Staff Software Engineer

OpenSesame's mission is to help develop the world's most productive and admired workforces. We do this by delivering a comprehensive catalog of elearning courses from the world's top publishers. We add value to customers through their entire learning journey.

While it appears to most people that we just sell training courses (over 20,000 of them), what we really offer is the opportunity for companies to upgrade the skills of each of their employees.

We are at a pivotal time in our growth as we diversify the ways we drive revenue. We've expanded our product offering dramatically, and have a growing network of partners that is developing into a vibrant channel. Our customer base has high satisfaction ratings and there is room to grow our retention even more.

www.opensesame.com/about.

About the Job

We are seeking a Staff Engineer with experience in Extreme Programming (XP) practices—such as test-driven development, continuous deployment, and evolutionary design—who will improve the skills of engineers across the organization. The ideal candidate will act as a hands-on player-coach who leads by example to teach and mentor the engineers they work with. They will come up to speed quickly in an unfamiliar codebase, identify challenges, and coach teams in addressing them.

“Help engineering teams achieve greatness.”

Performance Objectives:

In your first 90 days, you will be ramping up and working to understand the needs and opportunities of the engineers on your team. You will develop a plan in collaboration with management and begin executing that plan.

People:

• Form rapport with team members (including Product and Design) and engineering leaders.
• Understand your team’s process and how people work together.
• Understand engineers’ needs and frustrations.
• Pair and mob with team members to develop their skills as part of their normal work.
• Advise engineering managers on how to take advantage of team members’ strengths and how to address their weaknesses.
• Coordinate efforts with Staff and Principal Engineer peers, managers, and VP Eng.

Product:

• Understand how to use your team’s products.
• Understand how your team’s work fits into the big picture.
• Understand your team’s code, design, architecture, and tech stack.
• Coach team members in collectively owning their work.
• Coach team members in working incrementally.

Process:

• Collaborate with senior team members to introduce test-driven development, pairing, and teaming/mobbing.
• Coach team members in improving build processes to achieve zero-friction local development and continuous integration.
• Coach team members in creating fast, reliable tests based on James Shore’s “Testing Without Mocks” pattern language.
• Coach team members in incrementally refactoring their code.

Within 6 months, your team will be well on its way to fluency in XP practices. You will have established yourself as a trusted expert on your team. You will have made connections with engineers across the organization.

People:

• Teach senior members of the team to act as player-coaches themselves.
• Collaborate with engineering managers to develop team members’ career opportunities.
• Work as part of the Staff and Principal Engineer team to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities across all teams.
• Form relationships with engineers across the organization.

Product:

• Develop team members’ ability to collectively own their work without your active involvement.
• Develop team members’ ability to work incrementally without your active involvement.

Process:

• Develop team members’ ability to apply XP practices such as TDD, continuous integration, and refactoring without your active involvement.
• Develop team members’ ability to continuously improve their build and integration processes without your active involvement.
• Coach team members in applying evolutionary design.
• Work with engineering leaders to identify and begin applying solutions to large-scale design challenges.

By the end of your first year, you will have established yourself as a trusted expert across the organization. You will be working as part of a team of Staff and Principal engineers to improve the skills of engineers organization-wide.

• Join any team and come up to speed quickly.
• Move between teams on a regular cadence, working with other Staff and Principal engineers to identify and address cross-team opportunities.
• Advise Engineering VP and management team on systemic opportunities for improving team skills and processes.
• Work with peers and team members to incrementally retire legacy technologies and simplify architecture.

Tech Stack

We currently use the following technologies, with a preference for TypeScript, Node, React, and Terraform:

• TypeScript / Node.js / React
• PHP / Drupal
• C# / .NET / Angular
• Python
• Go
• Terraform
• Docker
• AWS

Compensation: The base pay for this position depends on experience and generally ranges between $200,000.00 to $220,000.00. At OpenSesame, we offer a comprehensive benefits package to employees upon hire, including professional development, ISOs, health insurance, 401(k) matching, and paid time off.

We carefully consider a wide range of compensation factors, relying on market data to determine compensation and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience. We prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals.

Location: This position can be based anywhere in the US. We operate as a remote-first company, and invest in all-company meetings several times a year.

Performance Driven: We're looking for self-starters with a track record of delivering excellent results, but we're highly selective about who we hire. We don't focus on typical job requirements, instead, we're interested in specific examples from your past experiences. All positions can be based anywhere in the US, and require up to 15 days of travel per year, with senior management and leadership teams requiring up to 35 days.

Equal Employment Opportunity: OpenSesame is an Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer that values and welcomes diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of various legally protected characteristics, including criminal history, and strive to provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. We prioritize safety and security and may use your information accordingly, and you can contact us for assistance or accommodations during the job application process. For more information on our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives, click here.

Pay Transparency: At OpenSesame, we prioritize pay transparency, fairness, and equity to create a positive and inclusive work environment, regularly reviewing our compensation practices to align with our values and goals. We provide competitive and fair compensation to our employees based on their skills, experience, and performance.