Backend Engineer, Customer Engagement

A home is the biggest investment most people make, and yet, it doesn't come with a manual. That's why we're building the only app homeowners need to effortlessly manage their homes - knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. With Thumbtack, millions of people care for what matters most, and pros earn billions of dollars through our platform. And as one of the fastest-growing companies in a $600B+ industry - we must be doing something right.

We are driven by a common goal and the deep satisfaction that comes from knowing our work supports local economies, helps small businesses grow, and brings homeowners peace of mind. We're seeking people who continually put our purpose first: advocating for pros and customers, embracing change, and choosing teamwork every day.

At Thumbtack, we're creating a new era of home care. If making an impact and the chance to do good inspires you, join us. Imagine what we'll build together.

Thumbtack by the Numbers

• Available nationwide in all 3,143 U.S. counties
• 75 million projects started on Thumbtack
• 4 million customers in the last 12 months
• Pros earn billions on our platform
• More than 9 million 5-star reviews for our stellar pros
• 1000+ employees and $3.2 billion valuation (June, 2021)

About the Customer Engagement Team

The Customer Engagement team is focused on building features to help customers discover all the product offerings that Thumbtack has to offer, offering customers inspiration, guidance, and recommendations for starting and managing projects on Thumbtack, optimizing incentives to activate and engage customers, and powering smarter engagement marketing campaigns to regain and re-engage our customers. The team is very cross-functional: Engineering, PM, Design, Analytics, Data Science and Marketing all work closely together to achieve our goals.

Challenge

We have technical problems ranging from mobile experiences and performances, high scale backend systems, and to machine learning optimization algorithms. Many of the experiences that we build in our apps are to activate, engage, and re-engage our users which requires consistent A/B tests in relation to their experiences. Our challenges are pretty open ended, and we move real fast!

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.
• Execute new ideas quickly and effectively on the backend while also being a resource to other teams and engineers.
• Collaborate with data scientists to connect and implement complex machine learning algorithms to our backend systems to support our growing customer base.
• Willing, when necessary, to solve tough technical problems at any level of the stack, and be persistent in getting to the solution.
• Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams such as Product and Design to plan and execute on engineering projects
• Work on large projects and lead small teams of engineers

What you'll need

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
• Fluent in at least one major programming language and would be able to switch between multiple languages. In our stack. We mainly use Go, Python, Php, with Swift, Kotlin and Java for our mobile apps.
• Solid experience building software on top of relational databases such as Postgres or MySQL.
• Write high quality, maintainable, testable code, and you enjoy doing it.
• Curious, data-driven, and a critical problem solver. Break down complex problems rigorously and understand the tradeoffs necessary to deliver great, impactful products.
• Hands on experience in machine learning, or passion to learn the fundamentals of ML to help implement models into our products

Bonus points if you have

• Experience using AWS and/or GCP and its suite of technologies such as DynamoDB, Elastic Beanstalk, etc
• Familiarity with the big data ecosystem (Hadoop/HDFS, Hive, Spark, etc).

Thumbtack is a virtual-first company, meaning you can live and work from any one of our approved locations across the United States, Canada or the Philippines.* Learn more about our virtual-first working model here.

#LI-Remote

• Virtual-first working model coupled with quarterly in-person events and Camp Thumbtack
• 20+ company-wide holidays including two week-long shutdowns
• Libraries (collaborative workspaces) in San Francisco, Toronto, and Manila
• Stipends for remote work support, home office set-up and Thumbtack services
• Cell phone and WiFi reimbursements
• Subscriptions and Employee Assistance Program for mental health and well-being

Learn More About Us

• Life @ Thumbtack Blog
• How Thumbtack is embracing virtual work
• Follow us on LinkedIn
• Meet the pros who inspire us

Thumbtack embraces diversity. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and do not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, age, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic information, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by federal, provincial, state, or local law. We also will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records, consistent with applicable law.

Thumbtack is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation for a medical condition or disability during any part of the application process, please contact: recruitingops@thumbtack.com.

If you are a California resident, please review information regarding your rights under California privacy laws contained in Thumbtack's Privacy policy available at https://www.thumbtack.com/privacy/ .