Job Board
for underrepresented folks in tech
Remote-US
125,000-133,000
Fri Aug 19 2022
13 people in tech
6 women in tech
6 people of color in tech
LGBTQIA+ folks in tech
1 disabled folks in techRotational is an intelligent distributed systems company. We blend data engineering, machine learning, and distributed systems to build planet-scale data solutions that connect users, colleagues, and customers across the world.
JOB DESCRIPTION
About Rotational
Rotational is an intelligent distributed systems company. We blend data engineering, machine learning, and distributed systems to build planet-scale data solutions that connect users, colleagues, and customers across the world.
What We’ll Depend On You For
- Deliver on client contracts by performing both data science and data engineering tasks.
- Help build Rotational products and IP into solutions that resonate with the market and demonstrate superb infrastructure, security, and UI/UX.
- Independently develop code bases and packages that are well tested and documented.
- Implement data-driven workflows that include data ingestion, wrangling, model building, and model training
- Design and implement APIs including both REST and gRPC.
- Manage databases and design data storage solutions for a variety of data models.
- Contribute to open source projects, including writing code, reviewing pull requests, creating examples, maintaining documentation, and providing mentorship.
- Engage in sprint planning and daily engineering standups; participate in synchronous and asynchronous code reviews; receive and provide feedback to colleagues.
- Help us to create and maintain a culture of respect by valuing the contributions of other engineers both within and outside the company.
What You Can Expect From Us
The core Rotational values are:
- Curiosity. We work on a wide range of technical tasks from ML to protocol buffers, and everything in between. We enjoy going outside our comfort zones because we stay curious!
- Respect. We’ll take your contributions, your opinions, and your feedback seriously. We’ll assign you real, hard work, including tasks that push you beyond your current experience.
- Collaboration. We’re teachers at heart; we’ll provide you with plenty of opportunities for collaboration (e.g. pair programming, whiteboard, design sessions) and mentorship.
- Excellence. We love a job well done, and we all share in the responsibility to build high-quality software that’s secure, robust, and a pleasure to use.
- Growth. We’re technologists who believe that technical innovation requires both software development and people development. We want to understand your goals and help you achieve them.
Things We’re Looking For
- Comfort with at least one programming language (e.g. Python, Javascript, Go).
- Experience with data; for instance, manipulating it with data structures, maintaining and/or querying databases, performing analytics and machine learning.
- Experience with software engineering; for instance, developing software holistically with tests, documentation, deployment and configuration while keeping safety, performance, security, and readability in mind.
- Confidence with version control and code collaboration tools (e.g. Github, Gitlab, etc).
- Empathy and communication skills.
Things We Aren’t Worried About
- Specifics about degrees and credentials. We believe that creative and thoughtful programmers come from all different backgrounds.
- Knowledge of particular programming styles or techniques. Building intelligent distributed systems involves a broad variety of technologies from web apps to machine learning models to file systems. We use many languages and frameworks from Golang to Python to React to SQL. We care that you are excited to bring what you know, that you’re open to being flexible depending on the deliverable, and that you’re willing to learn as you go
- Where you call home. We’re a distributed company and we have contributors from all over the world. Working with people who are far away, in different timezones, with different cultures and backgrounds is no easy task, but it’s part of who we are and of the commitment we make to each other at Rotational
Apply for this position by sending your resume and a short email with “Distributed Systems Engineer” in the subject line to info@rotational.io.
INTERVIEW PROCESS
We usually have an initial conversation with the candidate to learn about their career goals and salary goals, and their interest in working on distributed systems. The next phase is a formal interview that includes a few discussions (~3 hours total), including a high-level chat with our CEO Benjamin about the company roadmap, a technical interview led by our CTO Rebecca (details below), a review of the candidate's past projects and goals with our COO Edwin, and a Q&A with all three execs to give the candidate the chance to ask questions.
Technical Interview
Tech interviews don't have a great reputation. Generally they're a cause of apprehension and stress, and often don't even do a very good job of assessing the skills candidates will actually use at work. For these and many other reasons, we take a slightly different approach to technical interviews at Rotational (hopefully for the better).
The technical interview will be with Rebecca and Benjamin and last roughly 60 minutes. The prompt is "Show off someone else's code" -- the gist is that we want you to come prepared to walk us through a piece of code that someone else wrote. This gives us a chance to see how you "think in code" without you having to do a whiteboard interview (shudder) or a ton of off-hours coding. But it also goes deeper than that!
One of the tech-sphere anti-patterns we try to avoid at Rotational is the all-too-common trap of denigrating other people's code. Perhaps it's because technologists tend to be perfectionists, or because critique is a convenient way to demonstrate engagement, but for whatever reason, there's often much more disparagement in the tech space than there is praise.
We think that's an oversight. Reading through other people's code and finding thoughtful comments, creative solutions, clever shortcuts, and elegant design patterns is one of the best ways to learn how to be a better programmer.
For the technical discussion portion of the interview, come prepared with a piece of code (either open source or with their permission) that someone else wrote, and which you admire. Here are some questions we're likely to ask you about it:
- What does the code do?
- What do you think the original requirements were for this piece of code?
- What are some of the choices that the author made that you really like?
- Which comments did you find particularly effective?
- What constructive criticism would you offer the author if you were on a team together?
- Are there any design patterns or algorithms the author uses that you'd like to try using or to learn more about?
- What are some of the decisions the author has made to protect the user and/or other system components from things going wrong?
DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION
At Rotational, we believe that diversity, equity, inclusion and justice is fundamental for open, free, and creative societies. We are a small but mighty team that actively seeks and welcomes diversity at all levels of the organization, because we have seen that it opens the door to cutting edge results, a distinctive culture, and experiences that inspire loyalty and commitment.
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