Software Engineer

Carbon Five is a digital product development consultancy. We partner with our clients to create exceptional products and grow effective teams in a healthy, sustainable way.

Over the last 20 years, we have learned a lot about what it takes to do this successfully, and in the process, we have created some of the most highly-valued digital platforms, mobile apps, websites, and more.

We offer great benefits, reasonable work hours, and intriguing projects in a welcoming work environment where employees feel safe, have fun, and learn every day.

At Carbon Five, you will work on a single cross-disciplinary product development team—engineers, designers, and product managers—working full-time, side-by-side with one of our clients. Together, you will learn the problems they want to solve, get to know the people who are experiencing them, and design potential solutions. You will iteratively develop and release working software using established agile development practices like experiment-driven design, test-driven development, small and frequent releases, and continuous integration and deployment.

As a Software Engineer, you will work with the rest of your team to scope, design, build, test, and deliver new features. You will pragmatically advocate for agile engineering practices, including test-driven development, collective code ownership, and continuous integration. You will work at all levels of the stack, sharing your expertise where you have experience and learning from your colleagues where you’d like to grow.

• Writing test-driven code while pair programming with other engineers
• Working closely with stakeholders, product managers, and designers to shape product direction and discuss the feasibility of prototypes
• Participating in iteration planning meetings where your team will refine feature definition, estimate stories, and prioritize the highest value work

• Prefer collaboration over working solo
• Take a collective approach to problem-solving and decision-making
• Enjoy being given goals and finding ways to achieve them
• Enjoy using your creativity and resourcefulness to tackle unexpected challenges
• Enjoy participating in all aspects of product development, including generating ideas, prototyping and building solutions, talking to users, testing outcomes, and integrating learnings into future work
• Want to learn new languages, paradigms, patterns, and frameworks

• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• A high degree of empathy for others
• The ability to develop, test, and deploy a complete application using at least one of the following languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Java, Elixir, Go, Swift, or Kotlin
• The ability to address bugs on your own, effectively using developer tools to identify the root cause(s) and define the work to resolve them
• Knowledge of web fundamentals, including the TCP/IP stack, HTTP, the DOM, HTML, and CSS
• Experience with a relational database, including familiarity with common query optimizations (e.g., using joins, eliminating N+1s)
• Experience with a version control system, preferably Git

• Experience consulting or working as a freelancer
• Experience as a member of a professional agile software development team
• Consistent involvement in the tech community (e.g., speaking at conferences and meetups, mentoring less experienced practitioners, leading or volunteering time to organizations committed to supporting underrepresented groups in our industry)
• A track record of self-directed, continuing education
• Experience with multiple device platforms (e.g., web, iOS, Android), programming languages, programming paradigms (e.g., object-oriented, functional)
• Experience with non-relational data stores
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure), containerization tools (e.g., Docker), and orchestration systems (e.g., k8s)
• Experience building accessible user interfaces
• Experience implementing visual and interactive designs using advanced JavaScript and markup/stylesheet languages
• Experience with commonly-used back-end frameworks (e.g., Express, Rails, Spring) and front-end frameworks (e.g., React, Angular, Vue.js)
• The ability to architect applications at different scales, from server-side rendered web applications with hundreds of users to service-oriented architectures serving millions to fully decentralized networks usable by billions

• Projects with our clients last roughly 4-6 months, exposing our engineers, designers, and product managers to a wide variety of industry domains, product challenges, team compositions, and technical constraints in a relatively short amount of time. This way of working provides you as a practitioner with a rich environment for developing and expanding your skillset and growing your professional network.
• You will be given an annual professional development budget of $2,000 to attend conferences, complete certifications, and enroll in classes or other training.

• Health insurance. We pay the FULL premium for you, your spouse, and your kids.
• Vision insurance. We pay the FULL premium for you, your spouse, and your kids.
• Dental reimbursement. $2,500 - 5,000/ year of reimbursement for you, your spouse, and your kids.
• Life Insurance. $150,000 supplemental policy. We pay the FULL premium.
• Paid Time Off. More than 5 weeks of paid time off every year
  • 7 public holidays: MLK Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, and two days for Thanksgiving.
  • Annual Winter Break, from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day.
  • 15 days of accrued vacation time, increasing to 20 days after two years of employment
• Paid Sick Leave. 9 days available each calendar year for physical and mental health needs
• Benefits For Parents.
  • Paid parental leave (equivalent maternity and paternity policies). One (1) week of leave at 100% of your salary, followed by 6 weeks of about half of your salary. When combined with state benefits where applicable, this amounts to full pay for about 7 weeks.
  • We pay 100% of the health and vision premiums for your children.
  • Your dental reimbursement covers your children’s expenses.
  • Family-friendly company events.
• Unpaid Leave. After two years of employment, employees can take up to 3 months per year of unpaid leave.
• Profit-Sharing. 3-4% annual bonus, paid as an employer contribution to your 401(k)
• 401(k) program with a variety of low-fee funds
• Commuter benefits. The ability to purchase fares on public transportation and other qualified transit agencies using your pre-tax income.
• Recruiting bonuses. Up to $12,500 bonus for hired leads.
• Sales referral bonus. $2,000 bonus for successful leads.

• We check our ego at the door. As experienced practitioners, we understand that success is a team sport. We hire smart people who enjoy doing great work with others and who enjoy celebrating each others’ wins along the way. Teams solve problems and are given the support to do so without micro-management. We know every project is different, and only a dynamic team can deliver the quality and productivity that goes along with the name.
• Your nights and weekends are yours. You should have a life outside of the office, and being well-rested is essential to doing good work. We work sane hours because we want you to come in each day fresh and enthusiastic, ready to build great products with a clear mind.
• We don’t do trust falls. We genuinely like the people we work with and find that building strong relationships focused on trust occurs organically because we hire good people. We don’t have Forced Company Fun™, but we do enjoy getting together for (virtual) happy hours, tea time, holiday celebrations, and more. We look forward to attending more baseball games, gallery openings, boba tea outings, and playing tabletop games in-person again when it's safe to do so!
• We want you to be yourself. Folks at Carbon Five are skilled in many things. We’re rock climbers, musicians, parents, coffee critics, and much more. Part of working with us is celebrating your passions while discovering and sharing one another’s. Check out some of the things that we’re passionate about.
• We’re here for you. As we look into the future, we’ll continue to grow in whatever ways make our employees and clients happy. There is no exit plan or 10-year strategy; we’re simply in the business of building a great place to work, where employees feel safe, have fun, and learn every day.