Sports Reference LLC is searching for a Senior Software Engineer to design, build, and test software for our 8 websites. The Engineering team currently has 16 team members consisting of developers, testers, DevOps, and project managers. Sports Reference currently serves a still growing 20m monthly users through our Reference sites and our SaaS business line at Stathead.com.

Our sites are used worldwide every day by professionals and non-professionals alike. They are: Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Hockey-Reference.com, SR/College Football, SR/College Basketball, FBref.com, Stathead.com, and Immaculate-Grid.com.

Background

In this role, you will help design, build, and test complex, high-visibility technical projects for Engineering. You will help us migrate our platform to a serverless architecture capable of supporting several websites and potentially a mobile app. You will also help us maintain our existing websites and architecture.

To Apply

Please visit our jobs website at https://sports-reference-llc.breezy.hr/ and submit your resume and a cover letter for this position. In your cover letter, describe your experience and why you think you would be a great fit for this role. We will begin the phone interview process the week of February 26, 2024. Applications arriving after this date will be collected but will receive consideration at the discretion of the hiring manager based on the progress we have made in filling the position. We have provided a general outline of our interview process here: https://www.sports-reference.com/job-interview-process.html

Our Purpose and Values

We democratize data, so our users enjoy, understand, and share the sports they love.

We value:

Respect for our users, the athletes we cover, and our team;
Craftsmanship in building tools and products;
Reliable tools and services that meet our users’ needs every day; and
Data democratization. We publish many data sets for emerging and underserved sports. For instance, the New York Times covered our recognition of the Negro Leagues as major leagues in the summer of 2021.

To meet these expectations, we encourage team members to participate in company discussions and share new ideas, features or potential solutions to problems.

Goals and Tasks for Your First Year (In rough order of importance)

Must-Reach Goals and Tasks

Produce high-quality results by contributing heavily to large projects, such as our migration to Serverless, migrating our front end code stack to a more modern framework, improving our data ingestion pipelines, and potentially building a mobile app (or preparing to build one by creating an API-based integration capable of supporting a mobile app)
Actively own features or systems and define their long-term health, while also improving the health of surrounding systems
Assist our skilled support and operations teams in triaging and resolving production issues
Write understandable, testable code with an eye towards maintainability and performance

Nice-to-Reach Goals and Tasks

Help define large projects within Engineering by creating technical options, working collaboratively within the Engineering team to find the best solution for Sports Reference
Help review and implement processes around security and compliance

Qualifications and Skills

Evidence that you are capable of meeting many of the goals listed above
A proven track record of working on large, technically complex projects through to completion
Ability and desire to work on a collaborative team
Assist with defining and driving our team’s technology vision and roadmap
Willingness to work in the platform as-is, while being part of a multi-year team effort to rebuild several key components of the platform
Deep understanding of Computer Science fundamentals and distributed system architecture
Self-directed and capable of working effectively in a highly innovative and fast-paced environment
Deep understanding of best practices for the full software development life cycle (SDLC), including coding standards, code review, source control, build, test, deploy, and operations
Experience in writing, debugging, and optimizing SQL
Able to write code in at least one programming language
If you don’t think your application will have evidence that you can meet all of the ’nice-to-reach goals and tasks’ above but still are interested in the job and otherwise qualify, please apply. Nobody checks every box—we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others

Salary

Salary range starting at $95k for U.S. based employees. We are a remote-first company and determine our pay range for this position based on the market rates for Philadelphia, our home base. The salary offered will be based on your experience and skill level.

For candidates outside of the United States, we will calculate a local market rate based on pay for comparable positions in that market and comparable benefits packages when possible.

Annual bonuses are variable and are tied to a percentage of the company’s end of year profits and the employee’s time worked and salary earned during the year. In the last three years, they have averaged 15% of annual salary.

Benefits

Even though we are a small company, Sports Reference has a generous benefits package.

The total value of our benefits package is up to $30,000.
We cover full health and dental insurance costs for full-time employees and their dependent children. We cover 70%-80% of plans for an entire family.
We have a 401k with a match on your contributions up to 4% of your base salary. The 401k has many low cost investing options.
We pay all premiums for company-sponsored life and long-term disability insurance for all employees.
We provide up to $7,000/year in continuing education benefits.
Even if you live in or near Philly, you have the option to work remotely as much as you choose. We generally work a standard workday, but with flexibility to flex hours within that framework.
Any parent welcoming a new child to their family is entitled to 13 weeks of fully paid leave and up to an additional 26 weeks at half-time.
Employees begin with 18 days of PTO per year and an additional 8 paid company holidays and accrue sick leave at the rate of one day per month.
We will generally buy you whatever equipment will make you the most productive.
We typically will pay for reasonable moving-related expenses related to your acceptance of a position with Sports Reference. Please ask if you have any questions related to this benefit.
We provide a $50/month remote work stipend to cover the cost of internet access and incidental expenses.
For employees outside of the United States, we will work to provide equivalent benefits or additional compensation.