We are looking for an exceptional software engineer to join our team. Academia.edu has a very engineer-driven culture. We describe below how we think about our culture, and also the qualities of the person we want to join us.

What professional qualities do we admire?

• Exceptional engineering: innovation at the cutting edge of web development to overcome the complex challenges that can arise.
• Obsession with product and user experience: obsession with creating a great product, and a great user experience. Feeling anguish and pain when the site is slow, or when a user interface or feature is bad, and pleasure when the site is fast and intuitive.
• Problem-solving: intellectual satisfaction from solving problems. Finding the best and quickest solution to the problem the team is currently working on.
• Technical ambition: pushing the boundaries of the technologies we work with. For example, when thinking about the best UI for a feature, having no fear in considering creating a new JavaScript framework, if that is what is required to make it work right.
• Finishing: finishing products and deploying code. Believing that exceptional engineering, combined with exceptional creativity, are what makes a startup succeed.
• Versatility: comfort with tweaking a CSS style or optimizing a SQL query all in the same morning
• Ability to prioritize features: being able to look at a ton of possible features on a whiteboard, add more to the mix, and then choose which one has the highest priority
• Being thoughtful about productivity: thinking about what working environments and structures ensure optimal productivity. Ensuring that the right environment and structures are in place for everyone.
• Dedication: willingness to get up at 4am to restart the servers, and then build something the next day so the servers don’t go down again
• Personal investment in what we work on: caring personally about the impact of our work on people around the world

What personal qualities do we admire?

• Independent thought: being able to learn from people around us when we need to, and also challenge them when they need to be challenged
• Being inquisitive: thinking of ways of improving things that we interact with
• Creativity: being able to develop new ideas for the product and enhance the vision of the company
• Passion for the Academia.edu vision: passion for building a platform that could change the way that research is shared and discovered
• Keenness to have an impact on the world around you: keenness to be the one to build the platform behind Academia.edu. The possibility of positively improving the lives of millions of people via what we build is very exciting for us.
• Being visionary: thinking ‘What will the world look like in 10 years’ time, and how can we build that now?’

Experience

What is most important, by far, is that you are a quick learner who can discover and pick up new techniques fast.

• Web development: you have 2+ years of web development experience
• Full stack: you have experience designing and implementing the full stack of a web application: sysadmin, database implementation and optimization, application development, front-end CSS, HTML and JavaScript.
• Scaling: ideally you have some experience scaling an application to deal with an increasing user base. This is not essential though.

Here are some of the technologies that we work with:

• Ruby on Rails
• ActionScript 3
• Jquery
• Nginx
• PostgreSQL
• HAProxy
• Mongrel
• Memcached
• Scribd/iPaper API
• Facebook Connect

You should be comfortable finding the right tools for the job while becoming great at whatever tool you're using. Experience with Rails is a plus, but far more important is your ability to pick up new technologies quickly.

What are we offering?

• The chance to build an awesome product that could revolutionize research
• The chance to work with a fun and intellectually inquisitive team

We also offer some nice benefits! You will get a market salary and stock options. We want to hire someone exceptional, and we want to be generous with stock options to make this happen.

In addition, you will also get:

• health insurance
• any ergonomic chair of your choosing
• a laptop with two huge monitors
• a smartphone (iPhone/BlackBerry/Nexus One)

Where is the job based?

The job is based in San Francisco. We will help with visas and other issues relating to re-location.

How do I apply?

If you are interested to learn more, please email Richard Price at richard--at--academia.edu.

To make your application stand out, please sign up to Academia.edu, and let us know what you think of the site:

• what is good about the user experience, and what is bad
• what features we have that you think are good, and which are bad, or which are missing

If you are not affiliated with a university, you can sign up as an independent researcher. Please be as detailed as possible in your comments on the site.