Where we’re at right now

Olark has been trail blazing in real-time customer service since 2009 - you’ve probably seen our chat window in the bottom right corner of many other websites. Behind our humble Olark box is a powerful idea: when businesses on the Internet give their customers a direct line to build a relationship, amazing things can happen.

We have a fantastic customer base that is growing at a solid clip. Our challenges range from timely delivery of millions of chat messages per week to making a beautiful user experience in both browsers and instant message clients.

Our Culture

We’re a close team who work out of our offices in a large Victorian in downtown Palo Alto and Ann Arbor, Michigan, with teammates in NYC, North Carolina, Toronto and the UK. We are bootstrapped, profitable, & proud, and highly value self-direction and independent thinking. Our entire founding team is second time entrepreneurs; we love to teach and also value your past experiences you would bring to the team.

For work…

• Work from our office, front porch, café or your goat farm (no KIDding!)
• Use a standing desk, sit on an Aeron chair, or use yoga ball, your choice
• Get stuff done - we only have one scheduled planning meeting per week
• Love our customers
• Make products that are usable, beautiful, and robust

For fun…

• Chill and grill on our back porch
• Toss a disc around for an occasional evening “frisbee meeting”
• Climb our backyard redwood tree
• Share your weekend plans with colleagues in our chat room

Do you love solving problems at scale using Python or Ruby?

We are building the team to take us from thousands to tens of thousands of customers. Your job will to architect and implement systems used to provide realtime communication to millions of visitors across thousands of websites. You should love the idea of focusing on the small details that make our product scale, while still enjoying the idea of talking directly with customers.

What we expect from you

• you have done battle with linux and emerged victorious
• you have written production code in python or ruby used by thousands of customers
• you know how to test code to ensure that it scales.
• you take amazing pride in your work
• you love the idea of talking directly with customers

Bonus points for experience with

• MySQL
• Redis
• CouchDB
• RabbitMQ
• erlang
• ejabberd
• thrift
• memcache
• Ruby/Rails
• apt
• eggs, gems

What you can expect when working with us

• Getting high fives from our customers when you run in to them (this has happened to over half the team)
• An emphasis on learning; we’ll help you attend (and hopefully present at) conferences
• Market rate engineering salary, depending on experience and such
• Equity, everyone in the company shares in our success
• Relocation benefits (or flying you out to get to know the team if you will be working remote)
• Team lunch every Friday
• Real responsibility of being an early employee
• The cachét of being a force for customer happiness across the globe
• Generous Health/Vision/Dental Benefits
• Vacation Bonus
• Profit Sharing
• All-inclusive Annual Retreats for you and your spouse

Next Steps

• Send us an email with a funny personal story and why you want to work at Olark
• Include your resume, portfolio, and github
Join the team!

We are building the team to take us from thousands to tens of thousands of customers. Your job will to design and implement the beautiful user experiences for thousands of customers and millions of visitors. You should want to rigorously simplify and optimize user experiences, and be comfortable in both CSS and Javascript.

What we expect from you

• you have done battle in Javascript and CSS with IE6, FF3, Opera, and others…and emerged victorious
• you have written production code used by thousands of customers
• you love the idea of talking directly with customers
• you take amazing pride in your work

Bonus points for experience with

• Coffeescript
• postMessage
• CSS
• HTML5
• highcharts
• npm
• node.js
• Backbone
• Rails
• Django

What you can expect when working with us

• Getting high fives from our customers when you run in to them (this has happened to over half the team)
• An emphasis on learning; we’ll help you attend (and hopefully present at) conferences
• Market rate engineering salary, depending on experience and such
• Equity, everyone in the company shares in our success
• Relocation benefits (or flying you out to get to know the team if you will be working remote)
• Team lunch every Friday
• Real responsibility of being an early employee
• The cachét of being a force for customer happiness across the globe
• Generous Health/Vision/Dental Benefits
• Vacation Bonus
• Profit Sharing
• All-inclusive Annual Retreats for you and your spouse

Next Steps

• Send us an email with a funny personal story and why you want to work at Olark
• Include your resume, portfolio, and github

We’re a team of 14 with 14 front-line customer service people

That should tell you something right there; we don’t take customer service lightly. The majority of our customers use our product on the front-lines of sales and support so it’s absolutely critical that we do the same (it’s called dogfooding, but we think we’re way better than store brand!) We’re also building a brand around transparency, ease of use, thought-leadership, and fun! That means everyone that comes in contact with Olark should walk away with a smile and businesses should be able to look to us for how do do sales and support the “right” way.

For the last three years our customers have enjoyed talking directly to founders, engineers, and dedicated support team through our daily rotation system. As a result we’ve been able to build a product that elegantly solves the needs of our customers while giving off good-vibes all along the way. BUT, with your help we can do even better…

What we expect from you

• You need to LOVE talking with people and solving problems. I mean LOVE it.
• You value providing GREAT customer service and helping people above all else.
• You can handle answering dozens of email support tickets every day and several live chats at once.
• You have the skill and patience to clearly and sympathetically help all users, from CEOs to mom and pop shops.
• You feel comfortable dealing with technical queries, even when you don’t know the answer.
• You love to teach yourself new tricks, and pass that knowledge on to others.
• You like to barbecue, hang out and enjoy life (we work hard and play hard).
• You currently live in or near Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Not a Michigander? Tell us why you’re a great remote worker.

What you can expect when working with us

• Getting high fives from our customers when you run in to them (this has happened to over half the team)
• Market rate support salary, depending on experience and such
• An emphasis on learning; we’ll help you attend (and hopefully present at) conferences
• Relocation benefits (or flying you out to get to know the team if you will be working remote)
• Team lunch every Friday
• The cachét of being a force for customer happiness across the globe :)
• Generous Health/Vision/Dental Benefits
• Vacation Bonus
• Profit Sharing
• All-inclusive Annual Retreats for you and your spouse

How to apply

• Send us your resume, work and education history
• Send us an email telling us why you are the best of the best at customer support

Insider’s tip: Going the extra mile at the application stage is a wonderful way to impress us.
Here are some ideas you should think about including in your application:

• Create a short video that shows why you are the right person for Olark.
• Install Olark on your own site and explain how we could improve the setup process.
• Share your best story about a time you went well out of your way to help someone.
• Send us your favorite photo. Tell us why it’s your favorite.
• Tell us about a time you were left feeling great about a company’s customer service.
• Explain the details of the last project you finished outside of work.