Back-end Software Engineer

Who We Are 

Healthier Generation is a leading children’s health non-profit that promotes equitable whole child health so that every mind, every body, and every young person can be healthy and ready to succeed.  We believe a dedicated, intensified movement that centers equity in health practices and policies wherever kids live, learn and play is required to achieve dramatic improvements in the health and life outcomes of Black, Indigenous, People of Color, as well as communities experiencing deep poverty. 

Healthier Generation works nationally and locally with schools and school districts, youth-serving organizations, businesses, and communities – building their capacity to create healthier environments where young people can thrive. Our work, in total, has reached more than 31 million children and meaningfully improved environments to support the physical, social, and emotional health of the next generation—especially those from underserved communities. Our programs are evidenced-based and evidence-informed, supported by a robust digital/virtual/live training platform and action center, as well as direct-to-community services. Through Healthier Generation programs, products and services, more children nationwide are gaining the opportunity to build a healthy future.

The Back-end Software Engineer works as part of a dynamic, collaborative and innovative cross-organizational team that delivers high quality, high impact solutions.

They develop and maintain server-side code and software architecture that drives our back-end API. Working primarily with PHP, Laravel and PostgreSQL, this position is responsible for helping keep our back-end and data systems accurate, reliable, maintainable, scalable and performant. As a technical expert of these systems and the intricacies of how business logic is applied there, they occasionally serve a consulting role to other staff members and maintain shared technical documentation, including entity-relationship diagrams. They write advanced code and automated tests daily, identify opportunities for improvement, and adhere to security and privacy-related best practices.

Their work plays a key role in the creation and delivery of our public-facing digital products and the collection of data that informs everything from our programmatic work to high-level organizational decision making and collaboration with partners.

Core Responsibilities

• Back-end development for custom software products
• Create, update and extend complex custom code that is documented, maintainable, performant, and scalable
• Implement consistent, well-structured APIs that support a performant user experience and efficient utilization by external code and systems
• Monitor systems and tune code, queries for performance and reliability
• Collaborate with others to identify and refine arrangements for hosting of files, application code and data, as well as transfer and synchronization of data between systems
• Utilize modern, serverless hosting architectures, including environment configuration and automated code deployments for staging, production and other instances as needed
• Ensure readiness of API code and associated infrastructure to be replicated as local development environments with minimal effort, using production-like data
• Identify, document, and act on opportunities for refactoring, including abstraction that supports development of well-encapsulated, re-usable libraries
• Ensure code, workflows, and associated systems adhere to security and privacy-related best practices
• Develop automated tests for new code, maintain and improve for existing code, and perform manual QA that validates specifications are met and trouble-free
• Troubleshoot, identify and resolve software and system bugs
• Proactively identify areas for improvement
• Utilize Git for version control of code, and GitHub for automation of deploys, builds and running of tests
• Provide and submit to code reviews

Education and experience requirements for this role:

Required:

5+ years of software development, including skills in technologies listed below: 

• PHP >= v7 (advanced)
• PHPUnit
• Laravel >= v7
• Docker (intermediate)
• SQL (intermediate)
• Linux Command-line Interface (intermediate)
• Git (intermediate)
• HTML (intermediate)

A commitment to applying best practices in software development and associated testing, documentation.

Advanced knowledge of software and web-based system architecture, and proficiency in:

• Server-side frameworks like Laravel, Symfony
• Repository, service class and model building
• Use of PHPUnit and building with mock data
• Writing highly testable, DRY code
• Designing, developing and consuming RESTful APIs and other web services
• SQL design, advanced query building in raw SQL
• Interacting with databases via CLI
• Applying and enforcing security best practices and privacy-related considerations for web-based software
• Using modern tools and services for automation of engineering tasks such as generating builds and releases, deploying to production environments, and running automated tests
• Addressing performance and scaling of web-based software, including caching strategies, monitoring server and application logs, optimizing code and queries, and understanding the intricacies of HTTP itself
• Making extensive use of automated tests to validate specifications have been met, existing functionality remains intact and bad or unexpected input cannot disrupt the system
• Using OOP and common design patterns

Including:

Strong analytical, QA and debugging skills

Demonstrated ability to effectively communicate (orally, in writing, and in presentations) complex technical and non-technical information

Flexible, self-guided and a continuous learner

Ability to balance individual remote work within a collaborative team environment

Preferred:

• Bachelor’s degree
• Prior experience with Cloud via AWS Lambda
• Prior experience with PostgreSQL
• Experience working in a remote, virtual environment

Other Requirements:

• Required frequent travel by car or plane up to 10% of the time

Required Competencies: Who You Are

You should have a genuine interest in and commitment to making kids’ lives healthier. You are a dedicated equity driven, solution-oriented professional who values community centered approach and systems-level change. Your ability to prioritize tasks, build internal and external relationships and be self-driven prepares you for this position.

Your professional experience will show that you practice many of the following Healthier Generation core values:

• Mission driven: You are passionate about creating equitable environments for young people and believe every mind, every body, and every young person should be healthy and ready to succeed. You demonstrate a passion for school and youth-serving organizations, health and wellness, quality standards and processes.
• Crave Solutions: You strategize to transform systems and drive sustainability through evidence-based, data-driven approaches. You have an ability to assess and identify significant opportunities and potential problems and develop feasible solutions to address the problem.
• Bridge Builders: Making intentional and effective connections externally and internally to fulfill our purpose. You can build and maintain relationships with a variety of diverse stakeholders and have an understanding of the challenges facing communities that serve Black, Indigenous, and People of Color populations.
• Engage and connect: You demonstrate professionalism and courtesy with open and proactive communication to increase synergy. You assume best intentions and practice self-management and empathy to acknowledge our own and each other’s perspective. You can effectively provide and receive feedback that is constructive, timely, as appropriate.
• Never settle: You strive constantly for excellence and equity with an eagerness to improve and a zeal to stand up for generations of healthy, thriving kids. You have demonstrated knowledge and experience in cultural competency and applying an equity mindset with colleagues, leaders, stakeholders, and communities.
• Virtually here: You respect the time and contributions of colleagues by being punctual, attentive, and responsive in all virtual settings. You use available technology to create an environment that facilitates person-to-person connectivity and workflow. You also have effective presentation skills (internal, external, small, large, conference calls, in-person).

Compensation and Benefits

At Healthier Generation, we believe in a holistic approach to rewarding and supporting staff. We work to balance financial stability with competitive pay and meaningful benefits –while offering unmatched schedule flexibility and mission-based work. Some of the benefits we offer include:

• Flexible PTO (available immediately upon hire)
• 100% remote work, highly flexible work environment
• Competitive health benefits program and employer contributions
• Professional development and learning opportunities
• 401(k) employer match of up to 4%, with 100% vesting of the match upon hire
• Stipend income to support communication and wellness in the amount of $1,500 per year (in per-paycheck increments)

Each job at Healthier Generation is assigned to a salary grade built on market data.  For an individual coming into Healthier Generation, we set pay generally between the minimum and the midpoint of the salary grade and based on qualifications. For this position is budgeted up to $115,000.00.

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation is committed to Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, or veteran status in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.