Soma Capital Portfolio Jobs

Mobile Platform Engineer

CommandBar

CommandBar

Software Engineering
San Francisco, CA, USA · Remote
Posted on Aug 19, 2024

About CommandBar

CommandBar is a platform for helping software companies make their software easier to use (aka a “user assistance platform”).

How many times have you been frustrated by software?

Maybe you didn’t know how to make the software do what you wanted, so you had to wade through pages and pages of support documentation to figure it out. Or suffer through a sassy chatbot. Or worst of all, maybe you were bombarded by a bunch of unhelpful pop-ups prompting you to TAKE A TOUR and CHECK OUT WHATS NEW.

These unhelpful experiences (the help center, the chatbot, the popups) are trying to solve a real problem — we use so many tools today that it’s hard to master every one. But sadly these techniques for helping users are ineffective and annoying.

CommandBar makes any software product simpler, faster, and personalized.

We do this by embedding experiences in our customers’ products that actually guide and assist users. Some of these work by capturing the users’ input directly and responding with personalized results (like a custom walkthrough or a clip from a training video). Others work by proactively nudging users (but only when we think they’re likely to find it helpful).

Today, CommandBar serves over 25M end users from forward-thinking SaaS companies like Gusto, Hashicorp, Netlify, Freshworks, and AngelList.

Despite that big number, we're a small team of 35 today that's just beginning to grow, which means tons of opportunities to do trajectory-altering work (for the company’s trajectory and your own). If you're inspired to upgrade how humans use software, come join!

Why CommandBar?

You’re probably really talented. Why should you take your talents to CommandBar? Here are reasons we think working with us is uniquely high impact — on the world and your career.

  • Our ratio of impact on the world is high (and we intend to keep it that way).

  • There is a lot of room to grow and lead teams (if you’re into that) as we scale. A lot of the roles that we are hiring for are the first in the function so you’ll need to bring 0 to 1 energy.

  • We're at the forefront of new technologies, including new developments in AI (which we use heavily to power our product).

  • The team we’ve assembled so far is world-class — talented, curious, kind, and obsessed with building delightful, fast, simple software.

The main reasons for joining CommandBar are belief in our product and the opportunities for growth described above. That said, our benefits are pretty sweet 🙂 Overall, we believe in benefits that respect individual choice and reflect the fact that optimizing your life outside of work leads to better performance at work.

The salary range for this role is $125,000 to $165,000.

Our benefits include:

  • Flexible PTO with a 3 week minimum

  • Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance for you, and 50% for your dependents

  • 12 weeks parental leave for all parents

  • 401k with matching

  • A learning and development budget

  • A generous ‘Make Your Life Easier’ stipend

  • A home office budget

  • 3x/year all together including 2 team offsites and 1 engineering offsite

Becoming the first Mobile Platform Engineer @ CommandBar

Our customers rely on CommandBar to deliver a reliable and delightful experience for their end users. As the first Mobile Platform Engineer at CommandBar, you'll be working alongside the founders on all facets of our product. You'll have the opportunity to own projects that impact millions of users, in pursuit of a better way for humans to interact with software.

To date CommandBar has been desktop-by-default (mostly web apps). Recently we introduced our first version of mobile, and the customer response was so strong (turns out users often need even more help on mobile than desktop!) that we’re now planning to make mobile a first-class priority.

As the first dedicated mobile engineer at the company, you’ll be responsible for making that happen! You’re not starting from zero though: we maintain light mobile SDKs and have mobile experts scattered in our team. You’ll be given a wide range of ownership to make our mobile experience awesome, while having the full support of the rest of our engineering team.

Being the first mobile engineer is a pretty unique role. We think you’ll be a good fit if:

  • you are a capable software engineer generalist

  • you have worked across different mobile ecosystems

  • you are energized by working on different stacks and learning new technologies

  • you are excited to take ownership of product and technical decisions

  • you enjoy the architectural challenges of designing a scalable & easy to maintain mobile setup

Your job will not be to just replicate desktop-stuff on mobile. It will be to think through how to architect our mobile offerings in a way that optimizes for the end-user experience on mobile, while also leveraging everything else we’ve built so far.

Our tech stack:

  • iOS, Android, React Native SDKs for mobile (although you’ll have a large impact in deciding our mobile stack and foundations)

  • Python / Django on the backend

  • Infrastructure on AWS

  • Typescript / React for web frontend

How you know if you’ll like it here:

We believe in creating an environment where every engineer can do their best work, unburdened by process or tools that get in the way. That means:

  • Working with people you admire

  • Lots of ownership

  • See your work shipped quickly

  • Grow professionally at an ambitious rate (and receive commensurate support)

  • Be bought into the strategy of what you’re working on

How we achieve this somewhat-buzzwordy-but-blissful state of affairs:

  • No hierarchy (we are very flat)

  • Diligently removing bad process (everyone on the team is expected to flag elements of our working rituals that seem unnecessary)

  • Few meetings

  • Transparency around strategy (why are we building what we’re building)

  • Clear career paths

  • Quarterly growth goals for each team member (built in collaboration with manager)

  • Regular team knowledge session

What will help you succeed:

  • Broad mobile expertise across ecosystems; it’s okay if you have an area of depth in a specific area (e.g., Android), but you’ll be responsible for mobile across everything

  • Strong technical background

  • 2+ years of full-time experience

  • SDK + library experience is a bonus

  • Startup experience or the equivalent in fast-paced small teams. We think this kind of experience is really critical to building the skills to be successful as a CommandBar engineer:

    • Ability to move mountains across the company to get your work shipped

    • Great problem solving skills (breaking a problem down into smaller parts, considering solutions to each, zooming out and assessing the whole plan and its weak points)

    • Working smart by prioritizing effectively, pushing to de-scope things that aren’t important, planning ahead, and identifying complexity early on vs. later

    • Appetite for ownership; both product and technical

    • Excellent communication skills; ability to communicate technical information at the right level of detail based on your audience. You’ll be working as part of our broader platform team