Senior Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure

Hey there.
At Clay, we believe in empowering the growth of every business. We're on a mission to help teams grow their customer base by finding and reaching out to the right people.
Navigating the world of go-to-market data is a complex task involving data aggregation, transformation, and automation. We believe better software enables teams to become more effective in creatively seeking and reaching out to the people that matter. We are building a new type of data workflow tool that allows any team to find the right data, craft custom workflows, and automate their go-to-market strategy. We like to think of Clay as a composable canvas that unlocks power and creativity for growth-focused teams.
Building a powerful yet easy-to-use tool that enables complex data aggregation, transformation, and automation is no easy feat. It takes a huge amount of creativity, discipline and attention to detail. It also takes a team of brilliant minds, collaborating, supporting and learning from each other.
At Clay, we hold two things to be true as we grow our team - hiring is more about the person and less about the description; diverse teams build the strongest, most meaningful products. We are committed to building a team that reflects these beliefs, and cannot wait to speak with you.
Software Engineering, Backend Infrastructure @ Clay
At Clay, our Backend Infrastructure Team maintains the core of our operations: the API, storage, queues, and search functionality. We're obsessed with speed, scalability, security and improving the developer experience for the whole team. You'd be responsible for scaling the API to running tens of billions of queries a day and growing quickly, as well as designing systems that power our latest features.
As an early engineer, you'll be part of a core team that's reimagining computing from the ground up surrounded by an exceptional team of product-minded designers and developers. There will be no shortage of fun conceptual and technical challenges to explore, build and scale.
What You'll Do

• Design & ship core features. Spec, implement and maintain core features and infrastructure. Given the size of the team, everyone is touching all parts of the stack and has lots of responsibility.
• Collaborate & learn. You'll partner with the rest of our team, communicate openly, give and receive thoughtful feedback, and have a chance to learn from people who excel in their areas of expertise.
• Take ownership. We're focused on building a high-trust, ownership focused environment where everyone aims to define what they think is most important to work on, and drive initiatives forward.

What You'll Bring

• Demonstrated ability to ship high-quality, well-tested features. You've got a Bachelors or Master's degree in Computer Science, or 4+ years working as a software engineer in production environments.
• Familiarity with our stack. Our stack is currently Node, and React. We hope you will be proficient in JavaScript (Node, React, vanilla JS), or have a demonstrated knowledge of another general purpose programming language and the ability to quickly learn.
• Excellent written communication skills & a design-minded consideration of abstractions. A big part of simplifying software development is choosing the right abstractions & communicating them effectively. In this role, you'll be responsible for designing and crafting internal and external systems and APIs that are elegant and intuitive to use.
• Keeping the big picture in mind. We're fans of engineers who think about all aspects of the product, and keep UX and business objectives in mind as they're building.

Nice To Haves

• Diversity of perspectives and interests. We hope to build a team that is curious, and open-minded.
• Experience working with systems & data at scale. May be building large-scale high-performance data pipelines, event ingestion systems, or generally working with larger production systems
• Additional proficiency and/or experience with: Linux, containers & cloud environments such as AWS and Google Cloud; Kafka, Pubsub & SQS style architectures; Go, Rust, C++, or Clojure, as we explore incorporating more robust systems for our backend

Working @ Clay
Based out of a central office on 19th Street in Manhattan's Flatiron District. We love the energy of in-person collaboration while also offering the flexibility to work from home when needed.

• Competitive salary and role trajectory. Roles, responsibilities, and comp grow as we do.
• Health insurance. Fully funded, high quality health, dental & vision coverage.
• Visa sponsorship. We get it - it's an arduous process, but we're not scared of it.
• Flexible schedules and paid time off. We ask team members to take at least 3 weeks fully-disconnected per year, with a flexible vacation policy beyond that.
• Mental health. We're currently building a plan to help you find coaches, mentors & mental-health services.
• Personal comfort. Order whatever equipment you think will help you work more enjoyably.

Learn more about Clay, how we think about the world, the vibes and what it's like to work with us right here!