Full Stack Engineer

CalMatters/The Markup seeks an experienced Full Stack Engineer who believes in the power of journalism to strengthen democracy, and wants to use their skills to make a real difference in people’s lives.

You’ll join a small-but-mighty team that builds tools and experiences to drive meaningful impact, based on our reporting. You’ll have a voice in our product decisions, work closely with journalists, wrangle unusual datasets, and develop great storytelling packages on our website. And you’ll be a key contributor to the infrastructure that powers nearly everything we do.

This full-time position with benefits is based in California and represented by the Pacific Media Workers Guild. This role is remote and requires occasional travel to our Sacramento office. We will consider U.S.-based candidates not living in California. You will report to our Director of Product.

About CalMatters/The Markup

CalMatters, now in its tenth year, is an award-winning nonprofit, nonpartisan news venture dedicated to explaining the policy and politics of America’s biggest state and the world’s fifth largest economy. In 2024, it merged with The Markup, another nonprofit national news publication that challenges technology to serve the public good.

We produce vivid, original multimedia journalism, data-driven news analyses and watchdog accountability reporting on calmatters.org and themarkup.org, and distribute our work at no cost to more than 250 media partners. Our success metric isn’t clicks — it’s impact. Products at CalMatters/The Markup serve millions of people. For example:

• More than 1 in 5 California voters head to the polls informed by CalMatters’ nonpartisan Voter Guide.
• Blacklight, our real-time privacy inspector, has been used over 10 million times and helped journalists, nonprofits, and academics hold tech accountable.
• Digital Democracy, our unprecedented, custom-built AI tool that tracks everything you’d want to know about state legislators has unearthed stories and prompted legislators to call for change.

We also have the most diverse major newsroom in California. Here you’ll be working alongside dozens of experienced journalists in a supportive, collaborative atmosphere.

Responsibilities:

• Maintain and enhance our content management systems, based on WordPress, including developing our plugins and interfacing with our hosting and technology partner, Newspack
• Deliver end-to-end software development for tools and products, working with product leadership and the newsroom to build front-end features, back-end APIs, and infrastructure
• Build and develop a clear understanding of the end-to-end configuration, technical dependencies, and overall behavioral characteristics of our processes and systems
• Maintain and advance our testing and CI/CD infrastructure to support reliable, efficient delivery
• Evaluate and integrate external plugins and libraries with our website and tools
• Assume an active role in navigating security and data privacy concerns throughout all our information systems and practices, performing risk assessments and technical risk mitigation
• Continue developing engineering standards, processes and contingency plans to ensure smooth and cooperative daily interactions, including code reviews, QA tests and on-call responsibilities outside of typical work hours
• Communicate clearly and proactively within and across teams
• Be a generous collaborator within the product team and across the organization
• Occasionally represent CalMatters/The Markup in media appearances and public events

What we’re looking for:

We strongly encourage applicants with diverse experiences and backgrounds to apply. Research shows that underrepresented applicants often downplay their skills. Even if you believe that your experience doesn’t match the qualifications listed (and we certainly don’t expect candidates to be equally skilled in the areas we’ve listed), we still want to hear from you. Please apply!

Skills we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of web development experience across the stack
• Familiarity with WordPress development, including plugin integration and development, build processes, testing, and experience with the WordPress Block editor (Gutenberg)
• Strong command of JavaScript/TypeScript and PHP, including linting and testing
• Strong command of Python or similar high-level language used for data wrangling and analysis
• Experience with AWS cloud infrastructure, and with an Infrastructure as Code system (terraform, aws-cdk, etc). Comfort debugging infrastructure and connection issues, as well as designing and developing infrastructure setups for new projects
• Knowledge of git, MySQL, REST, JSON, HTML, and SASS
• Experience designing and developing highly available, secure, maintainable technical products
• Ability to understand, maintain, and refactor legacy systems without compromising functionality
• Working knowledge of digital privacy concerns, and ability to design and develop privacy-protecting systems in conversation with the team

Pluses, not requirements:

• Experience with Ansible
• Experience with Google Workspace ecosystems (including as an administrator) and Google SEO/AMP/Analytics
• Experience working directly with journalists
• DNS experience, especially with CloudFlare and/or AWS Route 53
• A history of open-source development or stewardship
• Familiarity with email delivery platforms

Compensation and benefits

The salary range for this position is $125,000 to $135,000 per year. We offer a complete benefits package with medical, dental and vision insurance — we cover 95% of the cost for employees and dependents — from a range of HMO and PPO providers. We’ll match contributions of up to 2% of your salary to our 401(k) program and provide life insurance at no cost.

The salary range above is our best estimate, in good faith, of what we expect to pay for this position. Our final salary figure will take into account the candidate’s experience and skills, as well as our commitment to pay our staff equitably.

How to Apply

We are an expanding and collaborative newsroom, successfully forging a new model for sustainable, intelligent, nonprofit journalism. We’re committed to reflecting the people we serve and especially encourage members of underrepresented communities to apply. If you’re interested, provide a resume and work samples. In lieu of a cover letter, we’d like you to respond to our application questions below.

Please do not contact the hiring manager directly, and do not send a résumé to staff at their individual email addresses.

If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, don’t hesitate to contact jobs@calmatters.org.

Submit via the link.