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by riceluxs1t 2366 days ago
Hi. I recently applied to this role https://boards.greenhouse.io/khanacademy/jobs/1797331 and am curious to know more about Khan Academy; I believe in its mission to make world class education accessible to anyone from anywhere. How can I know more about the firm and about this opportunity?
1 comments
dangoor 2366 days ago
Hello! Nice to hear that you've applied, and best wishes for the application to go well.

One thing that may interest you if you haven't already seen them are our engineering principles: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZQ-HTuH38L8sf4ZObfJN...

Do you have any specific questions? What kinds of things are you interested in knowing more about?

link
riceluxs1t 2366 days ago
Hi.

1. How big is the engineering team and how is it expected to grow?

2. What are your engineering principles? (the link seems to require a permission?) what are some unique challenges?

3. "KA's mission is to make world class education accessible by anyone from anywhere" -> what is KA's 2020 focus to make this mission more realistic?

link
dangoor 2366 days ago
Hi! Good questions.

1. Engineering is somewhere around 75 people (including management)

2. The principles doc is open to the public. I'm not sure why you're unable to view it. The high level principles are "We champion quality", "We nurture every engineer", "We collaborate compassionately", and there's more detail in the doc.

The principles reflect both how we work and how we want to work. Our VP of Engineering reflected on the creation of the principles and how they help work through our challenges: http://engineering.khanacademy.org/posts/eng-principles-help...

3. Our mission is a long-term one. In 2020, I suspect we'll be continuing to expand by making further in-roads with students in US schools (and schools in some of our other targeted regions like India, Brazil, Mexico), and helping people by leveling the test preparation field.

We continue to expand our content, which is freely available and translated into many languages.

As I mentioned in my original message about the job posting, though, in 2020 Engineering has a special focus on rebuilding our backend. This will have some user-facing benefits in the short term, and many longer term benefits as it will better prepare us for continued growth.

link