Contact

Software Engineer

Drive Capital

Columbus, OH

Job Description

Drive Capital invests in entrepreneurs in the Midwest and beyond — a region we call the Driveway. We're investing more than $2B in 70 startups and counting. Some you might've heard of, like Duolingo and Greenlight, and some you probably haven't, like Fifth Season and Path Robotics.

A view out the window from Drive Capital

What's a VC?

At a venture capital (VC) firm like Drive Capital, we partner with small businesses that we think can become big ones. We look for passionate entrepreneurs who are building technology businesses to solve big problems, and we provide resources to help them grow. Want to learn more? We put together a VC master class below:

A Master Class In Venture Capital with Drive Capital

Meet Herbie:

Imagine a CRM, but make it magic instead of stodgy. Now layer on tools that surface promising startups to investors, make connections to the next great customer, and help startups recruit the most impactful team members. This platform, affectionally called Herbie, powers Drive Capital.

We wrote Herbie's first line of code in 2014, and our team of full-time engineers built it to touch every part of our workflow. We're growing the team to give us greater leverage on our proprietary data set. We're also giving our startups access, and we want to make Herbie as valuable for them as it is for us.

You will:

  • Work alongside the rest of the Drive Capital team to understand and solve their problems with software.
  • Own your work from start to finish: interviewing users, gathering problems, brainstorming, planning, architecting, designing, implementing, testing, shipping, iterating until it's right, and operating it in production.
  • Identify and prioritize work that has the greatest return on investment. We're constrained by engineering bandwidth, so we judiciously scope work that moves the needle the most.
  • Grow yourself and your teammates through constructive code review and collaborative design discussions.
  • Understand how Drive Capital works by shadowing investors, watching startup pitches, periodically attending partner meetings, and talking to Herbie users within the portfolio.

About you:

  • You bring a diverse perspective to the team. We are bootcamp grads, computer science majors, and self-taught engineers who've worked on one-person teams, open source projects, and at the largest tech companies.
  • You've been building applications using web technologies at work or on the side for at least a year. We use Python and Django REST Framework on the backend and TypeScript and React on the frontend, but you don't need to have used those specific tools before. They were new to most of the team when we joined.
  • Even if you lean toward one end, you're eager to learn and tackle anything anywhere in the stack.
  • You want to learn about startups from a sample size of several dozen. You're curious to hear from passionate entrepreneurs working on language-learning apps or robotic welders.
  • You like to mold ideas into reality. If you bake homemade bread, build LEGO models, paint, or are taking on a fixer-upper, you'll find someone else here doing the same.
  • You believe that the most exciting way to answer a question is “I don't know; let's find out!” You're enthusiastic about tackling new challenges but also know when to phone a friend.

What we offer:

  • Competitive salary (of course), 401k, health coverage at no cost to you, and paid parental leave.
  • Take time off whenever you need it. In addition, we're off for major holidays and for two weeks at the end of each year.
  • We invest in our team for the long term just like we invest in companies, so we'll support your growth and provide opportunities for you to explore your interests.
  • A MacBook Pro of your choice, 27” monitors (yes, plural, or an ultrawide if that's your thing), and whatever peripherals you need to be productive.
  • A phone on our plan.
  • Catered lunches, snacks, and drinks.
  • A parking pass and the view above at our Short North office.

What's next:

We're thrilled that you're interested in joining Drive Capital!

  • Reach out to our Director of Engineering, Brandon Mills, via chat or directly at brandon@drivecapital.com. Share a little bit about yourself and what you're looking for.
  • You'll have a couple calls with our engineers to talk in more detail about your background, what you're looking for, and what we think makes a successful engineer at Drive Capital. These will be two-way conversations because we want you to have time to ask questions too.
  • We'll ask you to write a bit of code. The problem will give you a better idea of what we're working on and give us a chance to learn how you approach building software.
  • You'll come see the office, meet the other engineers, and sit down for a technical discussion with a couple of us to see how we'll work as a team. We'll design a hypothetical product together, talk through a high-level architecture, outline a rough data model, and sketch out some features. We'll also work together on some code related to the work sample you've provided. We want you to have familiar tools, so bring your own laptop if you'd like, or we can provide one.
  • You'll have a chance to meet the broader Drive Capital team and hear about Herbie from its most frequent users. They'll want to learn what makes you tick, and you'll get to see how the rest of Drive Capital works.