Job details

Backend Engineer, Edge

Job Posted: 8/1/24

Location: North America

Hi there!

At Zapier, our mission is to make work easier and more productive for everyone, and we'd love for you to join us to help make that happen! We’re looking for a Backend Engineer to join Team Edge and help us build internal automation services that power fantastic products. We run at the edge of Zapier’s system boundary, powering both Triggers and Actions by handling both incoming traffic and outgoing requests to our partners. Our services are critical, run at scale, and operate as a foundation to all of Zapier. Come join us on this mission!

About You

You have a solid foundation of experience. You bring over 4 years of experience, with at least 2 of those years dedicated to building distributed, scalable web applications. Your depth of expertise makes you a valuable asset to our engineering team.
You excel in backend development. You have robust expertise in using Python to build web services and are proficient in working with AWS, especially Lambda and other cloud technologies. You have hands-on experience with event-based technologies like Kafka or SQS and are skilled in database performance optimization and query tuning with MySQL. Familiarity with caching solutions such as Memcached or Redis further highlights your technical prowess.
You are proficient in performance monitoring and optimization. You use tools like Grafana, Prometheus, and Datadog for monitoring system performance, identifying bottlenecks, and ensuring optimal operation of our services.
You appreciate the value of DevOps practices. Knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure as code (e.g., using GitLab and Terraform) is a plus, as well as proficiency in implementing and securing authentication and authorization mechanisms (OAuth, JWT, RBAC, and session management).
You value collaboration. You understand that building modern software is a team sport, and you enjoy working as part of a tight-knit team. You’re happy to pitch in and help the team, whether by reviewing code, pairing on a tricky problem, or just thinking about how to solve the challenges we’re facing.
You value exploration and versatility. You are comfortable working in other teams’ codebases to achieve the Edge team’s goals. This will involve embedding yourself in the other team, becoming familiar with their developer workflow, and collaborating with stakeholders on the other team to implement your solutions.
You can balance lots of concerns. Our team manages a wide variety of services catering to a broad spectrum of internal clients. You'll be expected to adeptly balance incoming work to address these services, prioritizing them ruthlessly yet judiciously. Your ability to manage this diversity without being overwhelmed is crucial, ensuring not only that we meet our varied demands but also consistently deliver high-quality, impactful results in our dynamic, fast-paced environment.
You advocate for the user. You have a keen eye for great design, and you’re empathetic to the needs of the end-user. When you notice users struggling to succeed you take it as a personal challenge to understand why and help the team build a better product.
You love learning new things. You love researching new tech and driving forward with the implementation details.

Things You’ll Do

Directly impact how our customers can be more productive by building, supporting, and scaling triggers and actions, the foundational building blocks of Zapier.
Work with AWS services like SQS, Redis, S3, Lambda and MSK to build scalable solutions that process millions of requests. Use Terraform to maintain and build our infrastructure.
Refactor or improve existing code as languages, frameworks, or techniques evolve. Help the team pick appropriate tools to solve new problems as they arise.
Work closely with our product, design, and frontend teams to create amazing and intuitive experiences that make it effortless to connect different apps together.
Provide feedback on tools, processes, and documentation in place to help us become a better, more effective organization.
Work with your colleagues to develop new skills, through code review, discussions and mentoring. Help us all become better engineers and humans.
Ship to hundreds of thousands of users every day while having lots of autonomy in terms of code and feature ownership.
Participate in on-call rotations to ensure the reliability and availability of our systems, providing timely and effective support when issues arise.

You’ll also have the opportunity to specialize in a variety of areas of the Zapier codebase. Focusing on a specialization will not limit your growth at Zapier as we believe that each engineer brings a unique perspective and can contribute in all areas. We encourage collaboration and will frequently have engineers contribute across teams to assist with projects.

How to Apply

At Zapier, we believe that diverse perspectives and experiences make us better, which is why we have a non-standard application process designed to promote inclusion and equity. We're looking for the best fit for each of our roles, regardless of the type of education or companies in your background, so we encourage you to apply even if your skills and experiences don’t exactly match the job description. All we ask is that you answer a few in-depth questions in our application that would typically be asked at the start of an interview process. This helps speed things up by letting us get to know you and your skillset a bit better right out of the gate. Please be sure to answer each question; the resume and CV fields are optional.

After you apply, you are going to hear back from us—even if we don’t see an immediate fit with our team. In fact, throughout the process, we strive to never go more than seven days without letting you know the status of your application. We know we’ll make mistakes from time to time, so if you ever have questions about where you stand or about the process, just ask your recruiter!

Zapier is an equal-opportunity employer and we're excited to work with talented and empathetic people of all identities. Zapier does not discriminate based on someone's identity in any aspect of hiring or employment as required by law and in line with our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, Belonging and Equity. Our code of conduct provides a beacon for the kind of company we strive to be, and we celebrate our differences because those differences are what allow us to make a product that serves a global user base. Zapier will consider all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, consistent with applicable laws.

Zapier is committed to inclusion. As part of this commitment, Zapier welcomes applications from individuals with disabilities and will work to provide reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodations are needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact jobs@zapier.com.

Application Deadline:

The anticipated application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later, or if the position is filled.

Even though we’re an all-remote company, we still need to be thoughtful about where we have Zapiens working. Check out this resource for a list of countries where we currently cannot have Zapiens permanently working.

Zapier Glassdoor Company Review

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