Interested in making cities work better? OpenPlans is Hiring
Michael Keating
OpenPlans' transit and transportation software work is growing fast and we are looking for engineering and design talent to help us make cities work better. We are working on real-time vehicle location services for New York City's buses, bicycle routing services for city cyclists, social applications for exploring outdoor trail systems, trip planners and online maps for transit agencies, and tools to improve many other aspects of urban mobility.
We need software engineers, interface developers, and graphic designers to make all of these projects fly and to help us create the next wave of open source mobility software and services, whatever those may be.
Over the next several months we will likely hire several full time staff, but we are also looking for interested consultants and hackers to contribute on a short term, part-time, or ad-hoc basis. All of our software is open source, and our development practices are sufficiently agile and flexible to accommodate a range of contributor types. Here are some of the qualities we are looking for:
Skills:
* Software engineers with experience working on open source projects, with the kind of talent it takes to solve complicated transportation problems. Front end and back end skills welcome. Java a plus but multiple languages are valued.
* UI engineers who can both design highly usable public interfaces, and implement them across multiple platforms and browsers. We like clean, standards-based HTML/CSS and extensible JavaScript development practices. Familiarity with API design and integration is valued.
* Visual designers who can bring vision and decisiveness to logos, styles, and interactive map elements that will be seen and used by millions of people. We appreciate a healthy balance of contemporary aesthetics with the whitespace and accessibility required for interactivity and identity on public sector websites.
Interests: OpenPlans makes cities work better and our transport business is focused on helping people get around cities easily, and without needing their own car. We like bikes, trains, buses, cabs, shoes and sharing. If you like these things too, you will enjoy working with us to make them a bigger part of city life.
Culture: OpenPlans is a not-for-profit, open source software company. This doesn't mean we don't make money or pay people well (we do). It means we are not out just to make a cool product and a fast buck. We only work on projects that make a real difference in the world, and nearly all of our code becomes a public resource. No patents, no pointless projects, no regrets.
At this stage we are gathering candidates from which to draw an initial application pool. We may or may not post formal job descriptions. For now, if you are interested, please send us your resume, relevant links (github, websites, portfolio), and a short note about why you are interested and why you might be a good fit. We will contact you when we would like to advance the conversation.
Also, please take a look at some of the projects we are working on, test them out, post to the lists, join the channels, submit patches, and get involved. Many of our hires have come from the communities of developers who already know our code because they wrote some important piece of it.
- The OpenPlans Transport Team