Engineering Director, Backend
Remote
Engineering /
Full-time /
Raya's vision is to be the best recommendation engine for how to spend quality time in the real world. For the last seven years, we've focused on creating a premium experience for daters to find others with whom to spend quality time together. For the next decade, our product will evolve to focus on providing magical moments in the real world, regardless if you're single, in a relationship, or have a family.
Our iOS only app is the gem of our product suite and we're looking for a passionate leader to steward the development, work on key projects, and mentor our strong team. Our iOS application combines Raya Member Suggestions - a people recommendation system, Raya Directory - a powerful natural language member directory, Raya Maps - which showcases where members are and trending place recommendations in real time, Raya Feed - which updates you on what your connections are doing globally, Raya Scenes - which shows a real time lens on the world through what our members are doing, Raya Messages - which includes rich messaging functionality and video chat, and the Raya Profile - which highlights the cultural DNA and showcases Raya's unique perspective on identity.
Raya's Engineering Director, Backend should have have 8+ years of Javascript experience at a technology company with a strong engineering culture that has a considerable number of active users. Raya uses Node.js so being a veteran expert in the codebase is a requirement. You will join at the early stages of the company and will have all the excitement and accountability that comes from joining a fast growing, well funded startup.
Raya’s team includes the 3rd designer of Facebook, one of the first 10 engineers at Venmo, the PM who launched the like button, the engineer who founded Flipagram and a lot of other amazing people. We prioritize learning and teamwork and love giving people the opportunity to champion big challenges and grow into better versions of themselves. A great candidate is excited to support the team's initiatives in messaging, connecting, and local based maps initiatives. They are diligent and design products with strong user empathy and deeply thoughtful product strategy. Finally, They believe in Raya’s vision, which is to enrich lives by fostering relationships through quality, in person interactions.
We offer comprehensive medical and dental coverage, $50 a day grubhub budget, equity based employment, a great culture, learning opportunities, unlimited vacation, 12 weeks paid parental leave, and we pay all employees $1,000 a year to go somewhere in the world that they’ve never been because of our values of human connection, empathy, and curiosity. You can see more at the bottom of our careers page: https://careers.rayatheapp.com/
What You'll Do
- Manage and mentor a growing team
- Contribute to our codebase as well as take on large architecture progress
- Create and refine high performance mobile apps that push the limits of mobile technology
- Build fun, new products that are very stable and run smoothly
- Conceptualize, develop, and launch new features
- Carefully evaluate the technical tradeoffs of every decision
- Work with the Design team to hone in on the best UI and infrastructure practices
- Carry out code reviews to guarantee code quality
Knowledge, Skills, Abilities
- The ability to clearly outline and visualize and communicate best practices
- Strong architectural intuition and ability to motivate and inspire a team
- A team player who can collaborate and build trust with engineers, designers, data science and other cross-functional teammates
- Ability to independently initiate and drive projects to completion with minimal guidance
- Communicate concisely and influence outcomes
- Strong CS fundamentals (algorithms and data structures) and problem-solving skills
- Knowledge of software design patterns and iOS best practices
Minimum Qualifications
- 8+ years of Node.js (Javascript) development
- Experience at an organization that ships products to scaled audiences
Preferred Qualifications
- 3+ years mentoring a team of backend developers
- A passion for building and a kindness that makes you a great educator
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