Software Engineer, Web Performance

San Francisco, CA, United States

About Us

We're on a mission to make it possible for every person, team, and company to be able to tailor their software to solve any problem and take on any challenge. Computers may be our most powerful tools, but most of us can't build or modify the software we use on them every day. At Notion, we want to change this with focus, design, and craft.

We've been working on this together since 2016, and have customers like Pixar, Mitsubishi, Figma, Plaid, Match Group, and thousands more on this journey with us. Today, we're growing fast and excited for new teammates to join us who are the best at what they do. We're passionate about building a company as diverse and creative as the millions of people Notion reaches worldwide.

Notion is an in-person company, and currently requires its employees to come to the office for two Anchor Days (Mondays & Thursdays) and requests that employees spend the majority of their week in the office (including a third day).

About The Role

The Web Infrastructure team’s mission is to own the foundation of Notion’s web-based clients and to empower engineers to build performant, scalable, and accessible product experiences within them. We’re striving for a Notion that is fast, resilient, and reliable on slow devices or with spotty connections. We’re currently using TypeScript and React and make heavy use of web technologies in all clients, including the desktop and mobile apps.

What You'll Do

Shape and Build: We’re running cross-company and cross-stack initiatives to make Notion faster. Recently, we’ve built things like:

A wasm build of Sqlite running in a web worker to cache records on the client

Lazy-loading abstractions to cut the size of our app bundle in half

“In the field” aggregate profiles using JavaScript’s self-profiling APIs

Lead the Industry: We want to give you the space and time to not just make Notion’s performance “acceptable” but truly redefine what a fast web application can look like.

Full-Stack Expertise: You'll engage with all layers of the stack, spanning server and client environments, utilizing technologies like AWS, Postgres, NodeJS, WebSockets, React etc. No part of the stack is off-limits: Working on performance comes with an “Access All Areas” pass. Innovative solutions to our performance problems might span the client, the backend, and the networking layer in-between.

What We're Looking For

You have 6+ years of engineering experience, including expertise in optimizing the performance of client-side JavaScript.

Impact Driven: You care about user impact and prioritize projects accordingly. You're not motivated to use new technologies on their own, but through careful analysis of their applicability to the problem at hand, taking into account long term implications of technical decisions.

Keen Problem Observer: Have a clear and accurate understanding of context and possess a sharp eye for identifying potential problems and risks both short term and long term.

Thoughtful Problem-solving: You seek to understand complex problems deeply in order to develop multiple solutions, from which you can articulate tradeoffs between user impact, timeline, scope, craft, and tech debt.

Clear and Empathetic Communication: You communicate nuanced ideas clearly, whether you're explaining technical decisions in writing or brainstorming in real time. In disagreements, you engage thoughtfully with other perspectives and work together to find agreeable outcomes.

Collaborative Team Member: You enjoy collaborating cross-functionally beyond team boundaries to accomplish shared goals. You care about learning, growing, and helping others to do the same.

Bonus Points

You have engaged critically with frameworks like React and maybe even developed some of your own abstractions.

You previously enabled those around you to build products with better performance - by building developer tooling, benchmarks in CI, or helpful documentation.

You've heard of computing pioneers like Ada Lovelace, Douglas Engelbart, Alan Kay, and others—and understand why we're big fans of their work.

We hire talented and passionate people from a variety of backgrounds because we want our global employee base to represent the wide diversity of our customers. If you’re excited about a role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every bullet point listed in the job description, we still encourage you to apply. If you’re a builder at heart, share our company values, and enthusiastic about making software toolmaking ubiquitous, we want to hear from you.

Notion is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or 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 characteristic. Notion considers qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Notion is also committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If you need assistance or an accommodation made due to a disability, please let your recruiter know.

Notion is committed to providing highly competitive cash compensation, equity, and benefits. The compensation offered for this role will be based on multiple factors such as location, the role’s scope and complexity, and the candidate’s experience and expertise, and may vary from the range provided below. For roles based in San Francisco or New York, the estimated base salary range for this role is $130,000 - $250,000 per year.

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