Senior/Principal Software Engineer

Are you an experienced Senior/Principal Software Engineer looking for an exciting opportunity in a growing, innovative economy? Clear Ballot develops cutting-edge voting systems and election technology for customers nationwide, and we're looking for talented engineers to join our team and help shape the future of elections. 

This position is a flexible, hybrid combination of remote (approximately 75%) and in-person (approximately 25%) from our office in Nashua, NH. Please note that we are not able to provide relocation assistance or visa sponsorship at this time. 

Your 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. 

Qualifications: 

• Master's or Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field. 
• 7+ years of professional experience as a Software Engineer. 

Required Skills and Experience: 

• 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.

Nice to Have's:

• 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. 

Note: Prior experience in the elections industry is not required.