About the role

Hi there! We're looking for a Full-stack Senior Web Developer with an expertise in PHP frameworks, UX Design, Brand Design, and strong backend skills for a full-time remote position at RocketLit, our science literacy and assessment company. Experience with scaling, SEO, devops, and system architecture (particularly for Google Cloud Platform) are also a huge plus. RocketLit has been around for 10+ years and are Summer 2016 YC Alum.

You’ll primarily be working on our flagship assessment platform, InnerOrbit, which features the highest quality NGSS Assessments, phenomena, and innovative reports available to educators. We’re on the forefront of science learning for the classroom and and excel at giving teachers the data they need to make the best instructional decisions for their students. We've gained a ton of traction in the past three years and have been growing fast, while working on scaling both our team and our products. So, we need a senior developer to help with just about everything, specifically one with an eye for design and deep understanding of user experience.

What you'd be building:

Depending on your expertise and what you're most savvy at, on any day, you could be working in the realms of front end and UX, backend development and devops, or system architecture and design.

We need someone to help:

• Design and solve UX puzzles through innovative UIs
• Create beautifully designed UIs and consistent user experiences
• Create dynamic and intuitive visualizations from the plethora of cool data we have (think D3js)
• Review code and mentor more novice devs
• Adopt new technologies and refactor old ones
• Help with strategy, systems, and processes
• Set up scalable system architecture in Google Cloud Platform
• Diagnosing issues with CPU, database tuning, Kubernetes, Terraform
• Build out APIs and integrations
• Optimize SQL databases and complex slow queries
• Employ caching strategies
• Expand our use of worker queues
• Take us to the next step with CI/CD

You won’t be alone in all this. You’ll be working with a small team of other developers, some likely more senior and some more junior, but you need to be able to wear many hats, love collaboration, understand how to compliment strengths and weaknesses, and have deep understanding of many things. Having experience working with complex UIs, user experience, legacy codebases, system design, MySQL, and some devops are must haves.

What we can offer you:

• Competitive salary starting at 130k - 180k
• Medical, Dental, Vision
• 401k with matching
• 100% Remote work (though a few in-person meetings here and there could be cool too)
• Very flexible schedules
• A quickly growing, small, very fun, creative, radical, and driven team
• Building cool things that really help people, particularly educators and students

Qualified candidates will have:

• 8+ years of Senior Full-Stack Developer expereince, particularly with PHP
• Deep understanding of UX principles and philosophy
• An eye for good design, both functionally and aesthetically
• 5+ year of React/Angular/Vue experience
• CSS and experience with SCSS/LESS/SASS
• D3js / NVD3 / ChartJS experience
• 3+ years experience with Laravel or other PHP frameworks
• Ability to work with custom and legacy php frameworks, including an understanding of when and how to progressively refactor
• Ability to code in Vanilla PHP (without a framework)
• Understanding of SEO principles
• JQuery experience
• MySQL/Maria/Postgres experience
• API integration experience
• 3+ years of Google Cloud Platform experience or AWS equivalent
• Vanilla Javascript experience
• OAuth experience
• Redis experience
• CI/CD experience
• Ability to read and write Vanilla SQL queries including joins, subqueries, and aggregate functions
• Linux and Apache experience
• 5+ years of Git experience
• Experience with testing frameworks

How you can apply:

Please send your resume with the subject “Out of this world for UX!" along with any portfolios, projects you've been working on, and your github. Please also include a blurb about how your previous experience and skillset make you perfect for this role.

About RocketLit

RocketLit produces science education tools to give all students better access to learning and to give teachers and administrators better access to the data they need to be impactful.

Our first product, RocketLit, is an adaptive and personalized learning platform that serves reading to students at their independent level. Students read the same content at different levels of complexity and fluidly move up reading levels as they improve.

InnerOrbit is our quickly growing science assessment platform, giving students, teachers, and administrators the practice and data they need to be successful on science tests. We serve the highest quality content and feature the most detailed reporting on the market.

We’re a small and focused team working to change the world through science education. Our company has served millions of students and that number is continuing to grow fast. We’re looking for folks who will thrive in a nimble and talented, growing team.

Initial Screening (20 minutes)

If your resume and cover letter seem to match what we’re looking for, we’ll first contact you to schedule an initial screening (video chat) about 20 minutes with the hiring manager.

Technical Screening (1 hour)

From there, if you seem to be a good fit, we’ll go on to a technical screening. This should last about 45 minutes to an hour just to get an idea of your skill set and your fluency in these skills. We’d like to see stuff you’ve built, showcase decisions you made in design and architecture, and actual code.

Interview with Engineering Team (1 hour)

If you advance to the third round, here’s where you’ll meet the engineering team. We’ll ask you all sorts of questions here, everything from more technical skills, previous experience, future goals, and overall culture-fit type questions.

This should be 45 minutes to an hour as well.

Final Interviews (1 hour)
If you’re a final candidate, we will have at least one more interview lasting half an hour to help us decide between you or other final candidates.