closed vacancyLead Software Engineer for Climate - remote

The time is now to join a high-impact effort addressing the great challenge of climate change. Are you prepared to do what it takes to build our next generation climate science media platform?

We are looking for a motivated, standout lead engineer to assist our experienced, distributed team in development of an ambitious new project: Realtime Climate. Realtime Climate uses an unprecedented range of data sources to connect climate science, impacts and solutions to the daily lives of diverse audiences, through sending personalized messages to subscribers when climate-related anomalies are observed. Development is well underway and our product has launched successfully, but as we've grown, so has the demand for innovative new features.

Your responsibilities will include:

• Coordinating with experienced software developers, data scientists, and climate scientists to ensure that solutions to software design problems are coherent and consistent with an overall technical vision, in collaboration with the CTO.
• Design specification, improvement, and maintenance of system architecture as development proceeds.
• Insisting on engineering excellence, while maintaining a very tight schedule.
• Thoughtful design reviews and code reviews for SQL and Python code.
• Direct code contributions to the system where it makes sense in light of other duties, and varying with time.

No direct management of either the team or the product roadmap is required - just technical leadership and guidance.

This position is fully remote, on a 6-month term, independent contract basis. The position is paid on an hourly basis. 35-40 hours per week will be expected for the duration of the contract, with availability required during US Eastern time standard business hours. At the end of the contract, renewal is possible, depending on Climate Central needs and mutual interests.

Essential qualifications for this role:

• 10+ years of professional Python and/or SQL development for production software systems
• Significant experience (3+ years) using PostgreSQL
• Superb polyglot programming skills
• Expertise in software architecture of batch processing systems
• Expertise in controlling code complexity
• You need there to be great documentation, and are a terrific technical expositor
• You lead by example
• You walk the tightrope of under- and over-engineering, and are focused on high productivity software output over time.
• You are confident but know your limits, and when to defer to other expert team members on technical choices
• Ability to communicate effectively with a broad range of stakeholders

Preference will be given to candidates who:

• Have at least some Machine Learning or data science education or experience. The more the better. 
• Are familiar with, or have built, recommender systems
• Have experience working with social network data - Twitter in particular
• Have GIS experience or experience with geospatial data, including PostGIS SQL extensions
• Have experience with Python web frameworks - Django and Django REST Framework in particular

Location

This position is fully remote. Climate Central’s headquarters are in Princeton, N.J., operating under standard US Eastern time business hours. Substantial overlap with these operating hours is preferable, but we are flexible. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States.

Compensation

Compensation is competitive for a mission-driven non-profit. Hourly rate will depend on qualifications.

Diversity

Climate Central strongly encourages diverse candidates to apply. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and as such do not discriminate against any applicant for employment or employee on the basis of race, color, religious creed, gender, age, marital status, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran status or any other classification protected by applicable discrimination laws.

How to Apply

Please send your cover letter including hourly rate expectations and your resume to jobs@climatecentral.org with the exact subject line, “Lead Software Engineer for Climate”(no quotes). Due to the volume of employment applications and queries received, Climate Central is unable to respond to each application individually. Applicants will be contacted directly if selected as a candidate. The search will close when a successful candidate is recruited.