Location: Remote, New York City, or Oakland

Role Type: Full-time

Compensation: $139,050

Visa sponsorship: Not available

Hires remotely in: United States

Experience: 3+ years of technical experience

Recidiviz is thrilled to be hiring a full-stack software engineer to join our team! We’re a small, fast-moving group that uses complex criminal justice data from our state partners to build products that target the drivers of incarceration. That’s where you come in. We’re looking for someone to help us grow our existing technical platforms as well as build new products that will increase our impact across the country.

About us

Recidiviz is creating safer, healthier communities by improving outcomes for people in the criminal justice system. We build technology to reduce the number of people in prison and to help criminal justice leaders embrace data-driven decision-making.

Using software tools and thoughtful product design, we’ve been able to safely and permanently reduce incarceration and improve outcomes. We work side-by-side with leaders of the criminal justice system, people in prison and on supervision, and ecosystem partners to build a better path forward. In addition to the revenue we earn from state partners, some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations support our work.

People who succeed at Recidiviz lead with kindness and humility, assume good intent, learn from failure, and fix problems when they see them. They are excited to work arm in arm with government leadership and staff to improve outcomes. They are great listeners. They build deep relationships with and empathy for the people we work with and the people who our mission serves, even when those two groups feel at odds.

About the role

In this role, you will work with our product, design, and engineering teams to develop and maintain the web applications and data pipelines that help Recidiviz and our partner organizations foster a healthy and open criminal justice data ecosystem. You will collaborate with staff across the organization to ensure our products are as impactful and scalable as possible. You should have a solid grasp of engineering best practices, a willingness to dive into tough problems and diverse data, and a collaborative and kind nature to add to our culture.

Core responsibilities

• Work with our product and design teams to build impact-oriented products that facilitate an open criminal justice data ecosystem
• Work with our engineering and data teams to implement testable and maintainable features across our full-stack web apps and backend data infrastructure
• Collaborate with external users of our products to ensure our work is scalably launchable and configurable across all states and systems
• Ensuring the long-term health of our engineering organization by maintaining high bars for security, privacy, operations, quality, documentation, testing, and ethics

Wild success

Here are a few things you might accomplish in your first year at Recidiviz that would demonstrate wild success in this role:

• Drive impact by launching software in multiple states that helps justice impact individuals accelerate their transition onto their best path
• Level up our engineering team by making contributions to documentation, testing, process and culture, and by providing support to your teammates

Minimum qualifications

• High empathy and kindness
• 3+ years of practical experience building full-stack, production, user-facing software in a collaborative environment
• Experience working in a cross-functional setting with multiple stakeholders
• Experience writing code in Javascript/Typescript and React
• Experience working with SQL databases
• Experience working in cloud infrastructure environments like Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Comfort working directly with deployed systems to ensure high uptime, secure configuration, and rapid development
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field or equivalent experience

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with Javascript classes and object-oriented programming
• Experience with Python
• Experience with Firebase/Firestore
• Familiarity with AI tools like Claude, Cursor, or Copilot
• Experience in systems engineering, including improving the scalability, reliability, and maintainability of production software

Compensation

Compensation is standardized based on roles and responsibilities. This ensures equitable compensation and responsible stewardship of our resources. As such, we do not negotiate compensation offers.

The compensation for this role is: $139,050.

What we offer

• Effective, extremely thoughtful colleagues, working together on a mission that matters
• 90% medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage for you and your dependents
• Flexible time off, including 20 days of PTO, 3 days of paid volunteering time, and 13 paid holidays
• 12 weeks of paid parental leave
• 401(k) retirement plan with 5% company match and no vesting period
• Complimentary One Medical membership (depending on location)
• Partnership with Carrot to provide employees with inclusive fertility and family-forming benefits, as well as a small but growing number of hormonal health and gender-affirming care benefits
• Monthly ClassPass credit for personal wellness
• Free mental health support via Talkspace
• Well-located offices in Oakland and Manhattan, with the flexibility to work remotely or go into either office as you choose
• An annual company offsite and other ad-hoc gatherings
• All the exhilarating challenges and stretch opportunities of a tech startup, combined with the mission-driven heart of a nonprofit

More about Recidiviz

Recidiviz was an all-volunteer effort until early 2019, when Clementine, Andrew, and Joshua founded the organization. Since then, we’ve built an A-team of software engineers, designers, product managers and domain experts, from companies like Google, Apple, Dropbox, Opower, and Sidewalk Labs. Recidiviz was part of Y-Combinator’s 2019 class and has received support from some of the most respected philanthropists and foundations, including Ford Foundation, Mackenzie Scott, Schmidt Futures, Arnold Ventures, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Mozilla Foundation.

Today, Recidiviz works with (and earns revenue from) over 18 state partners – big and small, red and blue – and covers more than 40% of the US incarcerated population. We have helped to get tens of thousands of people out of the criminal justice system, safely and equitably, and saved states nearly $1 billion. In the next five years, Recidiviz plans to partner with 40 states and help 250,000 people who are stuck in the system to get out and stay out. In addition to partnering with state Departments of Corrections, Recidiviz collaborates with and learns from partners – from organizations like the Correctional Leaders Association (CLA) to community based organizations and justice-impacted individuals, whose perspectives guide our work.

To learn more about how we do what we do, check out our 2024 Year in Review, read some press coverage, or watch our TED Talk. And if you’re really keen to see our work, you can dive into our Github :).

An important note

Lasting change is always built on diversity. Recidiviz recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, gender identity and all protected status as required by applicable law. We consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you have a special need that requires accommodation, please let us know in your application. Even if you don't think you meet all the criteria above, drop your resume, and we'll take a look – you might be great for another role or another time!