Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Team: Executive Team

Type: Full-Time

Our current hiring is limited to Michigan since this is where our executive team is based.

Who we are

flockx is a startup with the goal of fostering community building through local groups, real-life events, and shared interests in your hometown or while traveling. Our aim is to facilitate the joining of local communities on a worldwide level by providing real-time information on activities in your area, assisting you in discovering meaningful places, and creating lasting memories.

We provide an ecosystem for discovering where communities are right now such as live music performances, locating where sports fans are gathering after the game, or discovering real-world activities and events in any given area. In addition, our ecosystem allows you to directly connect with people who share similar interests, enabling you to create authentic connections in real life that hold significance to you.

Role Summary

As a Principal Software Engineer, your role will be within the Executive team, a cross-functional group dedicated to advanced company experiments, business operations, and coaching other teams.

We're seeking an individual who is goal-driven and willing to explore unconventional approaches. The ideal candidate should also prioritize accountability and responsibility, working collaboratively within a team while maintaining individual autonomy.

They should approach problem-solving in a systematic and iterative way, focusing on experimentation to arrive at effective solutions. Additionally, the candidate should possess a high level of motivation to contribute to a cross-functional team.

Questions The Team Wakes Up to Answer

• What can we be doing to reach our vision more effectively?
• What gaps can we assist internal team's fill?
• How can we assist teams make effective decisions that reduce time to reaching their objectives?

Who you are

• Is able to act autonomously (with little to no direction) in and out of team sessions in ways that help the team grow and move the needle rapidly towards the objectives.
• Is comfortable wearing multiple hats, executing in all areas of activity relating to community engagement.
• Embodies culture values and team principal, setting an example for the team.
• Makes data driven decisions, especially when building and analyzing experiments
• Is able to collaborate with the team on content, messaging, value propositions, marketing campaigns etc; ensuring alignment, building of processes and delivering value to all stakeholders and community members.
• Motivated self-starter who thrives in team environments

Core Responsibilities

• Design and implement pilot minimal viable solutions that help the executive team validate hypotheses and can be handed off to future teammates to scale and improve.
• Serve as a technical expert in software development and architecture, driving technical decisions that align with business objectives and contribute to the evolution of the company's vision.
• Collaborate with the executive team to understand their requirements, and develop solutions that meet those requirements while maintaining a high level of code quality and performance.
• Mentor and coach other members of the team, sharing knowledge and expertise to help them grow as engineers and deliver high-quality software.
• Establish and enforce best practices for software development within the team, including code quality, testing, and continuous deployment.
• Contribute to the creation and maintenance of technical documentation for the software being developed, ensuring that it is comprehensive, up-to-date, and accessible to all stakeholders.

Must have experience/skills:

You’re a self-driven individual with a minimum of 5 years of demonstrated professional development experience covering the following areas:

• Accomplished at least 5 objectives that moved the needle for past companies
• Can communicate effectively from the forest into the weeds to others outside the engineering discipline.
• 5+ years of studying the discipline of computer science
• Accomplishments with both backend and frontend components of a web application
• Accomplishments with build environments and containers, eg Docker
• Knowledge and experience with SQL
• Ability to translate highly technical concepts into understandable actionable documentation.
• Ability to work with version control systems such as Git
• Accomplishments with Django, and the Django REST Framework
• Accomplishments relating to production Python applications
• Accomplishments delivering production ready systems
• Accomplishments relating to production Reactjs or alternative Javascript framework applications
• Accomplishments working using continuous integration and deployment
• Accomplishments creating and delivering presentations outlining experiments, findings, and/or capabilities

Must have soft skills:

• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate with various stakeholders within the team
• Customer experience skills to listen to the concerns of a customer and be able to work with team members to resolve their issues
• Interpersonal skills to work with a wide variety of people each day, build relationships and network
• Be knowledgeable about flockx products and capabilities
• Understand and align your effort based on company and team objectives
• Continuously improve the company’s and team’s processes
• Passion for ease of use.
• Ability to design and implement easy to use tools and reusable components, making thoughtful tradeoffs between consistency and availability when both are not possible.
• Strong communication skills to effectively convey technical information to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Be able to lead and mentor other engineers on the team and be able to coordinate work across different teams and departments.
• Strong problem-solving skills to help identify and troubleshoot technical issues and find solutions to problems.
• The ability to adapt to new technologies and programming languages.
• Strong time management skills to manage multiple projects and tasks, set priorities, and meet deadlines.
• An eye for detail to ensure code quality, maintainability, and scalability.
• The ability to work well in a team environment, collaborate with other engineers and stakeholders, and contribute to a positive team culture.
• Be committed to continuous learning and staying up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies in their field.
• Drive for excellent documentation. Work with team members to develop concise and actionable documentation that enables users to get the most out of the application fast.

Nice-to-Have skills and qualifications:

• Accomplishments relating to Objective-C or Swift
• Accomplishments with map heavy applications using tools like MapBox
• Accomplishments with ElasticSearch
• Accomplishments with geospatial algorithms
• Working knowledge and experience with Kafka, ksqlDB
• Accomplishments with MQTT

Salary and Benefits:

• Competitive salary dependent on experience.
• Discretionary Time Off , Paid Holidays, Volunteer Time Off
• 401K with Employer Match
• Opportunity for flexible work locations and schedules
• Casual Attire
• Wellness Stipend
• Work-from-home Stipend
• WeWork Subscription

Equal opportunity:

flockx is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We value all people, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, age, ability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds, and are committed to promoting equality at every opportunity both as a partner, provider of services and as an employer.