[Jobposts] Benetech: Software Engineer -- Front End : Palo Alto, CA or Telecommute

[C. Howell]

Please apply at http://benetech.org/want-to-help/work-for-us/

Software Engineer – Front End

Benetech was founded to be a different kind of tech company -- a
nonprofit with a pure focus on developing technology for the social
good. Our business model aims to create sustainable, not profitable,
projects, which allows us to do more and to be more creative in how we
apply technology to accelerate social progress. In many ways, we’re
like a start-up company in a venture capital environment --
identifying new markets and new ways to be efficient in existing
markets. The big difference is that our bottom line is centered on how
many lives we can help, not on how much money we will make.

We have four main program areas – Global Literacy, Human Rights,
Environment and Benetech Labs – and focus on projects that offer the
greatest social return on the funds invested. Jim Fruchterman, social
entrepreneur and MacArthur Fellow, founded Benetech in 1989 and leads
the organization as its CEO. Benetech has over 70 employees, most of
which work out of our Palo Alto headquarters on California Avenue
(walking distance from Caltrain and Stanford University).

One example of Benetech’s work is our flagship initiative, Bookshare
(http://bookshare.org). Bookshare opens new doors for people with
visual and reading disabilities. Bookshare is the world’s largest
accessible library of eBooks and periodicals. Bookshare offers more
than 250,000 books in its online collection and gives people who can’t
read traditional printed books, access to a dramatically expanded
world of information. This project is funded by the U.S Department of
Education, foundations, other donors and paid memberships.

Position Summary

 Benetech is looking for a Front End Engineer who will be a member of
our engineering team tasked with designing and building our various
software applications. Benetech engineering provides our engineers
with an exciting, fast paced and agile software development
environment in which they can develop their technical skills and make
significant contributions to our software development projects. The
engineering environment is highly collaborative and engineers on the
team actively interact with other team members, product managers,
operations staff and the quality assurance team.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Design, develop and extend the software components of Benetech’s
Bookshare application.

• Actively collaborate with other engineers, product managers and QA
engineers in a fast moving, agile environment.

• Bring thought leadership, critical thinking and creativity to all
phases of the product development lifecycle.

• Deliver passion, enthusiasm and team spirit to the work environment.

Qualifications

• B.S. in Computer Science, a related degree or its equivalent.

• 4+ years of extensive client-side JavaScript experience.

• Experience with at least one popular and well known JavaScript UI framework.

• 1+ years of Java experience.

• Deep understanding of software development best practices, design
principles, and software maintainability, specifically in agile
environments.

• Experience working with a full featured version control system.

Big Plusses

• Experience with development projects that integrate application
functionality with a CMS product such as Drupal.

• Experience working within an Agile process and familiarity with
Agile goals and philosophy.

• Experience with the concepts of continuous integration and test
automation and the tools to support them.

• Experience with a CSS framework.

• Experience with accessibility technologies.