Senior Principal Software Engineer

Summary

Join Clear Ballot, a leader in election technology, and help shape the future of elections. As a Senior/Principal Software Engineer, you will design, develop, and implement enhancements for voting systems and related technologies. You will write clean, well-factored code, drive key product development activities, and resolve product issues. The role involves collaboration with a cross-functional team, mentoring junior team members, and providing periodic customer support. This is a flexible hybrid position (75% remote, 25% in-person in Nashua, NH). Relocation assistance and visa sponsorship are not provided.

Requirements

• Master's or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field
• 7+ years of professional experience as a Software Engineer
• Proficient in Python and JavaScript
• Strong experience and knowledge of Python backend frameworks
• Proven experience developing web systems on Linux platforms
• Solid understanding o concurrent programming and performance analysis/optimization techniques
• Experience with MySQL, including strong knowledge of query analysis and optimization
• Comprehensive understanding of various automated testing methodologies (unit, integration, correctness, performance)
• Demonstrated experience working in collaborative, agile software development teams
• Experience refactoring complex software systems
• Strong commitment to sound software engineering practices, including: Incremental development
• Code reviews
• Build and test automation
• Secure coding practices
• Hygienic third-party library management
• Excellent interpersonal, written, and verbal communication skills, with the ability to effectively convey technical information to both technical and non-technical audiences

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and implement enhancements for voting systems, election auditing solutions, and related election technologies
• Write clean, well-factored code that will effectively and simply address requirements
• Drive key product development activities, including planning, estimation, prototyping, development, automated test development, code reviews, and evaluation/management of third party libraries
• Investigate and resolve product issues reported through customer and field escalations
• Champion the continuous improvement of build and test automation
• Provide periodic customer support, which may include staffing our election day operations center or providing on-site election day assistance
• Collaborate effectively as an individual contributor within a cross-functional team of software developers, customer support, and product managers
• Actively participate in planning meetings and contribute to solution design
• Clearly communicate technical details and deliverable information to team members, customer support, and product managers
• Participate in code reviews and adhere to modern coding and code review practices
• Mentor and provide technical guidance to junior team members by: Encouraging best practices for developing well-factored and tested software
• Developing internal tools and tests to enhance team velocity
• Reviewing and guiding the software design and specification process, from user stories to actionable tickets
• Providing guidance on implementation details related to performance and reliability
• Serving as a trusted and collaborative partner

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing clean and accessible user interfaces that adhere to modern web development best practices
• Familiarity with front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, Vue.js, and Bootstrap
• Knowledge of security best practices and experience with tools like OpenSSL (including MFA, certificate management, FIPS, etc.)
• Experience designing and developing RESTful APIs based on key principles of uniformity with respect to HTTP method usage, statelessness, clean URL design, etc
• Experience working with and conforming to government standards and certification processes

Benefits

This position is a flexible, hybrid combination of remote (approximately 75%) and in-person (approximately 25%) from our office in Nashua, NH