E post Series B raise which launched in Feb 2023. In just 15 months, we’ve gone from $0 → ~$7M ARR on the new platform (including significant ARR from upsells because of the new platform). Customer quote: “Laurel is the product I’ve been hoping for since I started practicing.”
About the Role
We are looking for an experienced Staff Software Engineer to join our team. You’ll have a direct impact on engineering practices throughout our backend stack and are expected to raise the bar for the engineers around you. As a Software Engineer, you will work on a charter to solve high level business challenges with a collaborative, cross functional team. Your curiosity will serve you well in asking the right questions to understand the customer problems we're solving. Your ability to learn quickly, write, and design quality software will serve you well in delivering value to our customers incrementally. Ownership comes from the ground up, we empower our teams to understand and make an impact on the business.
Why Now?
AI will fundamentally change the nature of work, and how we think about work. As a Software Engineer at Laurel, you’ll have the capacity to understand and impact the experiences of our customers, standing at the forefront of the mission to return time to our customers.
Laurel is at a pivot point. We've built a product that people like, and have a direction that people love, but it hasn't been done yet.
Core Duties
- Architect and Develop: Design, build, and maintain efficient, reusable, and extremely reliable code across our backend components of our applications.
- Collaborate: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including product managers, designers, and other engineers, to gather requirements, define technical specifications and measures of success, and deliver high-quality software solutions.
- Optimize: Identify bottlenecks and bugs, and devise solutions to mitigate and address these issues. Continuously improve performance, scalability, and security of our applications.
- Mentor: Provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior developers, fostering a culture of learning and growth within the team.
- Innovate: Stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and technologies, and proactively suggest improvements and new features to enhance our products.
- Test and Deploy: Implement automated testing and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to ensure robust and reliable software releases.
- Work with Product and Customer Success teams to flesh out business requirements and designs for those requirements and systems
- Participate in an on call rotation.
Connect: We want you not just to build but to engage with our product and our users. Your input and opinion will be highly valuable and it is expected that you have many thoughts on how things should be done and why.
Teammates
This role will report to our VP of Engineering and work alongside our Engineering team members.
Skills and Experience
- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience: 6+ years of professional experience in software development, with a focus on full stack development. Significant experience with modern web technologies is preferred. Experience working with large amounts of data is a plus.
- Technical Skills:
- We expect you to have deep knowledge and understanding, as well as strongly-held opinions about some of the below technologies (or similar). We want to hear your thoughts on best practices, patterns, code smells, ways to improve performance, etc. What things would you teach our other engineers? What has bitten you in the past? What things help you consistently deliver software that is of the highest quality, and why?
- Backend:
- Required: Strong understanding of Typescript, Node.js, messaging queues (ie. AWS SQS), MongoDB, NestJS
- Nice to have: Experience with Python (Django, FastAPI, or Flask). Familiarity with Airflow and PostgreSQL.
- Backend:
- We expect you to have deep knowledge and understanding, as well as strongly-held opinions about some of the below technologies (or similar). We want to hear your thoughts on best practices, patterns, code smells, ways to improve performance, etc. What things would you teach our other engineers? What has bitten you in the past? What things help you consistently deliver software that is of the highest quality, and why?
- Problem-Solving: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to think critically and creatively. Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple priorities.
- Communication: Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively in a fast-paced, team-oriented environment.
- Customer Mindset: Proven ability to engage with customers and understand their needs.
- Domain Knowledge: Experience in AI is preferred.
Flexibility and Logistics:
- Location: Hybrid in Los Angeles / San Francisco / New York, working Tuesday - Thursday in office. We will hire remote in the US / Canada for extraordinary candidates.
- Compensation: Competitive salary, generous equity, comprehensive medical/dental/vision coverage with covered premiums, 401(k), additional benefits including wellness/commuter benefit stipends. For candidates located in New York and California, the range for this role is $175,000-$225,000 USD. Final compensation amounts will be determined based on several factors including candidate experience, technical qualifications and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed.
- Visa Sponsorship: Unfortunately we are unable to sponsor visas at this time.
What happens if my kid or I are sick on a workday? Take all the time you need! We’ll cover for you. And send you some soup.
Not sure if you meet the qualifications? Keep reading…
At Laurel, we welcome diverse perspectives and people who think rigorously and aren't afraid to challenge the status quo. If you’re interested in joining us on our mission to return time, then we encourage you to apply, even if you don’t perfectly match every single bullet on the job description. We promise to review your application. Laurel is an equal opportunity employer, and we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment, free from discrimination or harassment, for all employees.