Engineering FAQ

Want to learn more about Privy's Engineering team? We've compiled a list of questions you may have if you're considering a career with us, or just want to get to know us a little more.

What's your stack?

• Languages: Ruby, Javascript
• Frameworks: Ruby on Rails, React + Redux
• Databases: PostgreSQL, Redis, Mongo DB, Influx, Amazon RDS
• Infrastructure: Heroku, AWS
• Testing: RSpec, Jest, React Testing Library, Enzyme
• Release management: LaunchDarkly

What's your day-to-day process like?

• We are organized into agile development teams of 3-5 engineers focused on specific areas of responsibility.
• We work closely with product and design to identify problems and define solutions, and then commit to getting it done. An engineer's daily responsibilities include writing code, reviewing pull requests, responding to reviewer feedback. This will be interspersed with reading/listening to customer feedback, writing and reviewing design documents, and responding to feedback from architects and product designers.
• A typical week includes daily standups (~15 minutes), a Wednesday product development team all-hands (30-60 minutes), a manager 1v1, and occasionally an architecture review or product lunch-and-learn. We do a sprint planning session and retrospective every 2 weeks.
• We do continuous integration and deployment. Builds take 5 minutes, deploys take 11 minutes.
• Our test coverage is about 84%.

What is the benefit of Privy to end-users?

Privy helps merchants own their marketing relationship with their customers. Privy's campaigns include customized website displays (popups, landing pages, spin-to-win forms), triggered emails, newsletters, and even SMS messages.

Building marketing software on top of portable and open standards like email and SMS mitigates the influence of internet gatekeepers and toll booths like Facebook, with all the attendant market concentration and privacy risks that follow. And helping entrepreneurs succeed online is hard, but valuable: we think the world is a better place if our options for shopping aren't just Amazon and Walmart.

How do you approach technical debt?

We understand that deprecating and regularly refactoring code is part of software development. We prioritize and encourage efforts to modernize our apps. One such project is replacing CoffeeScript/Backbone code with our more modern React/Redux patterns. We find that these migrations meaningfully improve the product and performance.

How does your team keep up with the latest trends?

Engineering has recently introduced bi-weekly frontend and backend meetups. These are aimed to be fun, open group discussions and presentations on anything across the stack.

What are the typical office hours?

Our core hours are 10am-4pm eastern time, and it's generally expected engineers are available to answer questions or join calls/meetings. Some early risers start around 8:30am and others don't end the day until around 6:00pm. We're a results oriented company, and prioritize action over clocking in.

Can I work from home?

Yes! Privy is a remote-first company, however our team is free to come into our Boston office full-time, a few days a week, or not at all to allow for greater flexibility.

How will my code be reviewed?

Engineers code review based on functionality and documented standards. We suggest improvements where beneficial to the product, performance or code quality and avoid long debates over low-impact style or design choices. While not being overly strict on staying cutting edge, we do expect your code to be written with modern patterns and best practices. We encourage meetings with your team to review architecture decisions early on.

Still have questions about engineering at Privy? Email us and let us know!