Overview

Code for America builds technology to help government services work for the people who need them most.

Be the founding engineer for a new technology team with a bold mission to provide SNAP & Medicaid benefits to every eligible American who needs them. This work seeks to improve the experience of 100M people that access the safety net each year, and tens of thousands of public servants.

We’ll accomplish this by developing a simple, respectful and relevant digital experience for every person seeking government assistance in a time of need, in all 50 states.

This role is perfect for an entrepreneurial, mission-driven engineering leader that is capable of both building early products, and building the team to take those products to scale. This will be our first remote team, we’re looking for someone who is excited by the opportunity to grow a remote-first engineering culture.

Our ideal teammate is an experienced engineer who shares our focus on user impact and reliable technology and will help us scale both our technology and our team. We work with well-known and reliable technologies like Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL and trusted approaches like TDD.

Here are some of the things you’ll do as a leader of our new multi-benefits team:

Ship the product

  • Bootstrap this new engineering team by serving as an individual contributor, then build a team to advance the standards you set.
  • Craft new features and products that help users more easily navigate the process of applying for and keeping their benefits. This includes things like submitting documents, dealing with call centers, and submitting reports.
  • Write automated tests and develop monitoring strategies to ensure a high level of service quality.
  • Implement minimal features to maximize learning, and then harden features to scale when we know they work.
  • Interact with and help users yourself to better understand their experiences.

Build the team & shape the strategy

  • Pair with your teammates to design and deliver clean, reliable, and maintainable solutions to user problems. We like keeping communication high and the cost of change low.
  • Help build Code for America’s first fully remote cross-functional team, by creating cultural norms and practices, and recruiting talented individual contributors from across the country.
  • Coordinate and collaborate with engineers from our partner governments and other mission-driven technology teams.
  • Work closely with the Program Director and Product Lead to evaluate opportunities to have an impact on residents and public servants through technology.
  • Assess risks, true costs and opportunity costs associated with prospective new products and features.

These are the qualities we believe are most critical for this role:

  • Phenomenal written and verbal communication skills — as the engineering leader for a remote team, you’ll need them daily.
  • You have a passion for our mission of making government services better for people who need them most.
  • You’ve been building web applications professionally for 7+ years.
  • You have extensive experience with Ruby on Rails.
  • You possess a deep understanding of computer science and web fundamentals, from data structures to APIs.
  • You can work autonomously but also enjoy collaborating with others, mentoring and teaching.
  • You’re happy to own all aspects of software development. You plan, code, test, deploy, monitor, and fix bugs.
  • You’re a master at finding ways to unblock yourself and your team.
  • You write understandable, testable, and maintainable code.

Extra Credit:

  • You have exposure to the world of Medicaid and/or SNAP, or similar benefits.
  • You’ve built engineering teams that include a diversity of experiences, backgrounds and geographies.
  • You hold a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or an equivalent field.

Code for America offers full health and dental benefits, a 401k plan with matching funds and a culture that is collaborative, hardworking and fun.

About Code for America

We are a six year old startup non-profit with a great culture and a huge opportunity to make a difference.  We work collaboratively and agilely and strive to learn from everything we do. We respect each other, work hard, and have a great time together.  We’re looking for individuals who share our vision, our values, and our willingness to do what it takes to achieve an ambitious mission over the next few years.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Code for America values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, people of color, LGBT individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans to apply. Code for America is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, citizenship status, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.