Careers - Gruntwork

Meet Gruntwork

We’re a human-friendly company

We want to build not only great products, but also a great company.

At GruntCon Bahamas, we took a tour of the famous John Wattling's Distillery!

Bold Responsibility

You get to take on big challenges, but the hours are reasonable.

Mission with Balance

We focus intensely both on achieving the company’s mission and on leading a balanced life.

Excellence & Execution

We take great pride in our craft, but also gets things done.

Meaningful Impact

We aim to make a significant positive impact both on the lives of our customers and our fellow humans across the world.

Respectful Debate

Disagreement is welcome, but we precede “advocacy” with “inquiry.”

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In short, we want to work on interesting problems, with interesting people, while leading interesting lives.

We hope you do, too.

Rewards

A compensation package that will make you

gruntled

*Gruntled adjective
grun·tled ˈgrən-tᵊld
: in good humor : happy, contented

We believe compensation should be fair, transparent, and generous.
We hire Grunts in many countries, so some details may vary.

Competitive & Transparent Salary

We’re committed to paying above-market salaries. To reduce bias and increase transparency, we compute all salaries using formulas.  

The formula factors in your career track (e.g. engineering, marketing), level (e.g. 3.1, 4.1) and location (e.g. San Diego, CA, USA) to produce a result that's above market for your title in your area.

Medical, Dental, & Vision

We offer a range of high-quality insurance plans, most of which are fully paid for by the company. For countries other than the US, this includes extra coverage on top of your statutory insurance.

Hardware Budget

We buy you a brand new Apple MacBook Pro (or other computer of your choosing of equivalent value) upon joining. It will be owned by you, not the company. We’ll also replace it every 3 years.

Generous Equity Grants

We all share a stake in the success of the business, and our equity grants reflect that. To reduce bias and increase transparency, we compute all stock grants using formulas which factor in your title and hire date.   

We also offer a Change in Control Bonus Plan, inspired by Progressive Equity, so in the event of a large exit, Grunts will take home a larger portion of the proceeds.

Retirement Plan

We contribute a portion of your salary to your 401(k) or your pension (depending on your country of residence).

Profit-Sharing Bonuses

We set aside a pot of money at the end of each year based on company profits, and distribute bonuses according to a formula that takes into account your level within the company and the length of your tenure.

Wellness Budget

We give you a personal budget of $1,000 USD per month (yes, per month) to spend on your workspace (e.g., a co-working space), health (e.g., gym, yoga), time savings (e.g., babysitter), and/or learning (e.g., books, courses). How you spend it is up to you.

Remote Work

Gruntwork is 100% remote

Gruntwork is a remote-first company. That means you can work from home, a co-working space, cafe, or wherever else you prefer; there's no commute; and you have complete control over your working hours.

ATT Gruntcon boulder, we felt a good use of company budget was a Grunty made of frosting.

Intentional time zone planning

We balance the benefits and drawbacks of the all-remote lifestyle by hiring all full-time Grunts within the North and South American time zones, guaranteeing at least a few hours of overlap live meetings or pair-coding sessions. We hire contractors worldwide.

Frequent in-person meetups

We believe in the importance of face-to-face meet-ups to enable social connection, build team rapport, and facilitate high bandwidth activities. Three or four times each year we host “GruntCons” at locations around the world where the entire company comes together to socialize, solve hard problems, and push the company forward.

Gruntwork is 100% bootstrapped

Unlike many venture-backed startups, Gruntwork is fully bootstrapped

We've grown the business responsibly and profitably based on the revenue we generate, without seeking external funding. This frees us up to think long-term, treat our people right, center on our customers, and avoid the pressures of unsustainable growth often imposed by investors.

This model also makes our equity grants and profit sharing bonuses more valuable, as we truly believe in taking shared ownership of the company we’re building.

WORK/LIFE BALANCE

Prioritizing both life and work

We believe in prioritizing both our work and our lives.
To help achieve that, we offer:

Remote-first workplace

Work from anywhere you’re more comfortable and productive. Whether that’s your home office, a local coffee shop, or a coworking space (we’ll cover the cost!), you can find the mode of working that works best for you.

Reasonable working hours

We expect our colleagues to work reasonable hours, and discourage working on weekends or holidays. We view our colleagues as each having about 40 hours to offer each week, and think carefully about how each of us can make the most impact in the work time we have.

Intentional commitment planning

When a new opportunity arises, we consider the real-world impact on the lives of our colleagues, and take that impact as a first-class consideration on whether to accept the opportunity and how to execute it.

Minimum Vacation Policy

We one-up “no vacation policy.” We know how important it is to relax and unwind, so we require that you take at least 4 weeks per year away from work. That’s in addition to our 2-week winter holiday break when we shut down operations each year.

Meeting-free days

We know how important it is to have time to focus, so we generally maintain a policy of scheduling meetings only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, leaving Tuesday and Thursday free and uninterrupted. You can still pair code, chat ad hoc with others, or meet as needed, of course — the point is to give you that time to do with as you please, so you have the space to be your most productive.

BUILDING A TEAM

How we hire

We aim to build a diverse team that is welcoming and safe for people of all backgrounds, cultures, and genders. When you apply for a role, here’s the process you can expect.

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Step

Initial screening

Once you submit an application, we’ll take a look at your background and make sure you meet our basic criteria for that position.

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Step

Skills fit

Next we’ll do a verbal deep dive on the skills required for your role to get a sense of how you fare compared to other prospective Grunts we’ve met. We don’t use puzzles and brainteasers in our interviews. And we don’t do whiteboard coding interviews. We just talk in depth about how your approach your craft.

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Step

Values fit

A skills fit is not enough! In this call, we’ll dig in to your values around how you approach work to make sure they align with ours.

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Step

Paid trial project

Instead of a day doing whiteboard coding, or a few days doing that “quick” async trial project, we ask that you take a full day to work with us on a real project. We might have you fix a bug in one of our open source projects, add a new feature, write a web page, design a process, or anything else that we actually need done. We’ll introduce the project to you at the start of the day, chat with you via Zoom, Slack and email throughout the day, and then review your work at the end.

In other words, it’s basically a regular work day—which is exactly the point! Our goal is to give you an accurate feel for what it would be like to join Gruntwork. By the end of the day, you should have a good idea of the type of projects we work on and what it’s like to work with us, and we should have a good idea of what you’re capable of and what it’s like to work with you.

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Step

Offer

Congratulations, it’s time to get an offer! As noted in the benefits section, Gruntwork pays a competitive, above-market salary according to a formula to ensure transparency and fairness, so we do not negotiate compensation.

All offers are subject to a background check and two reference checks.

In our own words

Don't

take our word for it

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Gruntwork is really an awesome place to work! The team manages to strike a great balance between really difficult and challenging work with being people-first and respecting work-life balance. We’re also really fortunate to work with infrastructure experts across the globe who contribute their subject matter expertise across a huge range of infrastructure subjects that allow our small company to cover a lot of ground.

Zach Goldberg

Chief Technical Officer

When I joined Gruntwork, I immediately felt comfortable voicing my opinion, which is something that often feels like it has to be earned. There’s a real culture of empathy and trust here, alongside incredible technical talent. Working here is amazing.

Lewis Christie

Senior Software Engineer

Working at Gruntwork has opened my eyes! After multiple venture-backed ‘successes’ where I saw my teammates burnout, get divorces, or worse, I am so grateful to work for a company that takes a human-first approach to growth. Being bootstrapped gives Gruntwork the freedom to create a company that serves its employees and customer community, rather than maximizing shareholder value. At Gruntwork, we still aim for excellence, but we do it while taking care of each other.

Chris Pham

VP & Head of Sales

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