At Sprout Social we are building software that is made to last. Our 25,000+ customers rely on us daily to reliably connect them with their customers, so scalability and performance are top of mind. Sprout Social is used by companies like the Chicago Bulls, Sony Electronics, Indiana University, Make-a-Wish Foundation, Edelman and Subaru who rely on Sprout to create stronger relationships with their customers through social media.
Code quality is an essential ingredient to keeping our Platform flexible and rapidly reacting to changes in the market and social media networks. Our systems execute at scale while staying nimble enough to keep up with new capabilities being offered by social network APIs. Our team uses a variety of technologies, including Java, Python, MySQL, Cassandra, Hadoop, Elasticsearch, NSQ, Docker, and Kubernetes.
We do not operate as lone wolves or "10x devs." Instead, we're building diverse, collaborative teams that get the best results sustainably. Embedded as a member of one of our cross-functional engineering squads, you will be part of the day-to-day Agile development environment. Back-End developers work in tandem with Web developers, QA, Design, and management to drive our product initiatives to successful outcomes.
We're looking for a creative, collaborative, highly motivated, and inquisitive learner to build great software with us. If you confidently write web applications using Java and Python and are passionate about learning, we'd love to talk with you!
Qualifications
These are the minimum qualifications that our hiring team is looking for in this role:

• 1+ years experience developing and supporting software in a production environment

Additionally, these are the preferred qualifications that would indicate a particularly strong candidate:

• 2+ years experience programming in object oriented languages such as Java, C#, Python, or C++
• 1+ years experience developing and supporting scalable, distributed backend services
• 1+ years experience working with databases

Within 1 month, you will:

• Complete Sprout's New Hire training program alongside other new Sprout team members.
• Deploy and make changes to our production systems.
• Interact with SQL or NoSQL data stores and NSQ messaging queues.
• Collaborate regularly with product managers, QA engineers, and other product teams to deliver value to our users.
• Get regular team feedback on your work through code reviews and pairing.
• Log into our remote Linux servers and monitor the status of our services.

Within 3 months, you will:

• Work with your squad to create and prioritize quarterly team goals.
• Contribute to our Agile culture of continuous improvement through retrospective meetings and experimentation-oriented thinking.
• Build connections with members from other teams through guild meetings and chapter outings.
• Participate in technical design meetings with your teammates to walk through new feature ideas and system improvements.
• Work with product managers, UX developers, and front-end engineers to come up with the MVPs of new features.
• Be the first line of defense against product outages and bugs while on support duty.
• Maintain, scale, and build upon systems that handle hundreds of thousands of messages a day.

Within 6 months, you will:

• Create, deploy, and manage concurrent, distributed systems.
• Build your engineering skills by attending in-house presentations, workshops, and training sessions.
• Form a career growth plan with your manager and work towards it.
• Decompose work into small, similarly sized units so that estimation is unnecessary.
• Identify technical debt and performance bottlenecks within our systems, come up with a plan to improve the code, and get it pushed to production.

Within 12 months, you will:

• Integrate and use monitoring and alerting tools to know about problems before our users.
• Participate in architecture discussions with senior team members.
• Be "point person" on a project, including writing design documents, coordinating dependencies, and acting as domain owner.
• Actively mitigate risk of failed delivery and missed deadlines through courageous, transparent communication with colleagues and stakeholders throughout a project life cycle.
• Demonstrate ownership over the codebase, from design to maintenance and everything in between.

Of course, what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.
As part of our commitments to DEI and social impact, Sprout Social has partnered with the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) to offer college seniors the opportunity to apply for scholarships and interview for our full-time Associate Software Engineer opportunity. Qualified applicants for this role are also eligible to apply to this scholarship through our UNCF application portal, where you'll find more information about the program and eligibility requirements.
About Sprout Social
Sprout Social powers open communication between individuals, brands and communities through elegant, sophisticated software. We are relentless about solving hard problems for our customers and committed to both customer and team success. Our team's shared belief in Sprout's mission promotes a culture of openness, empowerment and fun.
We're proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product and culture. Our benefits program includes:

• Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families
• Progressive policies to support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave program
• High-quality and well-maintained equipment-your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
• Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and mental well-being of our team

• Ongoing education and development opportunities via our Grow@Sprout program, employee-led diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and mentorship programs for aspiring leaders
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members
• Beautiful, convenient and state-of-the-art offices in Chicago's Loop and downtown Seattle, for those who prefer an office setting

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. For those that prefer an office setting, this role may be based in our Chicago or Seattle locations. If you prefer to work from your home, we can accommodate that for many locations across the United States. We are not set up in all states, however, so please take a look at the drop down box in our application to see whether your state is listed.
Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and an Affirmative Action Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity-
race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our 2020 DEI Report.
If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at [email protected] and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. We'll do all we can to ensure you're set up for success during our interview process while upholding your privacy, including requests for accommodation. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.
For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement (3) Pay Transparency Statement.
When you apply for employment with Sprout Social, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our Privacy Policy. California residents have additional rights and should review the Additional Disclosures for California Residents section in our Privacy Policy.
Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law.