Over 7 million people visit the City of Philadelphia’s website, phila.gov, every year. Whether they’re looking for information on the Philadelphia Marathon, checking whether trash pickup is on-schedule, looking for after school activities, or applying for public assistance programs, for many Philadelphians, their experience on phila.gov represents the image they have of government. For the past few years, we’ve been working closely with content creators, City colleagues, and the public to rewrite service information and to design features that better meet the needs of City residents. You can see the progress at www.phila.gov.This role sits within OIT’s reimagined Software Engineering group. Created in 2019, OIT Software Engineering team is a talented group of engineers reshaping how the City develops, procures, and maintains custom software. Our projects have a huge range and a huge impact - from operating and extending the front door to the City at phila.gov, to building the City’s Campaign Finance tracking system to building world class GIS applications like atlas.phila.gov. We’re developing more standards and frameworks for ourselves and for other developers to use; we use modern tooling (think AWS, GitHub, Docker, Terraform, etc.) and are a highly collaborative, productive team. As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll join the City’s internal development shop and work on critical business and resident-facing applications. You’ll work alongside UX professionals, content strategists and other members of the Digital Services team. Your leadership will guide the implementation of City standards for phila.gov. You’ll be primarily responsible for building out features on our WordPress platform using PHP and Vue.js, and following well-documented City standards, while contributing to new ones. You’ll get to work alongside stakeholders in a variety of different departments as you help design solutions – both from a tech and process perspective. As a Senior Engineer, you’ll be expected to help mentor other engineers who aren’t as far in their careers and provide a safe space for code reviews and help foster a collaborative work environment.You’ll join a city government that has the largest GitHub organization among cities (github.com/CityOfPhiladelphia), works in the open, and leverages open-source tools and cloud infrastructure to improve the experience of interacting with City government online.
This job is primarily a full-stack role, with the opportunity to work across the stack to fill in gaps. You’ll be collaborating with other team members to design and develop new features and APIs for phila.gov as well as doing UI development. You’ll be responsible for reviewing the code of other team members in our Git flow process, writing unit tests, monitoring features you’ve launched, and supporting the WordPress platform you and others have contributed to. You’ll also be responsible for working with stakeholders at OIT and other departments as part of our agile software development process.Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
The following are must haves:You have experience writing and establishing software patterns for an enterprise CMSExperience with PHP and PHP frameworks, and SQL or MySQL databasesYou have deep experience working alongside other developers using source control tools like Git & GitHubExperience with Vue.js a plus; most of our front-end development is in Vue. Alternatively, you can demonstrate experience in React / AngularYou’re someone that loves to learn; you’re proud of your Google-fu when encountered with obscure error messagesYou’re able to see projects holistically and identify – and break through – roadblocks; you feel a sense of ownership in the projects you’re working onYou’re able to take unclear / incomplete requirements and ask the right questions to develop solutionsYou believe that unless your code is tested, it doesn’t countYou care about the other engineers on your team and work hard to ensure they are supportedIt would be awesome if you: Have experience deploying – and supporting – applications on AWSCan demonstrate your background writing clear technical documentation for other engineersHave strong opinions on the right way to do things – but an openness to change your mind as you encounter new information – and share these in your code reviewsHave built, maintained or supported WordPress websitesKnow how to debug complex problems using logic and following a clear pattern
