Back-end Developer Full-time

We’re hiring a back-end developer. This is a full-time role that can be done from anywhere in the continental United States. It could be a great fit for you if you want to write open source code on a meaningful project as a leading member of a small team.

About us

The Permanent Legacy Foundation is a nonprofit seeking to democratize access to digital legacy. We believe that everyone deserves to be remembered. More of our lives now take place online, meaning the artifacts we leave behind are vulnerable to format shifts and cloud services closing their doors. Our descendants and future historians won’t have diaries or photos in an attic – they’ll have digital files that may or may not be accessible as time goes by. Permanent is a digital dig site for future archaeologists, a safe place to entrust your family history, and an innovative new way to fund cloud storage.

Your new role

We’re looking for an enthusiastic and experienced developer to help us modernize our file processing pipeline and extend our SDK to increase its usefulness to our partners. You’ll be working closely with both our internal engineering team (Cecilia, Natalie, and Mithuna) and some outside contractors. Your strengths, interests, and feedback will help shape the direction of our technical work going forward.

Some of our key projects for this year include:

• Implementing an SFTP service and improving our scalability to accommodate high upload volumes through that service;
• Performance improvements for large archives;
• Discoverability of public material on Permanent.

Ideally you’ll be fluent in TypeScript (PHP knowledge is useful, but not necessary) and have experience writing open source code. It’s helpful, but not essential, for you to have an interest in digital preservation and some familiarity with AWS products like S3, EC2, and RDS.

Our tech

Permanent is currently shifting to open source TypeScript microservices and extending our open source TypeScript SDK which sits in front of our older (closed source) PHP codebase. New functionality will be built in TypeScript. We are committed to writing code and holding discussions in the open as part of our mission – check us out on GitHub .

How we work

We are an entirely remote team that makes use of asynchronous chat and regular video meetings for collaboration and to build a sense of camaraderie. We hope to get the team together in person once it is safe to do so! We work some core hours together to make it easy to find meeting times but offer flexible scheduling outside of those hours.

How we hire

1. Apply by filling out our application form.
2. We’ll schedule a 30-minute screening call with our Director of Engineering to talk more about the role and your experience to see if this feels like a good fit for both of us.
3. Next, we’ll have an hour-long technical panel interview with a few members of our development team. We’ll ask you to bring a piece of open source code that you’ve written for us to first discuss and then extend by doing some pair programming (no whiteboarding or trivia).
4. Finally, we’ll invite you to a regular team demo meeting so you can get a sense of the team dynamic and what it would be like to work here.
5. We’ll make an offer.

Salary and benefits

• Salary range: $110,000 – $140,000
• Healthcare (medical, dental, and vision)
• Generous PTO (vacation time, sick time, and federal holidays)
• Work from home
• Wellness resources
• Parental leave

Additional Resources

Information on Permanent Legacy Foundation and our mission can be found at www.permanent.org and third party channels including:

• The Long Now: The Permanent Legacy Foundation Wants to Preserve Your Digital Legacy for Future Generations
• Austin Inno: New Austin nonprofit wants to give you control of your digital legacy
• The Photo Detective Podcast Episode 95: How to Save Your Family Archive on Permanent.org

Permanent is committed to diversity and inclusion and people from groups underrepresented in software development are encouraged to apply.