The Software Engineer will be a founding member of the Schmidt Futures technology and talent infrastructure team, which is responsible for designing and building the foundational technology that powers Schmidt Futures’ mission of finding exceptional people and helping them do more for others together. Reporting to the Managing Director of Tech and Impact, the Software Engineer will be responsible for building the underlying technological infrastructure supporting Schmidt Futures’ groundbreaking talent initiatives and network, and providing direct technology assistance to Schmidt Futures program teams, grantees, and partner organizations across the portfolios.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Building Technological Infrastructure:

• Build software that matches talent to opportunities to maximize social impact, and makes available SF’s network of talent to both internal and external stakeholders
• Work across teams in an entrepreneurial fashion to determine and respond to software needs, with a particular focus on software solutions that could be assessed and scaled across the organization’s talent programs
• Build data pipelines from talent program partners into SF’s Snowflake-based data warehouse
• Contribute to internal and partner-facing talent search and matching tool

Providing Technical Assistance:

• Engage with partner organizations or grantees to assess software needs, and participating in discovery / design sprints on an as-needed basis
• Lead up engineering as part of discovery and design sprints for partner organizations and grantees
• Advise partner organizations on key architectural and buy / build decisions

Operational and Strategic Planning:

• Use software experience to anticipate unmet needs across teams
• Pitch and build independent projects that find talent in new and innovative ways
• Leverage software to improve equity in sourcing and extend Schmidt Futures’ talent database
• Codify lessons, design decisions, data architecture for use by subsequent teams and future programs

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

Some of the desired capabilities include:

• Data modeling and implementation of a schema in a relational database
• Building data pipelines between alternate data sources to populate database
• Rapidly developing front-ends to surface insights and trade-offs to stakeholders
• Write and maintain code that is both reusable and scalable, as well as optimized for performance with the end-user in mind
• Hosting and deploying simple web services
• Developing REST APIs
• Demonstrated ability to design, write, and edit technical and process documentation
• Ability to handle ambiguity
• Excellent oral and written communication skills to effectively interact with customers and other team members

REQUIREMENTS

Applicants must:

• Have 5+ years of experience as a software engineer
• 4+ years of experience in front-end development (e.g. experience with modern js frameworks/libraries like React)
• 4+ years of experience in back-end development (e.g. NodeJS, Ruby on Rails, Python)
• Ability to work across multiple programming languages
• Familiarity working across multiple database technologies (e.g. relational dbs like postgresql and data warehousing dbs like snowflake)
• Knowledge of technical best practice (e.g. continuous integration, automated testing, etc.)
• Be based at the Schmidt Futures offices in New York or Washington, DC and be able to travel within the U.S. and internationally on a regular basis as needed following company policy and permitting circumstances

ABOUT SCHMIDT FUTURES

Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative, founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, that finds exceptional people and helps them do more for others together. We knit talent into networks, bet on the most promising ideas through diverse forms of competition and support, and equip people to scale through partners and modern tools. To realize this vision, Schmidt Futures uses a broad set of tools — including gifts, grants, investments, and startup activity — for charitable, educational, and commercial efforts with a public purpose. Our initiative brings together the efforts of various charitable and non-charitable entities to improve our potential impact by making diverse types of capital available to the efforts we support.

Futures Action Network, LLC, which operates Schmidt Futures, is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer that proudly pursues and hires a diverse workforce. We do not make hiring or employment decisions on the basis of race, color, religion or religious belief, ethnic or national origin, nationality, sex, gender, gender-identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable local, state, or federal laws or prohibited by Company policy. We strive for a healthy and safe workplace and strictly prohibit harassment of any kind.