Senior Front-end Software Engineer

Overview

Millions of people interact with the City of Boston digitally each year to do everything from finding information on City services to paying a parking ticket. On the Digital Services team, we believe these experiences should be easy to navigate, dignified, and even delightful. The Digital Services team within DoIT is focused on partnering with City departments to improve service delivery across the City. We’re a cross-functional team with a mission to improve the user experience of existing digital services, better engage and communicate with our residents, and build new systems to improve how the City delivers services online.

The Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) provides and maintains mission-critical technologies for the City’s more than 18,000 employees and the hundreds of thousands of constituents they serve. As a front-end engineer, you will work on small teams to build scalable infrastructure for the City – designing, implementing, and delivering services that City residents depend on. You care deeply about working on technology that improves people’s lives, but don’t think technology is always the answer. You are passionate about building large-scale systems that are inclusive, well-designed, fast, scalable, and secure, and you’ll help set high standards for our teams in terms of simplicity, empathy, and accessibility.

The full-stack engineer in this role will be responsible for developing end-to-end systems, modernizing existing legacy enterprise platforms to improve the City department’s public-facing processes and experiences which will enable users to have more access to the programs and services they need, in real-time, in a more user-friendly and uncomplicated way. This individual will be involved in everything, from strategy and planning through post-production testing and support.

Responsibilities

• Works with fellow engineers to design, review, and build well-crafted software.
• Collaborates with stakeholders (technical and non-technical) to understand their needs, clarify possible options, make technical recommendations, and architect, implement, and deploy new systems and improvements to existing systems.
• Works in an agile manner to efficiently ship new features that meet user needs.
• Creates tools and processes to automate our development, testing, and production workflows.
• Acts as a technical leader in the development of high-quality, well-tested, documented, CI/CD-enabled, and high-performance software solutions.
• Writes and reviews technical documentation, including architecture diagrams, and performs code reviews.
• Works closely with product designers, product managers, and engineers to implement solutions for end-user and business needs.
• Supports production systems and investigates issues when they occur.
• Upholds and continuously improves the team’s coding standards and development workflows.
• Pursues personal growth by maintaining an awareness of the state of technology, engineering techniques, and best practices.
• Contributes to and advances “best practices” within the team and our organization.
• Supports project planning, including requirements gathering, design, scoping, and estimates for upcoming work.
• Manages your own time and works well both independently and as part of a team.
• Provides exemplary peer reviews, enabling continuous learning and improvement opportunities for other team members.
• Participates in daily standups and other agile (Scrum or Kanban) routines.
• Performs related work as required.

Minimum Entrance Qualifications

• At least five (5) years of experience working in an agile, multidisciplinary team environment, preferably designing and building medium- to large-scale web applications on Cloud Platforms.
• At least five (5) years of hands-on professional work experience building web applications and systems using modern JavaScript with React.
• Current and/or prior experience developing API endpoints.
• Experience with AWS and SQL databases.
• Experience mapping and driving systemic improvements within complex service environments.
• Understanding of OWASP and other secure development methodologies.
• Experience in languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Node.
• Experience with tools such as Fleet, SASS, Docker, Behat, GitHub, TravisCI, Acquia Hosting, and AWS Lambda.
• Experience with Drupal 9 is a plus.
• Understanding of web and mobile user interface design best practices.
• Demonstrated ability to design, build, and test semantic, accessible web applications.
• Tenacity to dive into problems and iterate in working code.
• Equal parts systems thinker and advocate for users.
• Highly resourceful, reliable, and detail-oriented.
• Ability to exercise good judgment and focus on detail as required by the job.

BOSTON RESIDENCY REQUIRED

Terms:

Union/Salary Plan/Grade: SENA/MM1-10 Hours per week: 35

Benefits

At the City of Boston, we provide our employees with a wide array of benefits and resources that foster both their professional and personal development. Our goal is to make City government a place where everyone is empowered to make a positive impact for the communities in which we live, work, and play.

For full-time positions, employees may be eligible for the following benefits depending on the nature of their employment and applicable Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for the position. View the Collective Bargaining Agreements page to learn more. Benefits Available to City Workers

• Retirement & Savings Opportunities: Membership in the Boston Retirement System (BRS), a benefit pension plan providing lifetime income to vested employees when they retire, along with deferred compensation options to help you build a secure future. Visit boston.gov/retirement to learn more.
• Health Insurance & Benefits: The City offers competitive medical, dental, and vision coverage, plus flexible spending (FSA), dependent care accounts, and life insurance for our employees. Visit boston.gov/insurance to learn more.
• Other Benefits: City employees enjoy a benefits package featuring paid time off and leave, subsidized transit (MBTA and Bluebikes), educational assistance, and employee wellness programs. Visit boston.gov/life-city-boston to learn more.
• Salary information: To view salary plans and understand how salaries work at the City of Boston, go to boston.gov/salary.

Part-time employees who are scheduled to work for 20 hours or more per week may also be eligible for benefits on a pro-rated basis. Please refer to the applicable Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) to learn more about any benefits available for this position.

If you have any questions about the benefits offered for this position, please contact the Office of Human Resources at 617-635-3370 or ohr@boston.gov. The City of Boston is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We invite applications from all qualified individuals and do not discriminate based on race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other protected category.