Software Engineering Apprenticeship - Code for America - San Francisco, CA

[so...@codeforamerica.org]

Software Engineering Apprentice

at Code for America - https://grnh.se/b37447781

San Francisco, Ca

Code for America builds technology to help government services work for the people who need them most.

We’re excited to launch our 2019 apprenticeship program cohort to provide a pathway for people early in their technical careers to get on the job training.  We’re looking for passionate mission driven folks who are looking for opportunities to grow their skills. The program is eight months, full-time, and paid, beginning in April 2019.

The application period for this apprenticeship program is January 14th - February 11th, 2019.

You may be a fit for this program if:

• You’ve recently graduated from a degree or bootcamp program
• You’re returning to the workforce and want to get up-to-date on your tech skills
• You’re early in your career and looking to gain more experience

Our ideal apprentice has a solid technical foundation, is action-oriented and eager to learn, and shares our passion for the Code for America mission and our focus on helping users. We work with well-known and reliable technologies like Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL, but we don’t require prior expertise in our stack. You’ll learn to confidently develop and ship software in our environment as you progress through your apprenticeship.

So, what do we do?

Our teams work on a variety of problems facing people at risk of persistent poverty and incarceration, including food security, healthcare, employment, and criminal justice reform. We work hand in hand with public servants to identify and remove barriers within these systems so people can get the services they need. We do this by taking a user-centered, data-driven, and iterative approach to service delivery, and we believe this approach can be a massive force for social good.

Here are some of the things you'll do at Code for America:

• Participate fully in all team activities.
• Learn about the service delivery challenges in a policy area and how a user-centered, data-driven, iterative approach to technology can help.
• Ship software that helps users more easily navigate government services.
• Write automated tests and work on infrastructure to ensure a high level of service quality.
• Pair with your teammates to design and deliver clean, reliable, and maintainable solutions to user problems.
• Use lean product development practices to implement the simplest thing that could work, and continuously improve the product from there.

As an incoming apprentice, we expect you to have the following skills:

• You have a passion for our mission of making government services better for people who need them most.
• You have strong general coding skills, and can write understandable, testable, and maintainable code.
• You are able to quickly read and understand code.
• You are able to quickly learn new technologies and practices.
• You have a good understanding of algorithms and web fundamentals.
• You are able to participate in software design discussions.
• You have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• You are fundamentally curious and empathetic.
• You can work autonomously but also enjoy collaborating with others.

As an outgoing apprentice, we want you to have gained the following skills:

• You’ll have an understanding of what it’s like to deliver government services, and a deep understanding of the challenges within a particular problem space.
• You’ll be comfortable with pair programming and shared ownership of code.
• You’ll have a solid foundation in test driven development and know how to write automated unit tests for your code.
• You’ll be able to write and test new controllers and endpoints in a web app.
• You’ll have an intermediate understanding of web design patterns and be able to apply those design patterns to new code being written.
• You’ll have an intermediate understanding of version control tools. You’ll understand complicated git commands like git rebase -i and be able to merge two branches with many conflicts.
• You’ll have developed a strong understanding of how to use Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment to the fullest and be capable of creating CI and CD pipelines for your own software.
• You’ll have worked on operations and be capable of writing and deploying your own software to a cloud PaaS like Heroku. You’ll also gain some knowledge of working with an IaaS like AWS.

Benefits

Code for America offers full health and dental benefits, a 401k plan with matching funds and a culture that is collaborative, hardworking and fun. 

About Code for America

Code for America is a startup non-profit with a great culture and a huge opportunity to make a difference. We work in cross-functional teams, collaboratively and agilely and value high-quality, user-friendly work product. We strive to learn from everything we do and regularly host talks from leaders in the civic technology movement. We respect each other, work hard, and have a great time together. We’re looking for individuals who share our vision, our values, and our willingness to do what it takes to achieve an ambitious mission over the next few years.

Equal Employment Opportunity 

Code for America values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, people of color, LGBT individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, and veterans to apply. Code for America is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will not be discriminated against because of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition or any protected category prohibited by local, state or federal laws.