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Senior Software Engineer, Elections

United States

Change.org is searching for a Senior Software Engineer to help build and scale a new set of local election experiences and tools as we work to empower voters throughout the 2025 local election cycle. With deep expertise in software development and a passion for building impactful, user-centered products, you will play a key role in designing, developing, and optimizing our election-focused tools. You'll collaborate closely with designers, product managers, and other engineers to bring functional prototypes to real users, refining them en route to a scalable product in 2026 and beyond.

The successful functioning of democracy relies on informed citizens, yet many voters lack the information they need to make educated decisions in local elections, leaving them to vote uninformed or abstain from voting altogether. Over the next 6-9 months we endeavor to answer the following questions:

  • How might we educate voters with a best-in-class mobile-first voting experience?
  • How might we build tools for supervoters & endorsers to help inform fellow citizens?
  • How might we engage candidates to interact with their potential constituents?

Key Outcomes:

  • Took ownership of key project components or initiatives, proactively driving them to successful completion by coordinating with cross-functional teams, handling dependencies, and resolving technical roadblocks
  • Provided technical influence, guidance and feedback to junior team members, leveraging deep expertise to mentor and coach them effectively, and contributing to the overall growth and success of the team.
  • Participated in technical planning and decision-making processes within their immediate team, providing insights and recommendations that drive innovation, efficiency, and long-term success
  • Identified opportunities to improve development processes and workflows, implementing changes that streamline project achievement, enhance team productivity, and ensure adherence to best practices
  • Demonstrated a commitment to continuous professional development by seeking feedback and actively engaging in self-improvement activities to enhance leadership skills and effectiveness.

The most important core competencies for the role are:

  •  Mentoring/Coaching:
    • Develop a concise knowledge of our architecture and provide support and guidance to other engineers with design, coding, and pull-requests.
    • Promote the growth of other engineers through regular feedback and pairing sessions
  • Coding skills:
    • Full stack with experience working effectively at scale
    • Demonstrated experience with different technologies, languages and frameworks in all layers of the webstack, from frontend to backend with an emphasis on Nodejs, Ruby on Rails, Elixir, React, Javascript/Typescript, GraphQL
    • Experience with SQL-based databases, able to define and optimize data schemas
    • Experience with infrastructure as code technologies like Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS
  • Planning & Execution:
    • Deconstruct projects into a well-defined action plan, and be responsible for its execution
    • Identify and fill gaps in project requirements so they align with team goals
    • Maintain own priorities and make appropriate progress proactively
  • Architecture & Design, Performance:
    • Familiarity with instrumentation and experimentation, deep system understanding
    • Be a driver for system quality
    • Influence architectural decisions that drive high-performant, scalable and resilient systems in a collaborative environment
  • Communication & Collaboration:
    • Communicate early and often, sharing ideas, analysis, and information in a direct verbal and written manner
    • Partner and collaborate effectively across functions such as product, design, devops, QA, analytics and with colleagues located in different timezones
    • Contribute to an open, inclusive and transparent culture

Target experience:

  • 4–6 years of experience with full-stack web service development, building and scaling reliable systems in production environments.
  • 3 years of experience in at least one backend language used at Change.org, such as Node.js, Rails, or Elixir.
  • 3 years of experience in frontend technologies like React, JavaScript, and TypeScript.
  • Experience with infrastructure-as-code technologies, including Terraform, Kubernetes, and AWS, to ensure scalable and secure system architecture.
  • Experience developing and optimizing data access layers using RESTful APIs and GraphQL.

Interested? Great! Here's what you should know:

This is a full time role based in the US. We’re currently able to hire staff based in the following US locations: AK, AZ, CA, CT, DC, FL, GA, IA, IL, KS, MA, MD, MO, NC, NJ, NV, NY, OR, PA, RI, TX, UT, VA, VT, WA, WI.

Our compensation philosophy is based on pay equity. All of our salaries are determined before we launch a role – they are based on a predetermined salary scale, the level on that scale and the cost of labor for that location. The annual salary of a Senior Software Engineer is $196,000 USD in San Francisco/New York, is $186,000 USD in Austin, Boston, LA, DC and Seattle, is $166,500 USD in all other US locations

Benefits and perks also vary based on location. 

Our evaluation process is as follows:

  • Initial screen with a Recruiter
  • Interview with the Hiring Manager
  • Team interviews with some team members which will include: a live coding session, an architecture interview, and a product interview
  • Values interview with our Head of Talent and Head of Engagement
  • Executive interview with our CTO

We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting amazing candidates like you, so please don’t hesitate to apply—we’d love to meet you. We also know it’s rare for someone to meet 100% of the qualifications. Please apply anyway!

We actively encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to apply. At Change.org, we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We invest in programs to support our diverse workforce, offer inclusive onboarding experiences and affinity groups, celebrate the heritage of our staff, provide training on working across differences, and maintain fair and transparent salary scales. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, or culture.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process for candidates with disabilities. If you need assistance, or an accommodation, please let your recruiter know once you are contacted about a role.

We're committed to protecting your data. To learn more, please review our Change.org Job Applicant Privacy Policy.

We are legally required to conduct EEOC reporting. While this is required by the federal government, we recognize that it does not include all genders and ethnicities. We want you to know that Change.org celebrates all identities and we thank you for your participation.http://change.org/

Change.org participates in E-verify - click here to learn more.

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