Staff Backend Engineer - Platform

About us

In the last few years, remote and hybrid work has had an explosion in popularity, giving workers an unprecedented level of access to opportunity and an increase in quality of life. However, our existing tools were not set up to do remote work well. Work can be isolating, transactional, and void of the camaraderie that makes everyone feel like they’re in it together.

To solve this, Gather builds virtual offices that bring the best of in-person work to remote. We’ve already seen success with our approach, with over 10,000 remote-first companies using our spaces every day.

And yet it’s still the early days for our broader vision of the Metaverse. We’re excited about how the Metaverse can break down physical constraints that exist today, not just in where you can work, but which friends/family you can see, or what educational opportunities you can have access to.

Join us in this mission!

Role Overview:

Our Platform team plays a crucial role in building the foundations that power Gather. Our product is rich and complex, with audio/video products like Zoom or Google Meet, work chats like Slack or Microsoft Teams, and a real-time virtual world similar to an MMORPG.

As a Staff Platform Engineer, you help ensure our foundations and systems' performance, stability, and reliability. You design and create the building blocks our product developers rely on to ship quickly and reliably. You deeply understand a few domains, whether real-time distributed systems, computer graphics, rendering, or designing robust APIs and interfaces.

Staff engineers at Gather are engineering leaders. You’ll lead projects and sometimes teams to successfully deliver. You set a high bar for quality and pace. You will tackle some of our hardest engineering problems and help mentor the rest of the team on how to hit a higher bar of excellence.

Where you will make an impact:

• Design a game service to support thousands of concurrent users per virtual office
• Identify and fix performance bottlenecks on any of our services or storage layers
• Build client-side SDKs that define the way our application interfaces with our backend
• Dive deep into debugging and fixing performance issues with customers
• Define strategies for tuning, redefining, or creating from scratch pieces of our platform
• Mentor engineers across our engineering team
• Work closely with company leadership to shape large parts of the company’s strategy and direction

What you bring:

• Significant experience working with Typescript or an aptitude to learn Typescript quickly
• 5+ years of experience working in technical domain(s) relevant to the technologies that power Gather, such as real-time gaming backends, graphics and rendering, Typescript and React performance, or extensible platform architecture
• A keen intuition for well-designed software and well-written code
• Intrinsic motivation and the drive to own and solve difficult problems without guidance
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with technical leadership abilities
• An open and growth mindset when giving and receiving feedback
• You are resourceful, have a bias towards action, and love moving fast
• A healthy tolerance for the chaotic balance between Doing Things Right and iterating and shipping quickly

US Salary Range

At Gather, compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $187,850 - $237,575 annually and we encourage candidates outside of this salary range to apply.

Base pay is one part of the total package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for a stock reward program.

Benefits

• Work remotely out of a state-of-the-art virtual office!
• Competitive compensation, benefits, and meaningful equity
• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their dependents
• 401k and matching program
• Generous PTO policy and mental health days to recharge
• Meal stipend twice a week to keep you nourished
• Remote work, education, and health & wellness stipends
• Support for family planning & gender-affirmation
• The opportunity to join a passionate team in building something that actually makes peoples' lives better, every single day

Gather is committed to building an inclusive and equitable workplace for individuals of all backgrounds. We strive to build a workplace where employees feel comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work, everyday. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender perception or identity, national origin, age, marital status, pregnancy or parental status, protected veteran status, disability status, or any other basis prohibited by law. Additionally, we're committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and/or to receive other benefits and privileges of employment, please notify the recruiter you are working with. We also ask that all applicants consider answering the voluntary demographic questions on our job application to help us track the inclusivity of our recruiting efforts and programs. Answering these questions is entirely voluntary and your answers will not be shared with the hiring team and will not impact the hiring decision.