Senior Frontend Engineer

Our mission

Polar is a learning and knowledge management tool aiming to democratize education. Two major issues with education are a lack of strong digital tools and a steep gradient between advanced and emerging locations. With Polar, we want to lower those barriers for anyone to receive a strong education. While solving this problem is bigger than only what Polar is offering, we strongly believe that one of the foundations to solve this is a tool that can be used by anybody in their education - be it around reading, note taking, memorizing information, automating and simplifying learning, or collaborating with others.

Our culture

We are a remote-first startup. We initially founded the startup in SF but moved fully remote in late 2019. At Polar, we're building a culture of mutual trust, openness, and strong ownership by each individual.
We are still a small team and you are one of our very first hires. This means, you joining us is a crucial decision. Based on our previous startup experience, we have a very clear idea what kind of startup we want to build. We want to make sure that this vision is in line with your ideal work place. In addition, we are looking to hire for the long-term. We are only interested in candidates who share our passion for education, our vision of democratizing education, and how we can get there as a team. We strongly respect your work life balance but we are looking for someone who is passionate about the product and role, not just another 9-5 job. We want someone whose incentives are aligned with ours and who is as passionate about building an early stage startup as we are. We are funded right now and plan to raise a round next year.

Position overview

Our ideal candidate has a strong background in frontend development, a fullstack interest, and preferably some AI experience.

Specifically:

• Min 5 years of frontend experience - Javascript, React, React Native, PWAs, NodeJS
• Decent understanding of developing on phone, mobile, and desktop
• Understanding of web browser internals and modern APIs (service workers, PWAs, offline, etc)
• Experience with Typescript and Firebase preferred
• Experience with PDFs or EPUBs big plus
• Strong preference for previous startup experience
• Analytical thinking. Deep respect for the scientific method and objective data analysis**

Your challenge

Since we are a very small startup, your role will be more than just being one engineer in a big team. You will have major responsibilities from day 1. We provide hands-on mentorship and expect you to bring in best practices from your previous experiences. This includes making autonomous decisions, being clear and decisive about communication, and being a team player.

Screening criteria

We screen candidates across various facets. Technically, we want to see a strong set of hard skills and competent decision making. Culturally, we look for candidates who are confident yet humble, decisive yet open to others' opinions, and someone who wants to build a large vision as part of a long-term team.
To ensure a good team fit, the first two month is typically conducted as a probationary period. We want to make sure that you are the right fit for us but also that we are the right fit for you.

Details about working cadence

• We are a fully remote team and do not track working hours. You will only be judged on what you deliver, not face time
• We have a basic vacation policy in place which includes paid days off, all public holidays off, and more. Details will be shared once you pass all screening criteria
• Salary is determined differently for each candidate based on various criteria, incl. seniority, location, and performance. However, the main criteria by far is your performance. Your salary is reviewed on a regular basis
• Similarly, your role and responsibilities are reviewed on a regular basis. As we expect to grow significantly in the future, you can expect opportunities to grow with us as well
• When you join us, we put together a development plan for every new joiner to ensure you continue developing professionally

About us

We are a team of two founders with over 35 years of combined experience in startups, tech, growth, and business.

• Kevin is founder and focused on development and product. He recently sold his last startup. Polar is his fourth startup. He is also one of the inventors of RSS
• Jonathan is founder and focused on product and growth. He received his PhD from Yale and worked at BCG (management consulting) for five years before founding Polar

We also already hired three extremely driven and talented engineers on our team. As part of the interview process, you will have a chance to meet some of the team members to get a better idea of the team yourself.

We are SF and Boulder-based but are building a remote-first team. Your location is of secondary importance but we do need at least 4-5 hours of overlap to work effectively with you.

We aim to build a very relaxed company culture and are implementing various methods from our previous experiences in startups and consulting for that. We also have a Podcast called “Minimally Viable” where we discuss anything related to early-stage startups.

We are looking to fill this role as soon as possible, and are hiring on a rolling basis. We’re looking forward to your application!