Backend Typescript Engineer

MANUAL is a digital personal development and mental wellness platform designed to inspire young men to become the best versions of themselves. Today, male students are far less likely to be enrolled, retained, and graduate from higher education institutions, and this is especially true for young men of color. Their mental health outcomes are rapidly worsening, with young men dying by suicide and overdose at alarming rates.

MANUAL works with high schools, universities, and fraternities across the country – including the University of Mississippi, Morgan State University, and MSU-Denver – to solve this challenge, bringing high-quality men's success and mental health programming to tens of thousands of students. MANUAL has raised capital from Expanse Venture Partners, 12-48, the Inner Foundation, and angel investors from companies like Maven Clinic, McKinsey & Company, Eleanor Health, and more. MANUAL’s evidence-based approach has been proven to enroll young men who are not currently being reached by existing services, and users report significant levels of trust towards the service.

Are you passionate about crafting efficient and scalable applications? Do you want to use your skills to help thousands of young men around the country? If you're enthusiastic about full stack Typescript, and love the thrill of a startup, we’d love to talk to you!

Who We're Looking For:

Typescript Enthusiasts: You have a solid understanding of Typescript and the JS ecosystem. You've built or contributed to web applications and APIs using these technologies and are excited about crafting beautiful, efficient, and scalable web applications. You've written production backend code.

Problem Solvers: Complex challenges excite you, and you excel at finding innovative solutions. You understand that in a startup environment, delivering a functional solution that meets users' needs is better than crafting a perfect solution that never launches.

Team Players: Our small but growing team values collaboration and open communication. Your input will significantly impact our projects, and we value engineers who are humble and willing to assist their peers.

Lifelong Learners: Your willingness to learn and grow is vital. We appreciate those open to new ideas and experiences, understanding that everyone has something to teach.

What You Won't Need:

• A specific number of years of experience. Your ability to apply what you've learned to new challenges is what truly matters to us. We're not in a position to provide the support and mentorship a junior developer needs (ex. fresh out of college or dev bootcamp), so you should have experience shipping production code.
• A formal education in computer science. We recognize the value of diverse educational backgrounds and learning paths. Our head of engineering, for example, doesn't have a computer science degree.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the development of our RedwoodJS backend, which provides APIs for our NextJS and React Native apps. Most of your time will be spent working on our APIs - adding new features, improving tests, optimizing performance, etc.
• Assist in the management of our Postgres database and backend infrastructure.
• Engage in user feedback sessions to directly learn from our users and adapt our solutions to better meet their needs.
• Be involved in the hiring process for future engineering team members, helping us grow our team with talented individuals.
• Play a pivotal role in defining our engineering processes and culture.
• Collaborate closely with our head of engineering and other team members on a variety of backend and frontend projects, contributing your unique skills and perspectives.

Important Details

• Job Type: Full-time, remote work environment with occasional optional travel for team get-togethers.
• Compensation structure: We are considering engineers with a range of experience and skill for this role, and will make cash offers of $125k-$150k per year.
• Benefits: Fully covered (no employee contribution) Health, Dental, and Vision insurance. Unlimited PTO.

Hiring Process

• You submit your application, if we select you for an interview we’ll reach out to schedule…
• 30 minute intro call with Karl Morand, our head of engineering. This call will be focused on getting to know you, your background, experience, and answering any questions you have about MANUAL or the role. We won’t get into anything super technical (no live coding or anything like that). A list of some topics/questions will be provided to you before the interview - the goal is to see you at your best, not test your ability to remember anecdotes from your past under pressure.
• Take home project is the next step. You will have at least 5 days to complete the project. The goal of the project isn’t to nitpick your code, but rather to give us a starting point to discuss how you approach solving problems with code.
• 45 minute technical call with Karl Morand, our head of engineering. In this call we’ll use your take home project as the basis of our discussion on how you approach solving problems. All candidates who complete the take home project will advance to this stage. This call will include a more detailed discussion of your technical experience and knowledge. Specific topics of interest will be provided to the candidate when the interview is scheduled. While this call is more technical in nature, there is still no live coding. Candidates who successfully complete this stage advance to…
• 30 minute teammate interview with 1-2 other members of the MANUAL team. You’ll be working closely with everyone on our small team, so it’s important for you and us to feel confident that we’ll make a great team. You’ll receive information about the interviewers and topics when the call is scheduled. Candidates who successfully complete this stage advance to…
• Job Offer!