Backend Engineer, Marketplace Trust and Safety

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 $500B 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
• 70 million projects started on Thumbtack
• More than 4 million customers in the last 12 months
• Pros earn billions on our platform
• More than 8 million 5-star reviews for our stellar pros
• 1000+ employees and $3.2 billion valuation (June, 2021)

About the Marketplace Trust and Safety Team

Our Trust and Safety engineering team is responsible for building machine learning models and scalable backend systems to prevent, detect and mitigate platform abuse and fraud. Our mission is to protect our pros and customers and establish trust in using Thumbtack. The team builds the tools to help protect the platform from spam, fraud and abusive behaviors.

Challenge

Our challenges are deeply technical and span a wide range of domains from infrastructure, to data, to product. Examples of projects include: Payment fraud prevention, preventing spam in pro accounts, customer requests etc To read more about the problems that our team is taking on, visit our engineering blog.

Responsibilities

• 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
• 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.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to plan and execute on engineering projects

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.
• Experience in trust and safety, payments fraud prevention etc.
• 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 one or more of the areas: machine learning, deep learning, pattern recognition, anomaly detection, data mining, NLP or content understanding

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/ .