Backend Software Engineer - Python/Postgres [Remote / Global]

Do you want to work for a mission-driven non-profit, writing software that will contribute to helping the livelihoods of millions of coffee farmers around the world? Enveritas is a 501(c)3 non-profit and Y Combinator-backed startup looking to hire for our Engineering & Data Group. We are looking for a backend software engineer with a focus on python and PostgreSQL to join us on a remote/global, full-time basis. Our Backend and Data Engineering Team is a six-person team (soon to be seven!) and is part of our Engineering & Data Group. You can learn more about this job and about our Backend and Data Engineering Team at https://www.enveritas.org/jobs/backend-software-eng/

About Our Engineering & Data Group

We are a quirky, talented, and humble group of about twenty-five people with diverse backgrounds, ranging from journalism to academia to international industry. We’re represented across the gender spectrum, with 36% of our Engineering and Data Group identifying as women and/or nonbinary. Several of us are parents, with more expecting.

Our group builds software to collect, analyze, and report data about coffee farmers’ conditions and practices. This large-scale data-collection effort requires many moving parts to work together, and we use technology to support that effort at every step of the process — from identifying coffee farms in satellite imagery, to coordinating survey edits across country teams, to detecting data anomalies in real-time that can be investigated while teams are still in the field. A core part of our work is in data aggregation and report generation, with insights ultimately being shared with roasters and other stakeholders on how to assist in improving the social, economic, and environmental conditions of smallholder farmers. 

Our backend services primarily use a Python/PostgreSQL stack running on Linux. We use git and Github for maintaining our code, CircleCI for CI/CD, and AWS for hosting our services and static resources, with containerization where appropriate for development and deployment.

What You’ll Be Doing

You will contribute to major feature planning and development, both independently and in collaboration with your teammates.

• Implement new features on our core platforms, Jebena and Sini. You’ll participate in long-term planning and product roadmaps, collaborate with product managers on writing specs for the team to implement, and develop features from specs. You should be comfortable collaborating with non-Engineering teams to understand their feature needs. A lion’s share of your time will be spent working with Python and PostgreSQL to add features to our internal platforms.
• Maintenance and enhancements of existing code. You’ll work with other engineers to triage and resolve incoming issues (we use Sentry).
• Manage AWS services. In tandem with our Head of IT, a part of this role includes helping manage our AWS account, including reviewing our CI/CD setup and proposing ways to further automate and secure our setup, including expanding our usage of Terraform.

Qualifications

• Strong ability to present and explain complex ideas clearly to non-technical colleagues.
• Demonstrated ability to apply design patterns for creating modular and efficient software, with the ability to teach others how to solve architectural problems.
• Extensive experience with Python, including developing applications and complex data processing tasks. Familiarity with Django or Flask.
• Advanced experience with PostgreSQL, including query optimization, joins, stored procedures, and performance tuning.
• Practical experience with Linux, Bash scripting, Docker containers, and AWS services (EC2, RDS, CloudFront).
• A minimum of five years of full-time professional experience as a backend software engineer.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent training in the principles of software engineering.

Research shows that people of different backgrounds read job postings differently. If you don’t think you meet all of the qualifications but do think you’d be a great match for us, please consider applying and sharing more in your application answers. We’d love to talk with you to see what skills you can bring to our team.

Who You Are

Our team is fully distributed, so you should be comfortable with remote work. This role is a full-time individual contributor role. While you can be located anywhere that our EOR (Deel) supports, our core hours are 10am to 2pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, with team members choosing either an early start or later stop as suits them.

You should be inspired by our mission to improve the lives of