Senior Software Engineer, Full-stack (SF)

📍Work Tuesdays and Thursdays at our San Francisco office, and the rest Work From Home. Our San Francisco office is at 580 California Street, a few blocks from the Montgomery exit of BART and MUNI.

About Us

Academia.edu is the world’s leading platform for researchers and scholars to share their work, discover research and connect with fellow academics globally. Our bold vision: to democratize and accelerate the world's research, enhancing the speed of scientific discovery and technological progress for the benefit of everyone. We imagine a world where accessing academic papers is effortless, keeping track of cutting-edge research is seamless and collaborating with researchers is easier than ever before. Our platform empowers hundreds of millions of scholars worldwide to push the boundaries of human understanding. We believe in the power of knowledge to change lives and the world, and our commitment to this mission drives everything we do.

Join us as we continue to redefine what's possible in the world of research. Discover careers that challenge, inspire and propel you toward a future where your ideas can truly change the world. At Academia.edu, we're not just shaping the future of research—we're shaping the future of possibilities.

Please note that this role is in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

We're excited to have a packed and lively office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Twice a week those of us in the Bay Area come to our office located in the Financial District for All Hands, intense collaboration, brainstorming activities, and fun events. There are small rooms for 1-1 mentoring sessions or heads-down work, and larger rooms for team activities. We continue to support a flexible work environment for all of life’s surprises and needs with generous time off and flexible daily work schedules.

What we're looking for

Our ideal candidates have experience working full stack and are excited about owning product and engineering initiatives. Experience scaling web applications with an increasing user base into the millions is desirable.

Your skillset:

• Good coding habits are a must.
• Knowledge and use of common data structures and algorithms to solve problems.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to build solutions and products.
• Ability and willingness to learn new languages and technologies as needed.
• 5+ years of professional software development experience designing and building large scalable systems, consumer-facing web apps, or web platforms in a Unix/Linux environment.
• Professional level of coding proficiency with one of the following; Ruby, Python, or Node.js+Javascript or Node.js+Typescript. Must be willing to learn/work with Ruby on Rails stack.
• Solid understanding of databases; including data modeling, DBMS creation, data manipulation, and data queries.
• Rest API/back-end coding in a scripting language.
• Web Front-end coding experience, e.g., JavaScript, Typescript, React.js, a plus.

Our Tech Stack:

• Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq
• PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch
• React + Typescript
• RSpec, Chromatic, Jest, Storybook
• CircleCI, Jenkins, Ansible, Terraform, Datadog
• AWS ecosystem (EC2, S3, RDS, Redshift, Aurora, and many others)
• You don’t need to know our tech stack, but you must be willing and able to learn and apply it quickly!

What you’ll work on:

• You'll be designing and building systems and web applications to make our user base more productive on our platform. Here are some things that we are currently working on:
• A fast and scalable peer review system that identifies and distributes high-quality academic works.
• Services that help academic authors understand the impact of their scholarship via text parsing and computation of bibliometrics.
• Algorithmic approaches to identification of academic content and disambiguation of authorships to make every paper ever written available for free.
• A paper recommendation engine that helps users discover the most relevant research.
• A people recommendation engine that helps users connect with others who share their interests.
• Search Engine Optimizations to improve the discoverability of our corpus of 50M+ PDFs.

What impact will you have?

• Researchers from all over the world give us fantastic feedback:
• “I go through all the articles in the bulk download, save the ones that are clearly going to be useful, and discard the remainder. This saves loads of time but also points me in directions I might not otherwise have thought of looking.”
• “The bulk downloads give me the chance to read more related articles as well as see what research is citing the article I am looking at. It also helps me rapidly expand my personal digital library of references.”
• See more: https://www.academia.edu

What's in it for you?

• Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage: 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents
• Generous Time Off: 21 paid vacation days, 12 paid company holidays, and unlimited sick days; paid parental leave and other leaves for life’s needs; 6-week paid sabbatical every 4 years
• Flexible Work Arrangements: Flexible daily schedules within a hybrid work environment, annual remote-office budget, and monthly WFH internet stipend
• Competitive Compensation: Competitive salary, 401k plan, and stock options
• Mission-Driven Company: Join a mission-driven company to accelerate and democratize the world’s research

Diversity and Inclusion

Academia is a proud equal opportunity employer committed to hiring and supporting a diverse workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Compensation

The total cash compensation for this role is targeted at $160,000 to $220,000 USD for the first year. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors, including candidate experience and expertise, and may vary from the amounts listed above.