Tech Lead / Principal Engineer

About Us:

The wholesale distribution industry is ready for a revolution, and Proton is leading the charge. The world relies on distributors to sell nearly every physical product, but despite its massive contribution to the global economy, this industry has been left behind in terms of technology. Proton is changing that. With AI-powered sales software, we’re breaking through the complexity of selling millions of products and making it easier for distributors to anticipate customer needs. Our mission is to bring the distribution industry into the modern age and the results speak for themselves. Distributors using Proton see 10x ROI, faster new hire ramp-up, and happier sales teams.

In 2022, we raised a $20M Series A backed by Felicis Ventures (investors in Twitch, Shopify, Opendoor, and many others) and Battery Ventures. This year, we’re laser-focused on driving customer growth. If you’re excited about the opportunity to wear multiple hats, and continuously learn and experiment, now’s the time to join the Proton team.

The Role:

Proton is looking for an experienced Tech Lead / Principal Engineer (full stack) to join our fast-growing SaaS team! Reporting directly to the Director of Engineering, the Tech Lead / Principal Engineer will drive the technical development of the Proton.ai product and platform. In this role, you will take ownership of our architectural vision (both backend and frontend), lead major feature design and development, guide our tech stack choices and work with the engineering team to help us build a scalable, customizable, performant and secure application.

We're looking for someone technical with a deep understanding and curiosity of modern tech stacks and systems that will help us choose and implement solutions that benefit the future of our engineering.  

Proton collaborates with Oyster HR to hire international employees as full time (long term) contractors within our company. 

Gross Salary range is $80,000 - $140,000  USD annually, based on experience level. 

 

What you’ll do: 

• Architectural Leadership: Lead the design and development of the architectural framework that underpins our platform. Ensure it aligns with our strategic objectives and future growth.
• Feature Development:  Spearhead the backend and frontend coding of new features while helping the Product team understand complexity and tradeoffs.  Developing across the entire full stack of our product, driving features from idea to production and rapidly delivering value to our customers that makes a real impact.  
• Team Collaboration: Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including software engineering, infrastructure, backend, frontend, and devops, to provide architectural guidance, making sure the stack decisions being made support our future growth. 
• Infrastructure Enhancement: Champion initiatives to improve system infrastructure, streamline deployments, database decisions, and establishing a well thought-out environment that will scale along our business.
• Build vs. Buy Decisions: Evaluate and advise on build versus buy decisions, leveraging your experience to make informed choices that align with our objectives.
• Enterprise Customizability: Leverage your experience with enterprise applications to tailor our solutions to the unique needs of our corporate customers. Drive product architecture decisions to enhance configurability, ensuring a smooth experience for our diverse enterprise clientele.
• Performance and Reliability: Share your expertise in building high-performance, reliable applications, contributing to end-to-end architecture and data flow discussions.

 You'll be a great fit for this role if: 

• Proven experience as a principal engineer or similar in startup environments, with a focus on building scalable SaaS solutions.  7+ years of experience building and deploying scalable SaaS applications
• 3+ years of experience with backend technologies preferably Python or Go, but C# or Java are acceptable
• Experience with a modern frontend technology including, React, Angular, or Vue.js ( our primary framework)
• Track record of successful product architecture decisions and system improvements with a large focus on secure coding practices and standards to meet the needs of enterprise class customers and their data.
• Deep understanding of cloud-native technologies and concepts such as cloud providers, databases, application performance, scalability and security
• Curiosity for new technologies. You’re someone who actively seeks to stay informed about the latest frameworks, software advancements, and tools utilized by industry peers. You like contrasting and comparing technologies to find why one fits better for certain use-cases than the other. 
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and familiarity with modern development practices
• Experience with enterprise applications is highly preferred.
• Exceptional communication skills for conveying complex technical concepts to diverse stakeholders.

Current Tech Stack

Backend

• Python Sanic Framework

Frontend 

• Vue.js/Nuxt.js Vue v3 
• Docker and kubernetes to deploy 
• Our web app is currently 97.5% Javascript, 2.0% CSS, and 0.5% HTML. 

Mobile 

• React Native 0.73

While we have a well-established tech stack, we welcome highly skilled developers who are passionate about learning and expanding their skill set. Don't have experience with everything listed here, but eager to learn? If so, we encourage you to apply!

Benefits:

• Competitive Salaries + Company Stock Options - we want to pay you well (and equitably!) and make you feel like an owner.  
• Flexible Schedule - we think high levels of autonomy, responsibility, and working asynchronously foster an amazing workplace.
• Biannual Company Paid Off-sites - time for us to be together, brainstorm, and make magic happen.