Staff Software Engineer, Tanzu Observability Cheyenne, WY

The Elevator Pitch: Why will you enjoy this new opportunity?

Ready to improve on Kubernetes? So are we. Come join VMware’s new exciting Modern Applications Business Unit (MAPBU) team, made up of products and services under the Tanzu portfolio to help users build, run, manage, and observe all of their applications and workloads. Our teams build cloud-native observability solutions that give our customers the confidence to achieve their business outcomes on our enterprise-grade Kubernetes platform.

What is the primary need, technical challenge, and/or problem you will be responsible for?

Working on observability solutions, you’ll be responsible for the performant implementation of technically challenging features that involve a high volume of metrics, logs, and data - such as streaming, analysis, and visualization.

You’ll solve technical problems with Go, Java, Kotlin, and JavaScript using Test Driven Development (TDD), pair programming and other extreme programming (XP) methodologies. You’ll create solutions that scale to meet the needs of the world’s biggest enterprises.

You’ll work with popular open source technologies (Prometheus, Grafana, Kubernetes), contributing back to the community while leveraging the best of what open source has to offer in our products.

On-call rotations are part of most teams, but incidents are exceedingly rare.

Success in the Role: What are the performance goals over the first 6-12 months you will work toward completing?

Our observability solutions enable our customers to sleep at night knowing their platform is healthy and performant. From day one, you’ll be contributing towards this goal by writing and improving code, working with product, finding ways to make the team more effective, and contributing to architectural decisions.

Most new hires take time during the first few months to ramp up and learn about technology, product, and process. People are most successful when they bring a growth mindset and embrace the discomfort that comes from learning new things.

Even as you’re learning, you’ll contribute alongside your peers, bringing your unique experiences to our technical and product architecture conversations. You’ll also mentor your peers, using both past and new experiences to help those around you learn and grow.

What type of work will you be doing? What assignments, requirements, or skills will you be performing on a regular basis?

Your primary responsibility will be to pair with other engineers on technical problems using Test Driven Development, as well as collaborating more broadly on technical architecture decisions and working with the product team to ensure that we deliver the right solution to our customers. We take pride in writing high-quality, well-tested code. We take ownership of code as a team.

We have a general framework for our workday, and we spend most days pairing. We keep meetings and distractions to a minimum, allowing you to focus on writing software and delivering customer value.

• Office-wide stand-up to build office cohesion and start the day together.

• Team standup - discuss any blockers, choose pairs, maybe even tell a joke.

• Start pairing, grab the next item from the backlog, and begin test driving your solution

• Lunch! Eat on the balcony, run an errand, or join a book club.

• Reconnect with your pair and start an acceptance test for a big feature.

While that schedule does look busy, don’t worry — we take ample breaks throughout the day. Go for a walk by the river, read a book on the balcony, check in with kids’ school day. We also allocate only 7 core hours for pairing, giving you the flexibility to spend time learning new skills, reading email and slack, or catching up on your favorite technical blog. We value sustainable pace. We know there is a life outside of work, we want you to be able to spend time with family and friends. We understand that attending ballet recitals is more important than building great software.

While the majority of the team is located in Denver, right now we’re all completely remote and remote teamwork is increasingly important to us. To facilitate pairing, we expect folks to work within flexible core hours based on US Mountain Time. We use Slack to stay connected and shared workspaces for pairing. We are working hard to make sure that our distributed teams function as smoothly as our distributed systems.

Developers are rarely alone; from pairing all day to weekly 1 on 1 time with managers, there is always a colleague around to lend a helping hand. Mentorship from senior engineering leadership is built right into our processes.

What is the leadership like for this role? What is the structure and culture of the team like?

Inclusion, autonomy, effective processes, sustainability, and employee growth guide our team.

We firmly believe in the concept of servant leadership; our job as leaders is to enable others to make informed decisions and do their best work. Leadership is committed to strong feedback practices, with a focus on receiving and giving constructive criticism kindly.

We value diversity and strive for an inclusive team. Our leadership growth processes emphasize giving opportunities for people from a variety of backgrounds. We also strive to create an inclusive environment through the language we use. We recognize that the work here is never done.

Agile/XP concepts are at the core of our process. We have a host of practices around Test Driven Development, pair programming, team retrospectives, technical retrospectives and continuous integration. We are excited to teach these to you and innovate with you on their implementation.

A sustainable pace is key to success, so we aim to never work more than 8 hours a day. We have flexibility during the day and for start and end times, with extra care to be flexible during the difficult times in which we find ourselves.

Making an investment in each employee’s professional development improves the organization as a whole. We encourage all employees to attend (virtual!) conferences or purchase those pricey O'Reilly books — we give each person an annual budget to do it.

What are the benefits and perks of working at VMware?

You and your loved ones will be supported with a competitive and comprehensive benefits package. Below are some highlights, or you can view the complete benefits package by visiting https://benefits.vmware.com/document-library/new-hire-benefits/.

• Employee Stock Purchase Plan

• Medical Coverage, Retirement, and Parental Leave Plans for All Family Types

• Generous Time Off Programs

• 40 hours of paid time to volunteer in your community

• Rethink's Neurodiversity program to support parents raising children with learning or behavior challenges, or developmental disabilities

• Financial contributions to your ongoing development (conference participation, trainings, course work, etc.)

• Healthy and local inspired snacks in all our on-site pantries

Category : Engineering and TechnologySubcategory: Software EngineeringExperience: Business LeadershipFull Time/ Part Time: Full TimeRemote: YesPosted Date: 2020-10-26

VMware Company Overview: At VMware, we believe that software has the power to unlock new opportunities for people and our planet. We look beyond the barriers of compromise to engineer new ways to make technologies work together seamlessly. Our cloud, mobility, and security software form a flexible, consistent digital foundation for securely delivering the apps, services and experiences that are transforming business innovation around the globe. At the core of what we do are our people who deeply value execution, passion, integrity, customers, and community. Shape what’s possible today at http://careers.vmware.com.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement: VMware is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Prohibits Discrimination and Harassment of Any Kind: VMware is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at VMware are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. VMware will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics. VMware encourages applicants of all ages. Vmware will provide reasonable accommodation to employees who have protected disabilities consistent with local law.