Software Engineer II

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Job DescriptionAbout The Obama Foundation

At the Obama Foundation, we are guided by a core belief: that ordinary people working together can change history. Our mission is to inspire those people to take action, empower them to change their world for the better, and connect them so they can achieve more together than they can alone.

We were founded by community organizers, so when we seek change, we do it by bringing people together.

That approach begins at home, on the South Side of Chicago, where we are building the Obama Presidential Center. The Center represents a historic opportunity for Chicago: a chance to build a world-class museum and public gathering space that celebrates our nation’s first African American President and First Lady, steps away from where he began his career, where she was raised, and where—together—they made their home.

But that approach extends to all our work, whether it’s holding leadership training sessions in communities throughout the U.S., bringing local leaders together in countries around the world, working to support the global education of girls, or ensuring young men of color have pathways to opportunity.

As President Obama has said, “we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together.” So join us.

For more information, please visit www.obama.org. Purpose of the Role

The Obama Foundation has a small but rapidly growing product engineering team that has two missions: to build a digital ecosystem of tools for the next generation of leaders and activists that amplifies their efforts in bringing positive change to their communities, and building the foundational technology and digital infrastructure for the future Obama Presidential Center - a 21st century museum for the first 21st century presidency.

We operate similar to any other startup engineering team, defining our work in quarterly roadmaps, iterating in sprints, and making decisions in collaboration with our product, design, and user research partners. Our stack makes heavy use of Javascript, and we build our web applications with an eye towards component driven design leveraging Svelte, Storybook, and Tailwind. As a small team, we all consider ourselves t-shaped developers. We are all generalists who can move around the stack and even different technologies, but we all have passions and areas where we go deep and nerd out. We hope you do too, and we want to know what those passions are!

We are a well funded, fully remote team of diverse backgrounds, called to this work and bringing skills honed from e-commerce, media, health sciences, fintech, as well as non profit and political technology. We value accessibility, inclusivity, and the richness of thought that comes from the many paths that one can take to becoming a software developer. Even if your experience does not match every item in this description, we encourage you to apply and look forward to meeting you.

This position will report to one of our Tech Leads and work collaboratively with peers in the broader Product and Technology team.

Core Job Responsibilities

• Build the front-end of engaging accessible web apps from foundation to polish

• Implement services and infrastructure to support rich web experiences in a microservices architecture

• Work in partnership with Design and Product, utilizing tools like Figma, to take detailed specifications and turn them into functional applications, tracking work via Github issues and Jira

• Implement and maintain a rigorous test suite against common user scenarios, following standards set by senior engineers

• Contribute to planning, implementation, and review of our software development process individually and among the greater team

• Work at scale to help deliver our mission of moving millions around the world from hope to action 


Key Deliverables / Outcomes

• Work with senior engineers to deliver on key quarterly goals for our application development and infrastructure

• Build competency and expertise in one or more new technology domains at the Foundation for web, mobile, and other applications

• Incremental delivery of world class web applications, following and advancing our product roadmap along with the larger Product and Technology team

• Participate in team-wide code review processes

• Participate in and advocate for the user during planning and brainstorming sessions

• Write, test, and maintain various web applications


Required Qualifications

• 1–2 years experience or more with implementation and delivery of front-end code, written in React, Svelte, or other similar technologies

• 1–3 years experience or more with NodeJS, Python, Elixir, Sveltekit, or similar full stack development environments and toolsets You have implemented work within a microservices architecture through Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, or Microsoft Azure

• You have been working within an agile product engineering team, and have facility with working on sprint iterations and shipping MVPs that can be expanded on incrementally with continuous feature deliveries.

• You thrive in diverse, self-starting, collaborative settings, and are passionate about building highly responsive and broadly accessible applications for a common good

• You have knowledge of and experience with A11y and WCAG standards and implementation practices The salary range for this role is between $107,529 and $179,215, with new staff rarely starting at the top of the range and most often targeting a mid-point of $143,372.

Don't check off every box in the requirements listed above? Please apply anyway! Studies have shown that marginalized communities - such as women, LGBTQ+ and people of color - are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. The Obama Foundation is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible workplace that fosters a sense of belonging - so if you're excited about this role but your past experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to still consider submitting an application. You may be just the right candidate for this role or another one our openings!

In the interest of employee health and safety during the pendency of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Obama Foundation is requiring that all prospective employees present proof that they are fully-vaccinated against COVID-19, or seek a reasonable accommodation for religious or medical reasons, prior to their first day of employment.

Equal Opportunity Employer

The Foundation is committed to creating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. The Foundation does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, age, disability, parental status, veteran status, or any other protected status under applicable laws. We encourage individuals of all backgrounds to apply. If you are a qualified candidate with a disability, please e-mail us at careers@obama.org if you require a reasonable accommodation to complete this application.