Staff Software Engineer, Extensibility and Integration

WHO WE ARE:

ActBlue is a nonprofit that builds tech and infrastructure for Democratic campaigns, progressive-aligned causes, and people trying to make an impact in order to fuel long-term, people-powered change. If you’ve ever given online to a Democrat or progressive organization, chances are you’ve used our powerful online fundraising platform.

We put power in the hands of small-dollar donors and help thousands of groups — from presidential candidates to environmental organizations — build grassroots movements. We envision a democracy where everyone looking to make progressive people-powered change can easily and effectively deploy their resources, energy, and creativity to shape our country and futures. Each and every one of us, from the political activists to the tech innovators to the customer service pros, is fully committed to our mission.

THE OPPORTUNITY

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join our Extensibility and Integrations team. In this pivotal role, you'll provide technical leadership for multi-quarter initiatives in the dynamic world of digital fundraising — enabling fundraising administrators to seamlessly integrate and manage contribution data across their diverse toolsets. You'll be instrumental in developing an intuitive, self-managed suite of tools, advancing our reporting and integration capabilities, and crafting a seamless experience for fundraising administrators across our platform.

Working full-stack with Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, React, and TypeScript, you'll architect systems and establish technical foundations that power sophisticated integrations and data exchange. You'll partner closely with product, design, and cross-functional teams to identify and execute key improvements that boost product performance while solidifying the reliability, scalability, and maintainability of our systems. Your innovative approach to extensible solutions will enhance ActBlue's data and reporting tools — meeting the immediate needs of our users while paving the way for future advancements. By joining our team, you will play a critical part in reinforcing the technological infrastructure that powers progressive movements.

Our engineering and product organization is made up of empathetic and passionate people. We're organized into cross-functional teams that operate independently in alignment with ActBlue's broader organizational goals.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

• Architect and lead database modernization efforts, optimizing large-scale systems for efficiency and reliability while safeguarding sensitive donor information through advanced data management and retention strategies.
• Lead the design and implementation of scalable data solutions and robust APIs, ensuring seamless data integration, high availability, and alignment with business goals for peak performance during critical fundraising moments.
• Lead the technical execution of large, cross-team initiatives, working with multiple engineers to design and implement solutions that balance high-impact opportunities with effort, scope, and technical tradeoffs.
• Break down initiative-level work across multiple epics and contribute technical expertise to shape the team's roadmap prioritization.
• Proactively tackle database performance, refining schemas and enhancing data retrieval processes while creating strategic integrations for vendor APIs for improved system interconnectivity.
• Serve as a technical consultant and go-to resource for engineers across teams on complex architectural decisions, system design, and best practices — particularly around extensibility, integrations, and data exchange.
• Advocate for comprehensive monitoring systems and software quality standards, implementing best practices that anticipate and accommodate future scalability and maintenance needs.
• Recognize the importance of addressing tech debt head-on. Your proactive approach will ensure our systems remain agile and adaptable, setting us up for future success.
• Demonstrate technical leadership through writing documentation, establishing effective testing and monitoring, and fostering clear and audience-oriented communication.
• Coach and mentor engineers on your team, creating professional development opportunities and partnering with engineering managers to find sponsorship and growth opportunities for your colleagues.
• Model effective feedback in code reviews, explaining the "why" in a way that's easily understood, and create spaces for individuals to be engaged, valued, and heard.

WHAT YOU'LL BE WORKING WITH

• Frontend Development: JavaScript and TypeScript with React.
• Backend Development: Ruby on Rails, with SQL via PostgreSQL for database management, Node.js.
• Data Management: REST and GraphQL for API queries, Sidekiq for background job processing.
• Development Tools: TypeScript for static type checking, Yarn + Webpack for managing dependencies and builds, ESLint/Prettier for code quality control.
• Infrastructure and Monitoring:
• Application Hosting: Heroku for deploying, Kubernetes for container orchestration.
• Monitoring and Error Tracking: Datadog for system monitoring, Bugsnag for error detection.
• Data Analytics and Reporting: Mixpanel for tracking user interactions, Looker for data analysis powered by SQL/PSQL for in-depth PostgreSQL querying.

WHAT YOU BRING

• 6-8 years of relevant professional experience, with demonstrated ability to provide technical leadership for multi-quarter initiatives involving complex requirements, strategic thinking, and cross-team collaboration.
• Significant experience in  developing and maintaining large monolithic server-side web applications, including making changes to APIs to carry features to completion.
• Broad understanding of a spectrum of stacks; expert understanding of dependencies, needs, impacts, and risks across technical areas within a domain. Our team focuses primarily on the back end, but a candidate for this role would ideally have experience with and an understanding of the entire technological ecosystem.
• Deep understanding of performance, scalability, and security best practices, with the ability to recommend system-level improvements to mitigate concerns for broad systems. Known as a go-to consultant that engineers turn to for guidance in these areas.
• Experience designing and integrating with third-party APIs and building extensible systems that support diverse downstream toolsets and data consumers.
• Experience designing frameworks to enable a culture of defensive testing; consistently debugging the toughest issues throughout the stack regardless of environment, finding root cause or viable workarounds.
• A track record of effective collaboration with engineers to develop abstractions and patterns that make it easy to build reliable software.
• Eagerness to explore and refactor legacy code — we've been doing this for a while now and could use an engineer who brings an empathetic but forward-thinking approach to working in an older codebase.
• Ability to communicate effectively with non-technical stakeholders and to collaboratively translate business requirements and strategic goals into technical solutions, modifying communication style to fit the audience.
• Experience coaching engineers on coaching and mentoring others; fostering a culture of delivering specific praise and constructive feedback.
• Can provide support and stability during times of urgency; contributes holistic solutions in post-mortems.
• An inclusive, generous working style: you like to mentor, collaborate, and elevate your team by supporting your peers, providing coaching and guidance to multiple team members, and anticipating where your intervention would be helpful.

WORK & BENEFITS SNAPSHOT

This posting is for a full-time, remote, salaried position. Travel may be required on a limited basis to attend all-staff and departmental retreats (1-2 times per year). Additional travel may be required for select positions. 

Registered States*: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Washington D.C.

*While ActBlue is currently registered to support remote work in the states listed above, we possess the ability to register in additional states as needed. If you are located in a state not listed, we may still be able to proceed with your application, but please note that the offer process may take longer to accommodate registration requirements.

Work Schedule: This role requires availability during established, regular business hours (Mon-Fri) and is expected to be a part of an on-call rotation which will result in working nontraditional hours as needed.

Work Environment: Employees can expect to work with distributed teams across all U.S. time zones. Our roles require extended technology usage, and proficiency with virtual communication tools such as Zoom and Slack. Regular attendance in virtual meetings is inherent to every position.

Salary Range Details: $191,679 - $216,566 - $241,452

ActBlue is committed to consistent compensation practices across our organization. Final salary offers will take into account factors such as candidate experience, interview performance and current team salary parity. 

Benefits: 

• Flexible work schedules and an unlimited time-off policy
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families; plus fully-paid health reimbursement arrangement to use for out of pocket expenses and fully-paid short- and long-term disability 
• Fully paid basic and AD&D life insurance and a voluntary supplemental life insurance option
• Dependent and health care flexible spending account options
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits for employees 
• Automatic 2% Employer-paid 401K contribution, plus up to an additional 6% match on employee contributions
• A minimum of three months paid medical, family and parental leave (for all new parents, adoptions included)
• Commuter or home-office benefits, including a $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees
• Additional perks including quarterly snack deliveries and digital subscriptions to the Boston Globe & New York Times

ActBlue is unable to sponsor work visas at this time.

UNION INFORMATION: The terms and conditions of this position are subject to a collective bargaining agreement with the Communications Workers of America, the exclusive bargaining agent of covered ActBlue Technical Services employees.