🚀 Senior Backend Engineer, Growth

ABOUT US Alpha is a product studio focused on the intersection of AI and consumer social — well-funded by a16z and many of the world's top investors. Our mission is to give everyone a life filled with rich and meaningful friendships. Our flagship product, Clubhouse, pioneered social audio and has created meaningful connections in 200+ countries. We believe voice is the most human form of connection, and AI is about to make it even more extraordinary — we’re well-positioned to lead the next frontier. We have a lean, high-impact, high-ownership team. We’re 100% remote, founder-led, and product-driven — with a huge, ambitious vision and the right team to make it happen. THE ROLE We’re hiring a Senior Backend Engineer (IC4) for our Growth squad on Clubhouse. Our mission is to get people into a room with their friends: more new users, more returning users and more first connections. We get there through fast experiments across invites, notifications, onboarding, reactivation and ranking. You’ll ship your first experiment within your first month. You’ll work closely with our founders, product, design and data science to: - Solve a dynamic set of user problems around the journeys of new and returning users - Ship experiments at speed - Improve our ranking algorithms and personalization models for content discovery and friend suggestions - Make every notification count with better targeting and frequency caps - Iteratively improve a legacy codebase while keeping an eye on long-term maintainability We are a fully remote company with a strong commitment to ensuring you will do great work here and have the best professional experience of your life. This role is open to candidates across the U.S. WHO YOU ARE - You’re experienced and curious. You have 4+ years of production backend experience in Python (or similar) with relational and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB). You’re comfortable working in a mature codebase and improving it as you go. - You’ve built growth systems. You’ve shipped notification targeting, invites, onboarding or reactivation flows for a consumer product. - You have a product mindset. You tie backend work to growth and engagement metrics and bring your own experiment ideas. You balance technical decisions with product outcomes. - You move quickly and iterate. You scope small MVPs, ship them behind a flag and read the results. You know what makes a result trustworthy (exposure logging, guardrail metrics) and balance speed with reliability. - You work well cross-functionally. You enjoy partnering closely with Product Managers, Designers and Data Scientists to shape hypotheses and act on results. You communicate tradeoffs clearly in writing. - You’re collaborative and low-ego. You evolve your thinking based on new data, seek the best solution regardless of ownership and contribute to a positive, inclusive team culture. - You build with AI. You use AI coding tools every day and keep PRs small enough to review quickly. WHAT YOU WILL DO - Build and ship experiments that get more people into rooms with their friends, across invites, notifications, onboarding, reactivation and ranking. Your work reaches millions of users. - Evolve our backend systems — balancing quick iteration with code health and scalability. - Collaborate closely with engineers, PMs, designers and data scientists to shape and deliver high-impact features. - Instrument and analyze experiments to inform the next iteration. - Advocate for simplicity — making thoughtful tradeoffs to ensure solutions are maintainable and measurable. - Own the experiment loop. Make tests faster to set up and safer to run, with clear guardrails. - Create something meaningful. Social products allow people to connect in ways that were never before possible. At Clubhouse, you’ll be figuring out something entirely new for the world — a positive product that brings people’s voices together to help everyone have a life filled with great friendships. If you are a talented, ambitious builder and think you might be a good fit, we'd love to talk. Our company is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or make any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, you may contact us at [email protected].