Algorithm Developer

About Motion

Project management systems today are great at letting companies record their tasks, but place all of the burden on human project coordinators. These tools don’t know about the team’s time and resources and don’t have any intelligence — someone has to manually match tasks against their assumptions about the team’s capacity. Not only does this process waste precious company resources, it’s also error-prone and leads to overwork, missed deadlines, miscommunication, and micromanagement.

Motion is building the world’s most intelligent project management system — one that doesn’t require a project coordinator manually tracking each task, but rather an intelligent system that can make sense of hundreds of tasks across dozens of projects and automatically coordinate them across every person on the team. Motion allows companies to focus on the work they need to do rather than wasting up to 50% of their resources on overhead.

Our users give us data on their workload (e.g. projects and tasks) and resources (employee roles, calendars, and schedules). Based on all this information, Motion makes intelligent decisions about how tasks should be executed — better than any human project coordinator. Teams that use Motion know what people are working on at any given time, when each task will be completed, and whether any tasks will fall behind schedule. The moment something changes, instead of the coordinator having to figure out all the cascading effects, Motion instantly creates a new optimized plan for the team.

Motion is the project management system of the future. We are growing extremely quickly, trusted by thousands of customers, have millions in revenue, near-infinite runway, and an exceptionally talented team. Most of Motion's 40 employees work in engineering, and the majority of those in business and operations roles also have technical skills.

About The Role

Motion is hiring an algorithm developer to work on our cutting-edge optimization algorithms and enhance how we leverage AI for task management and project coordination. This role is ideal for a quantitative developer, particularly those coming from quantitative finance firms with significant experience in algorithm design and implementation, asset pricing, or risk modeling. Motion’s optimization framework is a game-changer for the field of project management and sets us apart from other companies in the industry. As part of this team, you'll be working on the most exciting and critical component of our technology.

You will be a successful engineer at Motion if:

• You are a quick learner and can rapidly familiarize yourself with complex optimization problems, AI-driven algorithms, and our existing codebase. You are comfortable taking on any part of the stack or learning new, unfamiliar technologies

• You have a sharp eye for detail and can anticipate logic loopholes and edge cases well before they are implemented, identifying potential issues during the spec review phase to ensure robust, scalable algorithms

• You are ambitious and always looking for ways to improve. For most engineers, this role will give you the most responsibilities you’ve ever had, while holding you to higher standards than other companies you’ve worked at. Don’t rest on your past achievements — expect to work your hardest and do the best work of your career at Motion. You will receive lots of coaching and feedback that you should seek to grow from

• You can take ownership of projects and lead them to completion while dealing with ambiguity and finding the right balance between speed and quality. You don’t need every detail and edge case spelled out for you because you can figure out the goals of the project and fill in the blanks

• You have a strong understanding of how you can create the most impact, and don’t get lost in the weeds in details that don’t matter. You’re excited to work on whatever solves the biggest customer problems, not just the coolest technical challenges

• You can collaborate effectively with other talented engineers and work well in an environment where the best ideas win. The median engineer at Motion has 9 years experience. You should expect your ideas to get challenged and to learn a lot from your coworkers

Technology Stack

Our current tech stack is entirely on the JavasScript ecosystem: Typescript, Node.js, Postgres, Temporal. Proficiency with JavaScript is not a requirement as long as you can familiarize yourself with the language quickly. In the future we may adopt other languages for in our stack such as C++, Go, Python, where they make sense.

About Motion’s Engineering Culture

Here are some helpful videos from Chander Ramesh, our Head of Engineering:

What it’s like day-to-day at Motion

Motion’s company culture and engineering practices

Motion offers a competitive salary and equity compensation, medical, dental, and vision health insurance

Motion is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone is treated with respect and given equal opportunities. We do not discriminate based on gender identity, race, ancestry, disability, religion, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We welcome and encourage all qualified candidates to apply for our job openings. 

Helpful Links:

Motion Culture: https://motionapp.notion.site/Motion-Company-Culture-21bd766b1f864764b0db2fa72529b182

Motion in the Press: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/19/2393012/

https://www.usemotion.com