Backend Software Engineer, Parse.ly

Parse.ly, a part of WordPress VIP, is the real-time content measurement layer for the entire web. Our analytics platform helps digital WordPress VIP storytellers at some of the web’s best sites, such as Arstechnica, The New Yorker, TechCrunch, Wired, The Intercept, Slate, and many more. In total, our analytics system handles over 65 billion monthly events from over 1 billion monthly unique visitors. Parse.ly and WordPress VIP are part of Automattic, the people behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, Simplenote, Jetpack, Longreads, Day One, PocketCasts, and more, with a mission to make the web a better place. 

About the Role

We’re looking for talented backend engineers to join Parse.ly’s backend engineering team. We currently make use of data engineering technologies like Apache Spark, Storm, Kafka, and Elasticsearch to analyze large datasets. As a Backend Software Engineer at Parse.ly, you will be expected to master these technologies, while also being able to write code against them in Python.

Our team is responsible for providing a real-time analytics infrastructure that processes over 2 million page views per minute from over 5,000 high-traffic sites. It operates a fleet of cloud servers that include thousands of cores for live data processing. We have written publicly about mage, our time series analytics engine. This will give you an idea about the kinds of systems we work on.

As an experienced Backend Software Engineer, you will help us expand our reach into petabyte-scale data analysis—while ensuring consistent uptime, provable reliability, and top-rated performance of our backend streaming data systems.

We believe in just the right amount of process – enough to keep things efficient, but not so much that it stifles creativity. We're all about empowerment and autonomy, giving you the freedom to make meaningful decisions and own your work. Egos? Not our style. We value collaboration, respect, and working together towards shared goals. Trust is huge here; we believe in open communication and transparency every step of the way. When you join us, you're not just a team member, you're part of a group committed to supporting each other and achieving great things together.

Responsibilities

What you’ll do

For this role, you should already be a senior Python programmer who wants to work with data at scale. Below are some of the key things this role will involve: 

• Write Python code using standard methodologies. See The Elements of Python Style, written by our founding CTO, for an example of our approach to code readability and design.
• Analyze data at an extensive scale. You need to be comfortable with the idea of your code running across 3,000 Python cores, thanks to process-level parallelization.
• Brainstorm new product ideas and directions with the team and customers. You need to be a good communicator, especially in written form.
• Master cloud technologies and systems. You should love UNIX and be able to reason about distributed systems. A favorite book of yours might be Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA).
• Participate in the team’s on-call rotation.

Parse.ly Backend Technology Stack

We currently adopt the following technologies across the Parse.ly platform:

• Python & JavaScript.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Databases like Elasticsearch, Redis, Cassandra, and Postgres.
• Frameworks like Django, FastAPI, and the PyData stack (e.g. Pandas).
• Kafka, Storm, Spark in production atop large data sets (terabytes per day).
• System management with Ansible, Terraform, and Nomad.
• Containerized workloads and services.

Requirements

• Strong knowledge of Python.
• Commitment to clean coding practices.
• Excitement to work with large-scale data systems (petabyte scale).
• Understanding and interest in building and working on distributed systems.
• Experience with databases (Elasticsearch, Redis, Cassandra, PostgreSQL).
• Strong written communication skills.
• Comfortable with on-call rotations.