Senior Software Engineer

Job Description

Have you ever tried to hire a plumber? How about a house cleaner? If you have, chances are it took you way longer than it should. In the era of instant-everything, it’s crazy that you still have to waste an entire afternoon researching, calling and vetting local service professionals whenever you need one. The market for hiring them is huge — $1 trillion in the US alone — but the process is inefficient and largely offline.

Thumbtack is transforming this experience end-to-end, building a marketplace that matches millions of people with local pros for almost any project. In making these connections, not only do our customers get more done every day, our pros are able to grow their businesses and make a living doing what they’re great at.

About the Engineering Team

At Thumbtack, engineers at every level directly impact improvements across the product, including project scoping, matching, scheduling, messaging and payments. Building an outstanding experience for each of these user flows is made more complex by the sheer scale of our approach: Thumbtack simultaneously operates in nearly 1,000 categories, in every county in the US. Our new Instant Match tool has allowed us to truly revolutionize the experience of hiring local pros, while increasing supply to meet the robust customer demand we’ve spent years growing.

About the Role

As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll focus on bringing the Thumbtack vision to life. You’ll collaborate with other engineers, designers and product managers to execute on a broad range of projects. This could include building new features to improve the experience of our users, architecting infrastructure to support a fast-­growing user base, or optimizing our marketplace mechanics to make better matches between customers and professionals.

Responsibilities

• Drive engineering projects to completion, with a tenacious focus on the business impact of those projects. Skilled at prioritizing tasks to deliver on goals with a sense of urgency.
• Solve tough technical problems at any level of the stack, and be persistent in getting to the solution, whether it involves front-end, back-end, or infrastructure work.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to plan and execute on engineering projects.

Must-Have Qualifications

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but still are interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box, and we're looking for someone excited to join the team.

• Minimum of 5 years of industry experience in engineering.
• You’re fluent in at least one major programming language and would be able to switch between multiple languages. In our stack, we mainly use PHP, Scala, and Go, with Swift, Kotlin and Java for our mobile apps.
• You have solid experience building software on top of relational databases such as Postgres or MySQL.
• You know what it means to write high quality, maintainable, testable code, and you enjoy doing it.
• You can break down complex problems rigorously and understand the tradeoffs necessary to deliver great, impactful products.
• You’re curious, you’re data-driven, you love to ask questions, and you think critically about problems.
• You’re comfortable communicating about your work with both technical and non-technical team members, including fellow engineers, product managers, designers, and analysts.
• You love delivering value to your users and your teammates through your work.

Nice-to-Have Qualifications

• You have experience building and maintaining reliable, performant distributed systems.
• You’ve owned and driven the development of complex projects or feature areas over the course of several months or years.
• You’ve used AWS and its suite of technologies such as DynamoDB, Elastic Beanstalk, etc.
• You’re familiar with the big data ecosystem (Hadoop/HDFS, Hive, Spark, etc).
• You’ve demonstrated your ability to thrive in a fast-paced startup environment.

More About Us

Thumbtack is a local services marketplace – one of the largest in the U.S. – that helps millions of people hire local professionals. With hundreds of unique service categories, customers can find a Thumbtack pro for almost anything: landscapers, DJs, personal trainers, even piano teachers. And in making these connections, we empower local pros too. Helping them get new customers and make a living doing what they’re great at.

Founded in 2008 and headquartered in San Francisco, Thumbtack is backed by over $250 million in investment from Sequoia Capital, CapitalG, Tiger Global Management, Javelin Investment Partners and Baillie G ifford.

• See what it’s like to work here
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Thumbtack embraces diversity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, citizenship, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.