Creative Technologist
About Brilliant
Brilliant is making a world of great problem solvers. We focus on adults learning quantitative skills – especially in math, data, and CS/AI – and deliver a best-in-class interactive learning experience across web and apps. Our courses teach you what you need to know, while skipping the stuff you don’t – so expect more about solving equations, statistical analysis, logical deduction, neural networks, and generative AI, and less about abstract theorems and integrating complicated trig functions.
We serve hundreds of thousands of paid subscribers, and we’re hoping you might be the right person to contribute to accelerating our footprint to millions of customers (and changed lives). In addition to what’s below, you can see all open roles and learn more about our team culture on our careers page.
We have always prioritized building a healthy business as the backbone of achieving our mission. We are default alive (will be profitable before needing to raise), have never had layoffs, are growing new customers at an exciting pace (high double-digits year-over-year). Our investors are top-tier + mission aligned, and we’ve kept our valuations tethered to reality – we aren’t playing “catch up” like many others.
In our day-to-day, we value adventure, excellence, generosity, and candor. We are optimists in the face of uncertainty, we take pride in our work, we go the extra mile for each other, and we tell it like it is (the good and the bad). We’re all here to do the best work of our lives together, and have a lot of fun along the way.
We believe that real-time collaboration and human connection are necessary ingredients in building a high-velocity, creatively-oriented consumer product. We maintain core hours (10am - 3pm Pacific) where everyone is online, regardless of timezone. Over half of us are located near our hubs in SF and NYC, and folks outside of those cities travel to attend team offsites once-per-quarter.
The Role
As a Creative Technologist (CT), you'll craft the mini interactive programs that power our courses in math, science, and computer science and maintain the underlying technical systems that enable them. You will combine your technical expertise as a software developer with your creative taste to transform concept art, whiteboard sketches, and mathematical/scientific models into visually polished and engaging interactive content.
Your work will feature prominently in our web and mobile products to deliver fun and interactive learning experiences to millions of learners. We strongly believe that interactive visualizations have the potential to change how people learn math and science.
Creative Technology at Brilliant is a highly cross-functional, collaborative role that involves both art and code. Creative Technologists at Brilliant are engineers with design sensibilities, who quickly prototype and ship educational content. Our CTs dive deeply into a single technology stack (web standards, HTML, CSS, SVG, Elm, and sometimes TypeScript), and push the limits of what our interactive experiences can be. As a member of the Engineering organization, you'll work alongside extraordinary programmers without big egos. We maintain high personal standards, share knowledge, and support each other. CTs also work alongside talented artists, animators, and subject matter experts in math, science, and computer science to help tell engaging stories. This position reports to our Senior Manager of Creative Technology, Jason.
Your Responsibilities
- Collaborate with engineers and course producers to turn concept sketches and prototypes into production-ready interactive programs
- Master our internal authoring engine and make smart design decisions, all with minimal guidance
- Write readable, idiomatic and reusable code in Elm (using our in-house frameworks, like Diagrammar) to enable the scaling of interactive visuals across Brilliant’s content
- Build and maintain a library of reusable, well-documented code packages to accelerate production work for yourself, other CTs, and course producers
- Work with artists and designers to integrate our art style and design system — environments, characters, objects, color schemes, and UI components — into interactive assets, to build a consistent visual world of content
- Rapidly test and iterate interactive diagrams and code packages based on feedback
Your Qualities
- Adaptable learner: Your ability to understand and apply technical concepts extends beyond specific coding languages, and you are excited to adopt our in-house tools to realize your creative vision.
- Strong Communicator: You are great at giving and receiving feedback, presenting ideas to the team, and keeping the team up to date on progress and timelines. We move fast, and constant open communication is key to success in a fast-paced environment.
- Flexible: You can wear multiple hats and adapt to shifting timelines and goals as we work towards maturing our production process. You are also comfortable taking on both library creation and asset production responsibilities.
- Affinity for problem solving: You have a demonstrated ability and keen interest in tackling challenges out of your comfort zone. The majority of your work will be math- and science-focused, so enthusiasm for the material and general problem-solving aptitude will help you go far in making an impact.
Suggested Requirements
- 4+ years of professional working experience
- B.S. degree (or equivalent work experience) in design, games-related development, or a technical field (e.g. Computer Science, Computer Graphics)
- Background or experience in interactive media, game development, data visualization, or animation with a strong sense of interaction design and understanding of visual design (e.g., form, value, perspective, composition)
- Experience in educational media is recommended, specifically understanding ways in which interactivity can be used to more effectively teach a concept
- A strong portfolio of creative coding work, showing iteration and exploration (for example, in a framework like P5.js, Processing, TouchDesigner, PureData, or similar)
- Experience in internal tool development, or working knowledge of Elm and other functional programming languages, would be ideal but not required
$130,000 - $190,000 a year
Compensation and Benefits
We use a systematic compensation framework: salary scales are set each year for each job vertical, managers level folks on their team, and those levels are mapped directly to our compensation scales. A location-based adjustment is applied outside of SF and NYC (typically 5-10%) - feel free to ask us about your location!
Given the systematic approach, we always make First and Best offers - there is no negotiation (for new hires nor our existing teammates). This ensures people are paid based on their expected contribution, not their negotiation skills.
We offer top-notch health care plans, with 100% of the premiums covered for medical, dental, and vision for employees. About 1/3 of our team are parents, and we provide generous parental leave + up to $1900/mo in dependent healthcare coverage.
We offer flexible PTO, with a norm of taking off about 6 weeks per year (including federal holidays). We also provide home office equipment, a professional development stipend, and free food at our offices.
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