LOCATION: Remote within the US
Daily Kos is the nation’s largest liberal online political community, news organization, and activism hub. Powered by millions of highly engaged supporters, we’re building progressive power by connecting grassroots activists to hundreds of people-powered organizations and campaigns.
We are seeking an experienced and results driven Senior Full Stack Software Engineer to help build and scale the DailyKos platform. You will be hands-on and will actively collaborate with a team of 13 to guide projects, implement best practice solutions, champion the elimination of technical debt, and translate requirements into delivered products. Applicants must be self-motivated, efficient, and capable of delivering results with limited guidance.
Daily Kos is an exciting workplace! Our site is used by hundreds of thousands of people a day who care deeply about progressive politics and are working to affect real political change. We provide an extensive feature set that extends from blogging to activism and beyond, built on top of a modern tool chain that includes Ruby on Rails, Sidekiq, SASS, JavaScript, React/Redux, Nginx, Varnish, and AWS/S3/Cloudfront. We have an energized team of great people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. If you’re interested in a position that offers more than just a technical challenge, we’d love for you to join our passionate and dedicated team.
Our offices are in Oakland, CA and Washington D.C., however, we are open to fully remote applicants.
Responsibilities
- Collaborate with coworkers across the organization to scope, design, and deliver solutions for large, complex challenges in the Daily Kos platform
- Partner with internal stakeholders to deliver high-quality product releases in suitable timeframes
- Actively participate in architectural planning and implementation
- Effectively communicate technical vision
- Evangelize best practices internally and externally
- Clearly communicate technical issues and tie work to company objectives
- Design for scale and reliability with the future in mind and do critical R&D
- Persistently debug tough issues, finding a root cause or viable workaround
- De-escalate conflicts and build consensus between team members about technical matters
Experience
- Strong experience with core web development technologies (Advanced JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks)
- At least 5 years experience with Ruby on Rails
- At least 2 years experience with React
- Working knowledge of MySQL and pgSQL, possessing the ability to design, understand and edit database queries, optimization and profiling
- Familiarity with AWS tool chain
- Strong experience with Sidekiq
- Strong experience with caching with a preference for direct experience with any of the following: redis, memcache, redis and/or varnish
- Experience with large and complex code bases, utilizing API design techniques to help keep code clean and maintainable
- A solid understanding of Linux
Qualifications
- Deep understanding of modern web application best practices
- Thought leader highly skilled in making technical decisions, influencing architecture, and prioritization across multiple teams
- Ability to anticipate technical challenges, explore alternatives and tradeoffs thoroughly
- In-depth understanding of full stack;can navigate and make legacy code maintainable
- Focused on defining patterns and operational guidelines for your domain
- Capable of successfully planning and delivering complex, multi-team, or system projects
- Identifies problems that need to be solved and advocates for their prioritization
- Able to reduce unneeded complexity
- Comfortable with the Agile and Lean development process
- Able to actively diagnose and address data scaling and optimization issues
- Ambitious spirit and focus on delivering value into customers hands with excellent communication
- Familiarity with principles of good user experience
- Excellent communication skills, primarily in a virtual work environment
- Familiarity with the Daily Kos application and commitment to become a platform expert
- Willingness to travel occasionally for events or retreats
Salary Range: $130,000 - $165,000
Benefits:
This position is a 40 hour/week, full-time exempt position and reports to the Lead Staff Engineer. Candidates must be legally eligible to work in the United States. The position offers a flexible work environment, the ability to work remotely or from home, competitive salary, excellent benefits including: full medical, dental and vision benefits, 401K with a company match, remote worker stipend, professional development stipend, company-paid holidays, a generous vacation package, traumatic grief leave, as well as employer-paid parental/family leave. Our organizational commitment to personal growth and work-life balance reduces churn and encourages a very rewarding long term position.
At Daily Kos, we believe that the diversity of ideas, experiences, and cultures that our employees contribute to our organization help us be more effective activists, and we are proud to be an inclusive and equal opportunity workplace. We have a team of amazing people with different backgrounds and talents that are energized by the day’s news events, and people united by common cause. We’re a company that loves learning and supports growth and training for all our employees.