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Application Team

Frequently Asked Questions

How did Smartleaf respond to the pandemic?
  • The application team drafted a team agreement the day before we went remote so that we were clear on the ways that we committed to working together.
  • Fortunately, the entire engineering department already had the ability to work remotely and most were working from home one day a week.  That allowed us to have a very smooth transition.
  • Everyone was able to expense the equipment they needed to work comfortably from home.
  • We have checked in every few months to keep track of people’s comfort levels as the situation changed (as it continues to do).
  • Since the pandemic began we successfully onboarded 9 new colleagues entirely remotely.
What is the composition of the team?
  • The application team drafted a team agreement the day before we went remote so that we were clear on the ways that we committed to working together.
  • Fortunately, the entire engineering department already had the ability to work remotely and most were working from home one day a week.  That allowed us to have a very smooth transition.
  • Everyone was able to expense the equipment they needed to work comfortably from home.
  • We have checked in every few months to keep track of people’s comfort levels as the situation changed (as it continues to do).
  • Since the pandemic began we successfully onboarded 9 new colleagues entirely remotely.
What work does the team do?

This is a representative sampling of past and planned projects for the team:

  • Designing and implementing new endpoints to extend our existing API
  • Measuring and optimizing performance of API endpoints to meet our 1-3 year objectives.  We aim to double our current capacity in the next year.
  • Designing the next version of our API
  • Measuring and improving performance of actions within our existing application
  • Design and implementation of new investment management workflows
What is expected of a senior engineer role here?
  • You set a good standard of quality in the work that you produce, including code, tests and documentation.  
  • You are able and willing to undertake exploratory projects and research and prototype new technical approaches as necessary.  You can bootstrap yourself to learn new skills.
  • You can dive into “messy” projects and organize them into a form that allows us to understand the core problems and productively formulate options
  • You are proactive about clarifying and communicating.  You are able to distill complex discussions into clear statements that help us make progress.  You have good verbal and written communication skills and are able to communicate effectively with different audiences including developers, product managers, designers and QA staff
  • As a participant, you enrich group discussions by proposing and exploring options. You are able to accept tradeoffs, and you know that both technical and business requirements play a role.
  • You can facilitate group discussion and effectively guide the team to understanding and/or decisions as necessary.
  • You are willing to engage 1-on-1 with peers and junior colleagues to mentor and learn from each other.
  • You are mindful of your colleagues during group interactions and set a good example of courtesy and respect.
What do we expect of everyone?
  • You follow good process in your own work; you also know you are not an island and you are willing to work with the process that helps the team as a whole, even if it’s not your first choice.
  • You are responsible for managing your own productivity.  You know how you learn, you know when you are in trouble, and you can proactively seek input and clarification before things become a problem.
  • You have basic presentation skills and are able to walk the group through technical concepts and proposed functionality.  We all take turns presenting team status and demonstrating work in progress during company meetings.  Everyone should be able to run any team meeting.
  • When you learn something new, you can teach it to the rest of the team
  • You are willing to help with the tasks that keep the team running, such as bug triage, organizing hiring, etc.. We expect everyone, regardless of seniority, to roll up their sleeves and do what needs to be done. 
  • You are able to participate in calls with engineering staff outside the company to clarify requirements and provide support to our partners.
What’s the onboarding process?

We have a developer onboarding curriculum that will walk you through the basic building blocks of the application.  In addition you will spend about 4 hour-long sessions learning about who our users are and how we fit into our clients’ workflow.  

Beyond the basics, we expect you to take responsibility for your continued learning:  search Confluence, read the code, talk to your teammates.

For an experienced engineer, we expect that:

  • You’ll be contributing small fixes and features to our codebase within the week
  • You will contribute to team discussion and decision-making from day 1
  • Within 2 weeks:
    • You’ll be finished with the onboarding exercises (and you will have made them better for the people who come after you).
    • You will be an active contributor to our 2-week sprints
  • Within a month you are essentially independent.  That doesn’t mean you know everything; it does mean that you are proactive and exercise good judgement about clarifying, communicating status and seeking help so that the entire team can make good progress even as you continue to learn.