Medium, Engineering, Career
Why I Would LOVE to be a Staff Engineer at Medium.com! (And Why I’m Well Qualified for the Role)
An open letter from me to Melissa DePuydt, Dir. of Engineering at Medium!
Dear Medium,
I’ve long thought, over the years, that if I were to ever work for Medium, I’d love to begin by posting a Medium article in lieu of a traditional cover letter. As a tech guy, the meta quality of this appeals to me, of course.
This marks my third application to Medium via Medium — and you know what they say, the third time’s a charm! But, of all the roles to which I’ve applied there, I particularly love the Staff Web Engineer role because I feel that it fits my background perfectly. Here’s why:
- First, I meet the tech requirements (Typescript, React, webdev, and tons of project experience). I’ll go over each requirement below.
- My webdev career has focused on (1) helping others publish (via CMSs) and (2) large-scale, highly optimized codebases.
- My background (pre-webdev) is in publishing and writing; I’m a lifelong writer myself and would love to be in a role where I can support other writers.
- Finally, I’m a huge fan of Medium.com, with 773 articles published since 2017 across a variety of publications.
⭐Medium.com literally changed my life.⭐
When I went viral with some tech articles in 2021, I found myself in a situation where I received many thousands of calls from businesses worldwide begging me to work with them. It was absolutely insane, and I pivoted into the “wild west” frontier of coding on the blockchain.
That was a real adventure for a handful of years, and brought my tech stack into the modern era — pivoting from building CMSs and database apps (2011–2021) to crafting high-performance React-powered decentralized applications (2021–2025).
→ All because of Medium.
And so to say that I’ve kept my eyes open for a role there — to which I could bring tech and publishing experience as well as platform enthusiasm to the table — would be an understatement.
🎯Breaking Down the Role Requirements (and Why I Check Every Box)
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: 8+ yrs exp. as a software engineer, w/ 3+ years exp. in Typescript & React in your most recent professional role(s).
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Absolutely! I’ve been a full-time web developer since 2011, with deep experience in many languages, platforms, and tech approaches. From 2011–2021 I specialized in building custom database applications and CMS implementations (PHP, MySQL, Javascript), and then pivoted to React, Node, Typescript, Next.js from 2021–2025.
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Strong product & design mindset; enjoy collaborating w/ cross-functional partners to help shape high-quality, end-to-end experiences.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Yes, as an agency owner since 2021, I’m accustomed to cross-functional collabs with a wide array of functional specialists — from designers to marketers to C-level execs, and of course with community members. Since pivoting to blockchain, my projects have generated $40M+ in revenues, all requiring such coordination and collab.
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Solid foundation in general web / frontend tech, including HTTP, caching strategies, performance monitoring and optimization, and WCAG accessibility standards.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Yes! As a webdev agency owner and blockchain project lead, I’ve gained exposure and experience with a wide range of web tech, including most of the leading modern full-stack approaches. NFT projects demanded deep optimizations (e.g., accommodating thousands of simultaneous users transacting within minutes on the blockchain).
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Experience as a tech lead, including defining the scope and requirements for user surfaces within high-impact products.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Absolutely! This is vital when collaborating on teams, as the engineer must understand how tech products function in order to properly (and accurately) estimate the scopes of work to be done. My broad background fits this well, as I’ve been involved in hundreds of projects, each with unique requirements.
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Passionate about growing the people around you, and you have experience mentoring and growing senior engineers.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Definitely! I think my experience on Medium itself shows this, as I’ve written developer relations-type pieces, web tech how-tos, and other content for many years. (I’ll include links below.)
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: You write clean, maintainable, and testable production code, with a strong emphasis on long-term sustainability and system health.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Absolutely, I’m deeply committed to writing clean code — and to thoroughly documenting and commenting my code. For example, I recently assisted a colleague with a legacy system I’d built, and my detailed documentation and in-code comments made it easy to navigate years later. So yes, I’m always thinking of the future — and this informs my approach to coding as well (e.g., limiting outside libraries if possible, ensuring scalable (“O(n)”) algorithms on larger datasets, thinking ahead about edge cases, etc.)
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Problem-solver who enjoys tackling ambiguous challenges and continuously improving systems, practices, and processes.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Yes, 100%. I imagine that the code powering Medium absolutely needs to be lightning fast, and I love the challenge of identifying and addressing bottlenecks in systems like this. I was on a team last year where we tackled a scaling issue with the Google Places API (which is a real beast of an API with pitfalls awaiting even highly experienced devs). (We solved it with caching.) That all said, the most ambitious challenge I personally faced since 2021 was pivoting to blockchain — where you’re often deploying (1) immutable code, that (2) often runs millions of dollars in financial transactions. (It can get a little nerve-racking!)
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Collaborate exceptionally well with cross-functional colleagues and stakeholders; able to clearly articulate technical concepts and ideas both verbally and in writing.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: Yes, and this comes not only from my agency experience, serving as a tech lead on hundreds of projects, but also from having served in many of those other roles myself. I’d love to talk more about that with you anytime.
- 🟩REQUIREMENT: Excited to contribute to Medium’s mission of deepening understanding through human storytelling, and you have personally used Medium to write, read, and engage with others’ stories.
- ✅MY EXPERIENCE: OMG, I ❤️ Medium! I’ve been a Medium evangelist since 2017, when I first discovered and adopted it. I have four of my own publications here and have published on perhaps 10 other Medium publications over the years. I have 4,903 followers as of today and this story marks #773 for me! So, this isn’t merely a job for me; it’s a chance to work on the very platform I’ve evangelized, built on, and loved for almost eight years (so far).
👤About Me
- 📄 Tech resume: https://jpd3.com/resume/tech
- ✍️My main Medium.com tech publication: https://medium.com/web-design-web-developer-magazine
- 🤝LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jimdee
- 💻Github: https://github.com/jpdnft
- 🌐Personal site: https://jpd3.com/ (React / Next.js)
🧪Sample Tech Articles
I probably have around 400–500 tech-specific articles on Medium. Those are all here. Below are some recent ones featuring coding work relevant to this role:
🔁Other Times I’ve Tried to Land Medium Roles
Okay, maybe these (below) weren’t engineering roles, but I’ve got all sorts of experiences that (I believe) will add value to Medium. So, if you’d like to learn even more about my passion and qualifications for Medium, here are a few more:
In addition to these, feel free to browse my other 772 articles — ranging from tech to humor to essays on word etymologies to (lately) various writings on AI. (I’m highly pro-AI, by the way, but I do all of my writing myself and always disclose any AI use, of course.)
🚀Final Thoughts (and Thanks!)
Thank you for considering me for this Staff Web Engineer role.
Medium has helped me build the kind of career I never even imagined possible pre-2021. If I can help other creators do the same by strengthening the platform’s engineering, I’d consider that a privilege. I’d truly love the chance to contribute.
So, thanks again for reading this, and for building something of great value to so many!
Best regards,
Jim Dee
JPD3.com | Jim [at] GenerativeNFTs.io | jimdee.medium.com
