At Prolegis, we’re on a mission to inform policymakers and empower citizens to level up democracy. 

Prolegis provides free, non-partisan, world-class tools that help policy professionals to legislate, regulate, and govern smarter, and offers free public resources which demystify government and shed light on constantly evolving policy issues.

Launched by invitation in 2020, Prolegis is steadily growing its user base within the federal public policy community. Feedback from our current community of users confirm that our products save people time, surface comprehensive information that is difficult to find, and provide useful insights into complex topics.

As Senior Rails Engineer, you will be working within a tight-knit team of remote engineers to help push the Prolegis application forward. You’ll be responsible for building and maintaining our Ruby on Rails application, and your work will directly impact the work of policy professionals engaged in the complex effort of debating and crafting legislation and regulations.

Qualities We’re Looking For

• Problem Solving: Our product is solving novel problems. You can break down large problems into a clean plan, and you can work with your teammates to systematically find the right solution
• Pragmatism: You believe pragmatism trumps novelty, and can choose frameworks and libraries without losing sight of the tradeoffs in any architectural decision. You put aside ideologies to work towards the bottom line
• Empathy: You always approach your work with the mindset of the user, and focus on their needs with everything you build. You consider dissatisfaction to be a weakness of the product, not a weakness of the user
• Strong Communication: You communicate well in an asynchronous format. You know when to ask for help, and how hard to push. You clearly articulate technical decisions, and you take creative risks when brainstorming ideas. During disagreements, you understand others’ perspectives and thoughtfully work towards a solution
• Growth Mindset: You are intrigued by new challenges, approach your work with joy, and have an indelible eagerness to learn

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement features, improvements, and fixes in our Rails application, which primarily provides APIs to our React front-end
• Pursue knowledge about the stack, the product, and the user’s needs
• Test your work in the form of automated tests, as well as working through edge cases and self-QAing your work
• Give thoughtful feedback during code review, and thoughtfully receive feedback

Minimum Qualifications

• Minimum 4 years of Ruby on Rails development experience
• Demonstrates enthusiasm, curiosity, and a team-focused attitude
• Independent work ethic
• Ability to communicate well in a team-oriented environment with remote colleagues
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• The role will focus on maintaining and improving our existing Rails application, as well as building new Rails microservices and smaller apps to help deliver new applications and functionality
• Strong working knowledge of OOP, design patterns, relational databases, and API design
• Expert knowledge of Ruby
• Working knowledge of at least one scripting language
• Strong knowledge of testing principles
• Experience with Git, continuous integration and regular deployments

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of Ruby on Rails (6+ years experience preferred): You can describe the framework’s weaknesses and can keep a large codebase organized and understandable
• Experience using Elasticsearch
• Experience using and explaining data structures and their various tradeoffs
• 6+ years of experience shipping real-world products in a similar role
• Startup experience highly preferred but not necessary

Our Stack
Prolegis uses a variety of technologies throughout our product. They include:

• Ruby on Rails
• Python
• Elasticsearch
• Javascript
• Typescript
• React
• Postgresql
• Git
• AWS
• Heroku

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive salary
• Stock options in an early-stage, fast-growing start-up
• 25 days of annual paid time off
• Regular compensation reviews
• Comprehensive health insurance for you and your dependents