Senior Software Engineer (JVM) - AI Services

Who we are

At Help Scout, we’re on a mission to help businesses delight more customers. We’ve been on this journey since 2011, and today more than 12,000 companies use our platform to provide outstanding customer support. We’ve been fully remote from the beginning, and have a team of 140+ people all over the world.

We love crafting beautiful products and growing a business together, but we're also trying to do something bigger. We're building a company that brings out your best and leaves the world a better place — a company that seeks balance between profit and purpose. That's why we've been a Certified B Corporation since 2019 and have pledged 1% of our equity back to the community.

Help Scout’s success hinges on hiring talented, high-accountability people who want to be part of creating a culture where we all feel challenged and supported to do our best work. We hope that excites you to join us! 

Company values

Happy to Help

Help is our first name. We show up for others, not because we have to, but because we want to. We share knowledge and give freely by default, and operate with generosity and empathy for each other, our customers, and our community. After all, there is no I in team (or software).

Craft over Convention

Although it’s tempting to follow a well-worn path, we push ourselves to run beyond it — even when that sets us apart from our peers. We’re building a culture where it’s safe to be ambitious and hold each other to high standards. That’s why we obsess over the last 10%, because it shows up for our customers and the business in powerful ways.

Progress not Perfection

The work of building a product, culture, and brand is never done – we ship our best effort, listen, iterate, then repeat. Seeking progress requires the vulnerability to be curious, humble, and hungry to learn. Great ideas can come from anywhere, so we share our work openly, welcome the perspective of others, and continuously search for what can be improved.

Own the Outcome 

Ownership is key to our collective success. We consider the impact on our team and our community before we act, and believe that trust and integrity are non-negotiable. To create a better future, our decisions are made with stakeholders today and ten years from now in mind.

Read more about how we define, share, and live these values here. 

Your Impact

Our mission is to deliver powerful, AI-powered platforms to build delightful customer service experiences on. As part of this team, you will have a unique and outsized impact on the success of our business.

It's hard to overstate the changes that generative AI is already bringing to our customers and we are still early on our journey. We are looking for somebody to match our passion for building complex systems and share our care for providing an unparalleled experience for the customer using generative AI.

We are a highly collaborative team that is always receptive to new ideas and perspectives. You will be empowered to speak up and help shape the direction of our products and workflows.

About the Role

• You’ll build best-in-class AI powered services from the ground up. This team works to abstract AI concerns and deliver endpoints to our internal product teams to build upon. A good understanding of the product, business goals and matching them with your strong ML knowledge will be key.

• Integrating tightly into our existing team, you will be a source of knowledge about ML techniques, acting as a bridge between generalist backend engineers who may not have specific ML experience.

• You’ll make purposeful and data-driven improvements - part of this role is developing key metrics that can inform decisions on the viability or success of a solution. We want to know where we are moving the needle when testing a solution internally as well as continually iterating based on customer feedback and behavior.

• Advocating for smaller, incremental changes and rapid-delivery, you’ll help to continually add value for our customers whilst being flexible to change.

• You’ll always on the lookout for new technologies and techniques to push us further. Part of this role is to keep up-to-date with advancements and proactively suggest ways in which technology can be applied to the business

• You’ll be collaborating with several other stakeholders to support the success of each team member, such as Product Managers, Designers, and Technical Program Managers (TPMs). Perspective from these folks will enable you to understand and solve hard problems

About You

• You are an excellent, pragmatic engineer that is highly skilled in creating Java based web services. Our production services are written in Kotlin so it's a bonus if you have experience there too.

• You have expertise and experience with LLMs and Generative AI.

• You have practical experience with ML techniques for search and retrieval.

• A lot of our work is exploratory and you are equally comfortable with self directing work, as well as collaborating with the team.

• You have a passion and curiosity for science and data gathering to validate our ideas are hitting their goals

• You are a great communicator and have an excellent command of written and spoken English. As a remote company, we rely on clear communication for collaboration and execution.

• You have strong opinions that are loosely held. You are happy to hear and action others folks point of view and equally happy to give feedback to others.

• You understand the need to balance business and customer needs with agile delivery of tightly scoped, scalable code that stands the test of time.

Time Zone Note

Since we have remote team members based in European and North American timezones, ideal working hours are roughly 9 AM - 5 PM ET. As long as the team consistently has four hours of overlap each day, you’re all set.

 More information about our culture and organization

• Engineering Leadership Team Values

• Success Measure and Guiding Principles 

• Experience Org: mission, vision, strategy

Compensation

Each role at Help Scout has a pay range aligned to our salary formula and based on national market data. We take a competency-based approach and pay is based on the level and band of your role. We assess leveling during the hiring process for new teammates, during our bi-annual performance review cycles, and when a teammate’s role changes.

Our remote compensation philosophy is not based on the employee’s geographic location. You are paid the same no matter where you live.

The salary range for this role is $162,000-$187,000.

Perks & Benefits

Help Scout offers a variety of perks and benefits to support you and your family. Our offerings include healthcare coverage, wellness resources, and so much more. Visit our careers page to learn more.

Hiring Guidelines: 

All of our roles are remote, however, some roles may carry specific location-based eligibility requirements. Additionally, because Help Scout is a fully remote company and we hire from many countries, we do not sponsor visas. Help Scout teammates need to be authorized to work from their home location. 

For our Sales, Product Management, Product Design, and Engineering roles, we are only able to hire in the United States.

For other roles, we are only able to hire in the following countries: United States, Canada, Australia, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, and Norway.

We’re working on expanding this list. Our Talent Acquisition team can help answer any questions about location after starting the recruiting process.

We are an equal opportunity employer and are committed to building a company that embraces and celebrates diversity and inclusion. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We have read the studies and understand that diverse teams build better products, bring more perspective to the table, contribute to a company’s financial success, and help foster a more inclusive environment for all employees, but the bottom line is that it's the right thing to do.

To provide you with the best experience, we can support you with accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the recruitment process. Simply inform our recruitment team during your conversation with them.

About Help Scout

We're on a mission to help businesses delight more customers. We love crafting beautiful products and resources to solve that challenge, but we're also trying to do something bigger. We're trying to build a company that brings out your best and leaves the world a better place — a company that seeks balance between profit and purpose. That's why we've been a Certified B Corporation since 2019, have pledged 1% of our equity back to the community, and have been remote since day one, now with 140+ people in 115 cities worldwide.

To learn more about who we are, visit the About page.