CommandBar

Magical widget that makes any software way easier to use

Fullstack engineer

$140K - $200K
Location
San Francisco / Remote
Job Type
Full-time
Experience
3+ years
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Vinay Ayyala
Vinay Ayyala
Founder

About the role

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 GustoHashicorpNetlifyFreshworks, 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 $140,000 to $200,000.

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

Fullstack engineer @ CommandBar

Our customers rely on CommandBar to deliver a reliable and delightful experience for their end users. As a Fullstack 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.

Our tech stack:

  • Python / Django for backend services
  • Typescript / React on the frontend
  • Infrastructure on AWS

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:

  • Strong technical background
  • 2+ years of industry experience
  • Broad base of technical skills including React, Typescript, and Python
  • 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

Do I need any specific knowledge / frameworks?

We’re currently staffing our teams with fullstack engineers; none of us specialize. Being generalists has allowed end-to-end ownership of large projects; at our size and scale this has enabled us to move quickly.

However, we do organize into 3 sub-teams that have different spikes and own different areas of our product. If you spike as a product-oriented engineer, a backend or infrastructure engineer, or as an AI-passionate (or AI-curious!) engineer, you’ll gravitate towards a role in the team where you can spend most of your time in your zone of genius.

About CommandBar

Our goal at CommandBar is to improve how software works for everyone. We build a widget that any software company can embed in their app to enhance user experience, making it easier and faster for users to get stuff done.

We serve millions of end users monthly and work with customer-obsessed companies like ClickUp, Gusto, Netlify, AngelList, Shortcut, OneSignal, and many others. We're proudly backed by Thrive Capital, YCombinator, BoxGroup, and world-class angels.

CommandBar
Founded:2020
Team Size:22
Location:San Francisco
Founders
Vinay Ayyala
Vinay Ayyala
Founder
James Evans
James Evans
Founder
Richard Freling
Richard Freling
Founder