Who We Are 

The Back-end Software Engineer works as part of a dynamic, collaborative and innovative cross-organizational team that delivers high quality, high impact solutions.

They develop and maintain server-side code and software architecture that drives our back-end API. Working primarily with PHP, Laravel and PostgreSQL, this position is responsible for helping keep our back-end and data systems accurate, reliable, maintainable, scalable and performant. As a technical expert of these systems and the intricacies of how business logic is applied there, they occasionally serve a consulting role to other staff members and maintain shared technical documentation, including entity-relationship diagrams. They write advanced code and automated tests daily, identify opportunities for improvement, and adhere to security and privacy-related best practices.

Their work plays a key role in the creation and delivery of our public-facing digital products and the collection of data that informs everything from our programmatic work to high-level organizational decision making and collaboration with partners.

Core Responsibilities

• Back-end development for custom software products
• Create, update and extend complex custom code that is documented, maintainable, performant, and scalable
• Implement consistent, well-structured APIs that support a performant user experience and efficient utilization by external code and systems
• Monitor systems and tune code, queries for performance and reliability
• Collaborate with others to identify and refine arrangements for hosting of files, application code and data, as well as transfer and synchronization of data between systems
• Utilize modern, serverless hosting architectures, including environment configuration and automated code deployments for staging, production and other instances as needed
• Ensure readiness of API code and associated infrastructure to be replicated as local development environments with minimal effort, using production-like data
• Identify, document, and act on opportunities for refactoring, including abstraction that supports development of well-encapsulated, re-usable libraries
• Ensure code, workflows, and associated systems adhere to security and privacy-related best practices
• Develop automated tests for new code, maintain and improve for existing code, and perform manual QA that validates specifications are met and trouble-free
• Troubleshoot, identify and resolve software and system bugs
• Proactively identify areas for improvement
• Utilize Git for version control of code, and GitHub for automation of deploys, builds and running of tests
• Provide and submit to code reviews

Education and experience requirements for this role:

Required:5 years of software development, including skills in technologies listed below: 

• PHP >= v7 (advanced)
• PHPUnit
• Laravel >= v7
• Docker (intermediate)
• SQL (intermediate)
• Linux Command-line Interface (intermediate)
• Git (intermediate)
• HTML (intermediate)

Required Competencies: Who You Are

You should have a genuine interest in and commitment to making kids’ lives healthier. You are a dedicated equity driven, solution-oriented professional who values community centered approach and systems-level change. Your ability to prioritize tasks, build internal and external relationships and be self-driven prepares you for this position.

Your professional experience will show that you practice many of the following Healthier Generation core values:

• Mission driven: You are passionate about creating equitable environments for young people and believe every mind, every body, and every young person should be healthy and ready to succeed. You demonstrate a passion for school and youth-serving organizations, health and wellness, quality standards and processes.

• Crave Solutions: You strategize to transform systems and drive sustainability through evidence-based, data-driven approaches. You have an ability to assess and identify significant opportunities and potential problems and develop feasible solutions to address the problem.

• Bridge Builders: Making intentional and effective connections externally and internally to fulfill our purpose. You can build and maintain relationships with a variety of diverse stakeholders and have an understanding of the challenges facing communities that serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color populations.

• Engage and connect: You demonstrate professionalism and courtesy with open and proactive communication to increase synergy. You assume best intentions and practice self-management and empathy to acknowledge our own and each other’s perspective. You can effectively provide and receive feedback that is constructive, timely, as appropriate.

• Never settle: You strive constantly for excellence and equity with an eagerness to improve and a zeal to stand up for generations of healthy, thriving kids. You have demonstrated knowledge and experience in cultural competency and applying an equity mindset with colleagues, leaders, stakeholders, and communities.

• Virtually here: You respect the time and contributions of colleagues by being punctual, attentive, and responsive in all virtual settings. You use available technology to create an environment that facilitates person-to-person connectivity and workflow. You also have effective presentation skills (internal, external, small, large, conference calls, in-person).