Product Engineer (Tech Lead)
Brilliant
Product
San Francisco, CA, USA · Remote · California, USA
Posted on Saturday, April 22, 2023
About Brilliant
Brilliant is a tight-knit team of scientists, educators, engineers, designers, storytellers, and illustrators who are redesigning education at scale.
We believe that math and science are fascinating and beautiful, but that the tools widely used to teach it are dry and ineffective. Brilliant makes learning STEM fun, through problem solving and interactive explorations – from foundational math and science to cutting-edge computer science and professional topics.
Brilliant helps over 12 million students, professionals, and lifelong learners around the world cultivate problem solving skills, build intuition, and master concepts rather than memorize them. To understand more about our approach, see our learning principles.
You can see all open roles and learn more about our team culture on our Careers page.
Application Note
We're always excited to welcome and encourage anyone from non-traditional backgrounds to apply, so please, don't sweat the requirements lists too much! It's important to note that including a cover letter which details your interest in Brilliant and why you feel you'd be a great fit for this position will be required to be considered.
The Role
Product areas at Brilliant are organized into cross-disciplinary pods. As a Tech Lead, you'll work extremely closely with a Product Manager, a Design Lead, and a team of engineers.
Currently, we're hiring a tech lead for our Learning Engines pod. This pod enables Brilliant's unique interactive learning experiences by developing and maintaining the tooling that our content authors use to build powerful, compelling, and effective lessons and interactives.
Interactive education is in its infancy: we've only scratched the surface of what's possible with computer-based pedagogy. Our work helps people across Brilliant teach topics from vector calculus to neural networks in an interactive way. Come build the future of interactive learning with us!
Responsibilities
- Help people around the world to learn more effectively by contributing code across our entire stack.
- Work extremely closely with the Product Manager of the Learning Engines pod. TLs and PMs at Brilliant are in close communication on a daily – if not hourly – basis. Together, they set the pod’s direction and continually adjust priorities based on the latest progress and learnings.
- Ask great questions, facilitate healthy debate, pull the right people into decisions, delegate deep analysis to experts, and recognize when an investigation is "good enough". You'll serve as the nexus of technical decision making for the Learning Engines pod -- and you won't make all of the decisions yourself.
- Be mindful of the “big picture” from both a technical perspective and a business one, keeping your pod on track in terms of “building the right thing” and “building the thing right”.
- Maintain a culture of excellence within your pod, setting high standards for candor and mutual accountability, and striking a careful balance between velocity and quality.
- Define and advocate for initiatives that will improve developer experience for Brilliant's engineers and user experience for Brilliant's users.
- Frequently ask: How does this impact our learners?
Who are you?
- You have at least 5 years of professional experience in software engineering.
- You got into programming because you’re motivated by solving users’ problems.
- You have a track record of technical, strategic, and interpersonal excellence. You transition seamlessly from strategic planning to project coordination to hands-on implementation — all within a day's work.
- You’re excited to build strong relationships with cross-functional partners. You’re constantly striving to be a better communicator. You believe that how we all work together will be the difference between building a great product and building a product that fundamentally changes how the world learns.
- You enjoy solving technical challenges in a way simple enough for an intern to understand and build upon. You avoid introducing complex, novel, or "clever" solutions. You write code for humans, not for computers.
- You're excited to collaborate closely with talented engineers, product managers, and designers. You enjoy solving problems as a team, pair-programming, and sharing knowledge. You want to be a mentor and to be mentored.
- You have deep experience with a few languages and frameworks, and you know what you do and do not like about them. You believe in using the right tool for the job — even when it’s an unfamiliar one, and especially when it's a boring one. You stay up-to-date with the latest technologies and patterns, recognizing the differences between a game-changer and a passing fad.
- You have a favorite product and can articulate your perspective on what makes using it delightful. You often think about how the products you use could be better.
Salary
- We use a systematic compensation framework. Salary scales are set each year for each job vertical, based on market data and company budget. Independently, managers level folks on their team, and those levels are mapped formulaically to our compensation scales.
- Additionally, we always make First and Best Offers — there is no negotiation (for new hires nor our existing teammates). This ensures that people are paid based on their expected contribution, rather than their negotiation skills.
- In San Francisco, NYC, and similar markets, the range for this role across the most likely levels for relevant candidates is $210-250k.
- We do apply a location-based adjustment in less competitive markets, typically 5-10%. Feel free to ask us about your particular location!
Our Engineering Team
Our engineers are extraordinary programmers without big egos. We love to share knowledge and support each other. We work together as an interdependent team to accomplish a common goal, and we know how to get things done. We maintain high personal standards, and possess an ongoing, voluntary, and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge.
Why join Brilliant?
Brilliant has a mission you can get behind. We’re a company that’s helping to bring learners from all over the world together and create a platform on which they can excel, learn, and contribute.
We also offer:
• Competitive compensation
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits – we pay 100% of the premiums
• Equipment budget for computer and peripherals
• Free lunch
• Weekly happy hour
• Flexible vacation time
• Fully-stocked pantry and refrigerator with snacks and drinks
• Sponsorship for conferences and professional development
• A stimulating work environment and a chance to change the world
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