The Role
We're looking for a senior engineer experienced with the full web stack—someone who has owned production apps for many years, and loves solving user-facing product problems. As a senior engineer at Mystery.org you’ll work on all areas of the app, from front-end changes that millions of children will see, to scaling issues, to internal tools that automate our business. Engineers have a seat at the table for all decisions in the company. You’ll work alongside a strong engineering team that obsesses over customer feedback and is constantly iterating to improve based on what we hear. We release multiple updates to our website every day and implement new features days after conceiving of them. Our current stack is postgres-heroku-rails.
You will report to Josiah Brann, our Director of Engineering. We are headquartered in San Francisco and this position is open to both local and US-based, remote candidates.
About You
- You love working in and have deep experience with the full web stack. From cross-browser CSS fixes to database tuning, you’re comfortable up and down the stack.
- You know that having the right tests is more impactful than just having tests.
- You have experience starting projects from the ground up, jumping into existing projects, and scaling up to millions of users.
- You’re part engineer &product thinker. We know the best ideas come from a deep understanding of both domains.
- You have a passion for education and staying curious.
Day-to-day
On any given day, some of the things you will be working on as a Senior Engineer:
- Releasing: We deliver features and improvements to our codebase multiple times a day, running our CI/CD pipeline through CircleCI.
- Collaborating: You’re confident working with cross-functional groups and varying levels of technical experience. You know that the best ideas come from balancing multiple viewpoints, and working together with other engineers helps everyone learn and grow.
- Testing: You know that a strong CI/CD pipeline requires a stronger suite of tests. You focus on testing the optimal paths rather than writing tests that might not be useful. There’s a new bug in production? The fix always comes with an associated test.
- Architecting: We trust our senior engineers not only to execute on ideas, but also to work with our Product Team and internal stakeholders to architect the best solutions. You know that the why is often just as important as the how.
- Learning: You know that the skills you have today are a tool to continue learning, and a growth mindset is important to continued improvement. You hope to be a better engineer, teammate, and person every single day.
- Related Tech: Just a couple of the things we use daily: Ruby on Rails, Postgres, Heroku, CircleCI, New Relic, Sidekiq, Sendgrid, GitHub, and many more!
Package &Perks
If you’re looking for the basics:
- $4M in funding from Y Combinator, Learn Capital, Reach Capital
Revenue growing quickly (>$10M) and we’re already profitable - Competitive salary
- Equity in a high-growth company
- 401K, health care, vacation
- Customers who love us
…but the real perks of working at Mystery.org are the quality of the people on your team and the problem we’re solving. Those things are what bring us to work every day.
About Mystery.org
At Mystery.org, we believe it’s important that children stay curious as they grow up. We will ensure that the next generation sees it’s an amazing world we live in, full of possibility and wonder — and that they learn how to figure things out for themselves.
We’re doing this by building the missing internet for children. Our first tool was created for children to use in the classroom. We have teachers signed up from 89% of elementary schools in the U.S. and now 50% of schools use us every month. We’ve created one of the fastest-growing learning resources and a brand that is loved by children. Now, we’re developing a new version of our product for parents and children to use at home.
For three years running, our sales have doubled. We’ve exceeded $10M in annual recurring revenue and are growing quickly.
When we talk about “the missing internet for children,” we intend to give children an experience that grownups take for granted: the ability to instantly explore anything they wonder about. Most adults don't realize how inaccessible knowledge is to children. For their first ten years of life, any time a child wonders something all they can do is ask grownups: parents at home and teachers at school. There are 1 billion children in the world today, and we’re making it possible for them to explore their questions, wherever they are. Over the past decade, grownups have been given this superpower but children have been left behind. So we're collecting every question children ask and creating video explanations for all of them. We think this will be the most important learning tool ever created.
Meet The Team
On your first day at Mystery.org, you’ll meet a group of 50 people who are passionate about learning and who each love their respective crafts. Our co-founder, Doug Peltz, began by assembling a team of the best explainers in the world from the Exploratorium, Klutz, Stanford, the Field Museum, and leading private schools. Our CEO, Keith Schacht, followed this by building a team of strong product engineers and designers. Keith was previously at Facebook as the product manager for News Feed and Messenger.
This focus on people extends to every area of the company. We’re building the team that we want to work with.
Inspired?
If you are inspired by our mission and passionate about helping teachers succeed and transforming science education for kids, we’d like to hear from you!