Facet? Looking for Software Engineer – Backend at California, United States Full Time

Facet’s backend services power our users’ essential creative processes. Facet relies on these services at almost every stage of the editing workflow: converting and serving user images, efficiently rendering batches of high-res images for export, performing ML-based image analysis and synthesis, and providing seamless collaboration and commenting on shared documents.

You would be responsible for extending these services to serve new product requirements, and ensuring that they remain fast and stable in the face of growing user demand. The quality of Facet’s user experience depends critically on the availability and responsiveness of our backend, so you will need to consider how design and implementation affect the entire product experience. It’s also the case that creative work can translate into “creative” API usage patterns, so graceful degradation in unexpected edge cases is important too.

This role represents an unusual opportunity to use your skill at optimization and scaling to bring more creativity, expression, and beauty into the world – we hope we’ll be hearing from you.

Requirements

• Professional experience building and maintaining complex backends with queues and multiple services.
• Demonstrated ability to propose effective solutions, implement them quickly, and iterate on them in response to feedback.
• Aptitude for clearly communicating difficult technical concepts.
• Empathy for the designers, artists, and the visual creative workers who will be using our product.

Responsibilities

• Scale Facet’s backend architecture to meet both user demand and new product requirements.
• Be ruthless about latency and performance; Facet is integral to our users’ professional work.
• Roll out new internal tooling to improve internal stakeholder and developer experience.
• Use tools including Typescript, Node, Express, Postgres, GraphQL, and Terraform to build fast, scalable APIs and processing pipelines.

Added plus: personal or professional exposure to photography, video creators, production or post-production including VFX and editing.

Facet benefits

• Competitive salary and equity.
• Paid parental leave for primary or secondary caregivers.
• Three weeks paid vacation.
• Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance and OneMedical membership.
• Build your own work environment: customize your laptop and desk setup with any peripheral or accessory you’d like.
• Order any work-related books on the company’s Amazon account.
• Flexible working hours: we have daily team stand-ups, but we understand if you work better when you’re not tethered to your desk.
• Relocation assistance.
• Yearly stipend for learning and development.
• Commuter benefits including a monthly ride-sharing stipend.

About Facet

Facet powers visual storytelling at scale through creative and supportive AI. Create stunning visuals with our AI-driven, project-based photo editor. Designed from the ground up to rethink the process of photorealistic editing, Facet lets you edit, collaborate, and create in a brand new way. ‘AI-driven’ means that Facet sees a photo like you see a photo – as a picture instead of pixels – so you can edit intuitively. A project-based file structure means that when you edit one photo your edits apply instantaneously to your whole project – whether that’s tens, hundreds, or thousands of photos. Bring stakeholders into your file to comment and collaborate simultaneously – or export your edits and apply them to a new project or share with a collaborator. Surf through styles and unlock new visual directions with non-destructive editing and an infinite history embedded within your layers. Whether you’re an artist, content editor, or brand manager, Facet gives you the tools you need to streamline your process, so you can go wherever your creativity takes you.

Facet is being used by thousands of creatives around the world. You can see examples of their work on Instagram and Behance. Facet is backed by Accel Partners and a diverse group of designers, product thinkers, and AI luminaries from Google Brain, Salesforce, and FAIR.

Working with us

Consensus goals, independent execution. We value collaboration on goal setting and technical/company direction while giving individuals latitude and ownership over how these goals are achieved.

Decathlon, not a sprint. Creative AI is a rapidly blooming space, so we need to move quickly to build product and grow our market. We all juggle multiple roles and we’re in it for the long haul. At the same time, we understand downtime is important. We don’t have an explicit vacation policy, but unlike other startups we expect you to gauge your level of stress and take one when you need it.

Sane experimentation. We’re exploring new territory and building a new product category. We need to experiment and try new things while maintaining a stable foundation for our future work. Our product should make the world better, and we shouldn’t break anything we’re not sure we can fix. Facet is partnering with artists and designers to develop a powerful, ethical approach to our technology, democratizing artistic expression in a safe, responsible way.

Creative + technical. Facet is about making technology a partner in the creative process. We enjoy product design, engineering, and research—but also photography, music, art, and cooking.

Diverse backgrounds. We’re solving a completely new problem and need a diverse set of viewpoints and voices to fully understand its scope and extent. We’re building a company and culture that can responsibly and respectfully integrate a plurality of voices.

Tea and baked goods. We’re really into tea and baking & think these are good things.

Why join us?

• AI for creative tools is something we at Facet believe very deeply in—as machine perception improves, we’re truly at the cusp of a renaissance in new tools for visual artists.
• Facet is something that has the potential to become a huge independent powerhouse, making creative work easier and more accessible for folks of all stripes, and we’re the right team for this problem.
• We are highly technical and we are backed by AI and product experts from Google Brain, Salesforce Metamind and FAIR. Joe founded two successful companies prior to Facet: Metamarkets was acquired by Snap and Premise has expanded to provide basic income and data services to underserved communities in over 30 different countries. Matt has deep expertise in computer graphics and machine learning, and previously led the engineering team at Operator.
• As a member of the founding team, you’ll have a significant influence on our product and we’re top 1% in equity compensation for our early employees. We’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to write and rewrite a ton of code, and we’re going to struggle with product direction and market development. We’re being upfront because above all else we value honest communication and collaboration. There is no other way to successfully navigate a seed stage business. By working together, we can go farther, faster, and accomplish more than any of us could by ourselves.