About Caribou 

At Caribou, we care about giving people financial freedom so they can focus on what’s most important to them. Today, less than two percent of Americans refinance their auto loans despite drastic increases in the cost of new and used cars. We see huge potential to help folks reduce their monthly auto expenses, as well as increase the predictability of those expenses over time. We do this by building technology to pair customers with community banks and credit unions, and ushering them through the process quickly. On average, our drivers save $115/month on their car loans while protecting their investment long term. 

Caribou is led by leaders from the technology, automotive, and finance industries. We’re proud to be backed by a great team of investors, including QED Investors, Goldman Sachs, Moderne Ventures, Accomplice, Link Ventures, Motley Fool Ventures and others.

About the Role

Caribou is looking for an experienced Tech / Team Lead that will be a hands-on leader of an engineering pod (two to five engineers) dedicated to a specific business domain.  You are someone that loves to build and deliver exceptional product experiences–for our partners, customers, and teammates in the contact center alike. You will directly lead one of our three product engineering pods and will play a key role in building the technology that will differentiate Caribou from its competition and enable it to scale.

In this role, you will…

  • Demonstrate total ownership of the delivery of the roadmap, partnering with your product and design peers to plan sprints, refine requirements, drive technical design, implementation, testing, deployment, and maintenance. 
  • Be accountable for the technical direction of your domain, including driving architectural design, providing code reviews, and delivering technical solutions that will lead to you + team building a robust, durable platform.
  • Develop a solid understanding of the business context / outcomes the team is seeking to deliver so that you can drive impact through the code your team creates.
  • Lead a team of two to five engineers and support / mentor others more broadly in the organization
  • Drive technical excellence by focusing on technical quality, stability, and resilience of the products and systems you support.
  • Be a hands-on contributor to the code base at least 50% of the time.

This role can be based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland or our Caribou offices in Washington, DC and Denver, CO. Alternatively, this role may work remotely from a state where Caribou operates*. 

This role will require attendance at occasional in-person team meetings at one of our offices.

About You

You, like us, are driven to achieve your goals. At Caribou, we have just three core values: Give a damn. Velocity. Make the assist. We’re motivated. We race towards our goals. And we help each other along the way. 

You have:

  • 10+ years of relevant experience building, leading, architecting, and scaling full-stack Ruby on Rails applications.
  • Technical leadership with proven experience to lead project teams, set technical direction and strategy, and work cross-functionally with Product, Design, and other parts of the business. 
  • Ability to influence team testing strategy and advocates for use of best practices Understands the testing pyramid and advocates for and applies appropriate test coverage at each layer (unit, integration, and e2e)
  • Ability to provide constructive feedback to engineers during design review, active programming, code review, and deployment by combining experience and industry best practices with Caribou's current needs.
  • Passion for software engineering with high standards of craftsmanship (high quality, low tech debt, low maintenance cost etc.)
  • Ability to solve problems as a participant in a robust PDLC (and has opinions on ways to improve it!)
  • Strong communication skills, with the ability to provide feedback and collaborate with a variety of stakeholders within the Product & Tech teams.

Technologies we use:

  • Ruby on Rails, Typescript, Node
  • Postgres, Cloud Pub/Sub
  • Harness CI/CD
  • GCP Cloud Platform

Our interview process consists of (4) steps including:

  • At-home coding assessment (git/bash & Ruby)
  • Recruiter Interview 
  • Hiring Manager Interview
  • Final Interview Loop:
    • Product & Business Domain Knowledge
    • System Design & Rails Assessment Code Review
    • Leadership Interview

How we will take care of you

Everyone at Caribou is a valued team member. Our compensation and benefits package includes: 

  • Competitive compensation: $170-210k
  • Equity options
  • 401k savings program
  • Generous paid time off including: Flexible Time Off (FTO) for all employees and 100% paid parental leave for all parents.
  • Robust wellness benefits including company-paid plans for health, dental, vision, mental health, disability and basic life insurance.
  • Optional benefits to suit your individual circumstances such as HSAs, FSAs, supplemental life and medical insurance, and pet insurance.
  • Up to $1,000 per year for eligible professional development expenses.
Our Core Values

We come from all walks of life and are joined together by our shared values, which guide our work and how we work together. 

  • Give a damn. What we’re doing matters. We show up determined to deliver results, and we love it.
  • Velocity. We’re intentional about where we’re going and we race towards it.  
  • Make the assist. We have diverse strengths. We offer and ask for help so we all win.  

Caribou is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, marital status, military or protected veteran status, genetics, or any other characteristic protected by law. This position is not restricted solely to the responsibilities listed above, and the scope and responsibilities are subject to change. A pre-employment background check is required as a condition of employment.

*Caribou does not currently have employee operations in AL, AK, AR, CT, HI, ID, IN, IA, KY, MS, MT, NE, NM, ND, OK, RI, SD, WV, WY.

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