Contra is an Independent-first community and commission-free hiring platform empowering the future of work. We match Independents with flexible opportunities and Clients with the perfect Independent for any project — from content creation to coding. We strongly believe that independence isn’t just a gig, it’s a way of life.

Welcome to Contra! We’re an empathetic, kind, and humble team looking for Software Engineers to join us in building the Future of Work and the best community for independents. This is a full-stack role, meaning you’ll have the opportunity to contribute across our web applications and backend services, while focusing on a specific part of the stack that plays to your strengths and preferences, like Frontend or Backend.

Our team loves to innovate to benefit everyone and deliver a top-notch Developer Experience for our internal team: fast pipelines, great API tooling, and the like. If this environment resonates with your engineering values, we’d love to talk to you!

How you’ll add value at Contra

Contribute to our rapidly growing React and NodeJS codebases (both within our Turborepo powered monorepo and our stand-alone apps) — everything from our web application to our backend GraphQL API, to our internal services that power payments.
Contribute well-tested, end-to-end TypeScript code. We are big fans of Vitest for unit testing and Playwright for end-to-end testing.
Craft readable, performant, and scaleable SQL queries and database schemas to solve data modeling problems.
Help improve our internal design system, codebase architecture, application performance, and Developer Experience.
Participate in all parts of the product development process, like design critiques, code reviews, and cross-functional planning with your team.

Our stack

Backend: AlloyDB(PostgreSQL), GraphQL, GraphQL Helix, NodeJS, Redis, Temporal
Data: Airbyte, DBT, Google BigQuery, Google Colab, Looker
DevOps: ArgoCD, Docker, GitHub, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes
Frameworks: NextJS
Frontend: GLSL shaders, React, react-three-fiber, Relay, Stitches, styled-components, Suspense, Three.js
Languages: Typescript
Testing: Playwright, Vitest
Tools: Chromatic, Linear, Mergify, Posthog, Slack, Stream, Turbopack, Turborepo

You’ll be successful here if you

Mission-driven. Our mission truly resonates with you and you would like to be a part of what we are building together at Contra!
A dedicated team player. You thrive in a collaborative, remote-only environment and you are comfortable with 8 am - 1 pm PST core hours!
Passionate about learning. Share a genuine curiosity for learning, always eager to pick up new skills. We don’t expect everyone to know everything but you learn quickly!
Goal oriented. Understand what you need to do in order to achieve your goals without needing all of the bells and whistles.
Committed to trying. Have the resilience and willingness to try and try again even if you fail after a few attempts!
Ambitious attitude. You bring a strong work ethic and contagious energy to your team as we work towards our North Star.
Path Paver. Joining a startup you enjoy taking ownership, building out processes and documentation that might not exist to share with your team members.

You will love Contra for our

🌎 Remote-only culture that is here to stay
🍎 100% health coverage for US full-time employees, and health reimbursements for all international contractors
💸 $4,000 laptop reimbursement upon starting + additional for equipment, co-working, and meetups
💰 401k matching for US full-time employees
💛 No-meeting Tuesdays Wednesdays
👋 Generous time off
👶 Flexible parental leave
💁 A custom slack emoji, just for you!

Our interview process

Intro call (15-30 minutes)
Complete a Technical assessment (2 hours maximum)
Technical interview (45-60 minutes)
Non-technical (culture) interview (30 minutes)
Strengths-based technical interview (45 minutes)
Cross-Functional Interview (30 minutes)
High-level technical interview with CTO VPE (30-45 minutes)
Interview with CEO Co-Founder (30 minutes)

Salary + Equity Range

$130k - $160k USD
Equity Value Range: $72k - $180k USD

About Contra

🚀 Contra is looking for self-motivated, open-minded, and eager folks to join our growing team.

We’ve put together a pretty special global team — we’re not limited by location, so everyone on our team has unique backgrounds and experiences that have shaped our company culture for the better. Everyone who joins Contra adds another special dimension to that culture, so we’re looking for folks that have an additive mindset, and want to participate in building both a great product, and a great place to work. While past titles, years of experience, and educational opportunities have taught us all valuable lessons, they’re not used as hiring criteria. If you’re motivated by our mission and owning impactful projects, then Contra is the place for you.

If you’ve made it this far, we want to talk to you! Even if you do not think that you meet all of the requirements in the job posting, we really encourage you to take the leap and apply anyway. Surprise yourself! The best is yet to come ✨

Contra is committed to equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing its team members with a work environment free from discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Contra are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, regardless of race, colour, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex, age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, pregnancy, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

Learn more about Contra

Contra.com

Contra on TikTok (our target audience is Gen Z)

Contra on Twitter

Contra in the Press

Ben on Twitter (our Co-Founder, CEO)

Gajus on Twitter (our Co-Founder, CTO)

Senior Software Engineer