Staff Software Engineer, Open Source

Help make the best-in-class React framework even faster

About Gatsby

You may know Gatsby, a wildly popular open-source project that has over 50k GitHub stars and a thriving community of more than 3,000 contributors. Beyond open source, we're also a newly commercializing business, one that helps professional developers build blazing-fast apps and websites without needing to become a performance expert.

As a remote-first, community-focused team, Gatsby's core values include:

• Prioritize the customer
• Expect excellence, have empathy
• Take ownership
• Grow through inclusivity
• Collaborate by default

Details of the role

• Type of Work: Full-time
• Location: Remote (preference for UTC-8 to UTC+4)
• Engineering Level: L5 (see our Engineering Levels Guide)

Why we're hiring

Gatsby is many tremendous things, but at its simplest, it's an open-source React-based framework and a Cloud platform where Gatsby works best. We are committed to building, maintaining, and improving both pillars. We are hiring to supercharge our efforts towards improving our best-in-class open-source framework, specifically the data layer and improving build speeds. We have a lot of ideas to improve, but we need world-class engineers to help make those ideas a reality, and demonstrably improve our user's lives in doing so.

Why this is interesting

We've made tremendous improvements in build speeds over the last year, but we're not done, and we have more work to do. Breaking down build speeds, and understanding the different layers of the open-source framework require expertise across the whole stack. Our data layer (powered by GraphQL), our runtime (powered by React), our build process (currently powered by Webpack), all of these require deep expertise and a willingness to dive below the surface level to see what makes a Gatsby site really tick. Further still, working directly on open-source nearly each and every day is immensely fun, rewarding, but... challenging!

Day-to-day responsibilities

• Deliver significant improvements to Gatsby users. Working closely with the rest of the team, you'll be a major owner of key features shipped by the Gatsby Engineering team, ensuring the on-time delivery of quality software and clear, coherent documentation.
• Strategize and improve upon current code quality. Our code is solid and best-in-class, but it's never done and we have a lot more to do. We need someone to come in and help be part of the team to decouple, improve, and ensure that we can be even more efficient in the future as we scale the team and sophistication of what we're doing.
• Build APIs and Implement in Cloud. You'll need a solid understanding of robust, scalable API best practices, and you'll work directly alongside other teams to ensure that Gatsby works best in Gatsby Cloud via invoking and using these APIs. Think: you're building the legos and other squads are helping assemble them into a cohesive whole that works best when all the pieces come together.
• Help your team be maximally effective at shipping code. We have some good early processes around continuous delivery and CI/CD pipeline tooling for releasing our framework, but we're not done yet. You will ensure that these processes work well for both internal and external stakeholders, alike, and ensure that we have a reliable, robust pipeline for testing and validating changes before they go live.
• Triage and make quick judgments. You'll be part of a team directly responsible for being receptive to user feedback, pull requests, and questions. You'll need to read and understand code, give good recommendations, and guide via influence, sometimes with people you've never even met or talked to!

Qualifications

• Expertise with build tooling. You will need experience and familiarity with modern build tooling processes, and you have certainly configured Webpack directly, or Babel, or you may have even used or experimented with tools like Bazel.
• Passion for tools that help new developers. You will focus energy on the documentation, tooling, and processes both internally and externally that encourage and support developers who are new to Gatsby and front end Web development solutions.
• Expertise with the modern JavaScript ecosystem. You will need to be proficient in Node.js, familiar with the breadth and depth of packages via npm, and used or be able to learn GraphQL and TypeScript.
• Experience with modern React. You will need experience and familiarity with current and future React APIs and capabilities, including hooks, concurrent mode, Suspense, and more!

Preferred qualifications

• Experience maintaining or contributing to an open-source project. You may, and likely have, built some of your own open-source projects or contributed to others.
• Experience with GraphQL tools, like graphql-compose, Apollo, or other layers on top of the GraphQL language itself
• Experience with headless CMSs such as Contentful and WordPress, or at least some understanding of modern Jamstack development
• Experience with Serverless infrastructure and more generally Cloud tooling via platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or on layers on top (like Serverless)
• Experience with CI/CD solutions like CircleCI or Github Actions, ideally to automate releases
• Has built production-grade websites with Gatsby, Next.js, Sveltekit, Remix, or other meta frameworks

The best parts of this job

• You'll be at the cutting edge of website development - working on one of the fastest-growing site building frameworks on the market, building a feature-rich content preview experience.
• You'll work closely with a small cross-functional team consisting of engineers and a product manager working to solve new and interesting problems.
• You'll play a key part in helping define our roadmap and prioritizing work.
• You'll be working in a safe, open environment of talented engineers who have a broad range of experience.
• Your role will be key to making Gatsby the next way to build on the web -- and a technology that enables the next billion web users.

The worst parts of this job

• You'll need to be prepared for occasional disruptions and reactionary work.
• As a fast growing startup, we have to move fast, which means some work will be descoped and priorities change frequently.
• Working directly with open-source users can be challenging and exhausting! Coupled with balancing the needs of the open-source users with the needs of the company, and it can sometimes be a tricky time prioritization problem.

Benefits and perks

• Unlimited vacation policy, with a minimum of 15 days paid vacation time
• Amazing health, dental, and vision insurance for you and your family (US only)
• 3 months of paid parental leave covering both adoption and foster placement
• Stock options in a fast-growing startup
• We're remote first, so skip the commute
• Set up costs for a home office OR co-working/private office reimbursement
• New laptop of your choice
• Wifi and cell phone reimbursement
• Fly to cool locations 3x/year for company-wide meetups (once it's safe again!)

Equal opportunity statement

Gatsby is an equal opportunity employer and we acknowledge and honor the fundamental value and dignity of all individuals. We commit ourselves to creating and maintaining an environment that respects diverse heritages and experiences, and seek applicants of diverse backgrounds and hire without regard to race, color, gender identity, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, physical abilities (or disability), age, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Headhunters and recruitment agencies may not submit resumes/CVs through this website or directly to managers. Gatsby does not accept unsolicited headhunter and agency resumes, and will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company that does not have a signed agreement with Gatsby.