Software Engineer (Terraso)
at Tech Matters [Closed]

Tech Matters is seeking a mid-level or senior software engineer to help build the Terraso platform, an open source project delivering critical software tools to empower communities around the world to adopt sustainable practices addressing the climate change crisis and improving human welfare. We support community leaders to organize, fund, and execute activities to sustain and regenerate human welfare and ecosystem health.

We are building and curating tools to help people with:• Data: collecting, sharing, analyzing, and visualizing data• Mapping: monitoring vegetation, water, and soil quality• Learning: sharing sustainable practices with fellow practitioners

This role is for you if you:

• are curious, thoughtful and critical

• enjoy being part of building something new

• excel at collaborating with people with a wide range of talents

• have informed opinions on your craft and a willingness to both take feedback and advocate for the integrity of your work

• are comfortable taking on ownership and responsibility

• believe in the mission of Tech Matters

In this role, you will:

• facilitate team discussions about which features to build

• contribute to the open source projects we depend on

• deliver performant, supportable, high quality code and features

• collaboratively define, scope, prioritize, and estimate work

• review code and provide thoughtful, constructive feedback during code reviews

• inspire the best in those you work with

• prioritize inclusion of diverse perspectives, making sure they are built into our development process, feature selection, open source code and documentation

You could be a great candidate for this role if you have:

• five years of professional software development experience

• a strong understanding of Django and PostgreSQL

• built, operated and maintained resilient, scalable services

• experience consuming third-party APIs

• fluency with the command line and git

• knowledge of testing, profiling, and debugging practices

• a commitment to building an inclusive and thoughtful workplace

• attention to detail and a willingness to take time to think things through and do them the right way

• excellent communication, organization, and prioritization skills

We’d be particularly delighted to hire someone who:

• has worked with geospatial data

• has shipped software using React or React Native

• is interested in or experienced with conservation and sustainability

• developed and maintained open source software

• designed and deployed APIs

• speaks, reads, and writes two or more human languages

We don’t require:

• any particular credentials, whether educational, experiential, or title-related

• prior nonprofit experience

• prior remote work experience

Our Stack

• we use React for our frontend and Django to power a GraphQL API

• we use React Native for our mobile apps

• we use PostgreSQL, Docker containers, and AWS S3

• we use GitHub Actions for CI/CD workflows

$70,000 - $120,000 a year

For our U.S. employees we provide medical, dental, vision and life insurance, a 401(k) with match, 20 days of vacation, 10 holidays and an education subsidy. Outside of the U.S., we will adjust for local circumstances (generally by building 30 days of paid time off into your daily rate).

Our Team

The overall Terraso team is seven people. We are still in startup mode and every individual makes a big impact. You would report to our Director of Engineering.

We are a remote-first, distributed team across the Americas. You can work from anywhere in these time zones. We have core overlap hours of 12-5pm Eastern Time, which is flexible day-to-day.

We do a lot of coordination asynchronously, so writing is important. While we seek to keep meetings to a minimum, we run short weekly standups and have other meetings to develop a sense of community even while far apart physically.

You should apply

Our users come from all kinds of communities, and so do we. We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes our organization stronger in delivering social impact. We encourage members of traditionally underrepresented communities to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. We know there are great candidates who might not check all of these boxes or who possess important skills we haven’t thought of. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to apply and tell us about yourself. An important part of every application is a cover letter describing why this position and our mission particularly resonated with you.

About Terraso

The Terraso platform consists of web services and modular applications which support local leaders in creating, funding, and executing plans to improve both environmental outcomes and human welfare. Developing this platform will require leveraging existing open source apps and systems while also building new tools. Terraso is the technology arm of the 1000 Landscapes for 1 Billion People initiative, a collaboration with six leading global environmental organizations: Commonland, Conservation International, EcoAgriculture Partners, Rainforest Alliance and the United Nations Development Programme. We have been working with community leaders around the globe over the last several years to ensure that we understand their needs and priorities, and now it’s time to build! If you are excited by the challenge and the huge opportunity for social good, please join our team!

About Tech Matters

Tech Matters is a nonprofit organization utilizing the power of tech to support social sector innovators and promote large-scale social change. As tech nerds for the social sector, we identify leverage points where technology can help hundreds or thousands of social sector organizations collaborate around solving a common social or environmental problem.

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