Sr. Software Engineer (Backend)

About NavaNava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation working to make government services simple, effective, and accessible to all. Since 2013, federal, state, and local government agencies have trusted Nava to build transformative digital services to help people access public benefits. Meeting our mission is an opportunity to restore trust between people and public institutions. We focus on populations that are the least protected because the stakes are higher.

As a client services company, we work with government agencies to improve how people apply for benefits, navigate their health care, and more. We bill for our time, selling our expertise and problem-solving methodology to government clients. Our clients hire us to help improve their products and services so that their users and beneficiaries have a better customer experience.

These end-users—the humans who benefit from our work—are at the core of everything we do. We research beneficiaries’ needs to help our government clients better deliver on their missions, providing everyone at Nava opportunities to do meaningful, impactful work.

Position summary You will work on small teams to build scalable infrastructure for our government -- designing, implementing, and delivering services that millions of Americans 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 for one of Nava’s major government partners. This is an opportunity to create a more secure and equitable experience for the public. The team will be extending the client’s existing codebase using mainly DevOps, Javascript, and Python to build widely relied upon services by millions of people nationwide.

What you'll do

• Working with fellow Nava engineers to design, review, and build well-crafted software.
• Collaborating with government partners and other contractors to architect, implement, and deploy new systems and improvements to existing systems.
• Working in an agile manner to efficiently ship new features that meet user needs.
• Creating tools and processes to automate our development, testing, and production workflows.
• Writing and reviewing technical documentation, and performing code reviews.
• Participating in an on-call rotation to support production systems and investigate issues when they occur.
• Taking part in hiring activities (e.g., submitting referrals, conducting interviews, and attending interview debriefs), as needed.

Required skills

• At least 6 years of hands-on professional work experience building web applications and creating APIs
• Experience with backend & DevOps skills, Java Spring, Kubernetes, and SQL/RDS,
• Understanding of web and mobile user interface design best practices
• Should be comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment in a self-directed manner that requires minimal supervision
• Familiarity with web accessibility standards to deliver services that are not just minimally accessible, but a simple and intuitive experience for all users, including those who rely on assistive technologies
• Strong communication and cross-functional collaboration skills
• Equal parts systems thinker and advocate for users
• Highly resourceful, reliable, and detail-oriented
• Ability to think strategically around trade-offs and short-term vs. long-term benefits
• An adaptive, empathetic, collaborative, and positive mindset
• Excellent written and real-time communication. technical and otherwise