Software Engineer

We are seeking a collaborative and creative Software Engineer to help enhance our existing systems and support our growing product development needs.

Take a role on a diverse, collaborative, and growing team. Come help build the future of journalism as States Newsroom’s Software Engineer. The role offers an opportunity to help inform communities across the nation, with your code reaching ten million people each month and powering both national reporting and state-focused journalism.

Fully remote, or based at our headquarters offices in Chapel Hill, NC or Washington, D.C., the Software Engineer is a key member of our small Product & Engineering team. This position reports to the Senior Software Engineer and works closely with product managers to deliver exceptional news products to our network of journalists and our audience of readers.

Day-to-day responsibilities will include offering higher-level technical support to our internal users; development of new products and features for our network of 40+ WordPress-based websites; and working with an array of supporting infrastructure from cloud computing stacks to security, performance monitoring, and caching platforms.

This is a role with room to learn and discover; you’re not doing the same thing all day every day, and don’t need to know everything from Day One. If you are a highly organized and adaptable professional who would enjoy working with and exploring a range of tools and technologies to support state and local journalism’s essential role in our democracy, then this job is for you!

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

• Maintain and expand functionality of custom WordPress plugins and themes, producing code fixes and updates
• Troubleshoot a range of high-level technical issues for the network
• Support the development and processing of RSS feeds for the distribution of content across the States Newsroom partner network
• Support journalists in day-to-day publishing operation, as needed
• Actively take part in the full timeline of product development: from ideating to scoping to deployment to maintenance

QUALIFICATIONS

You are someone who believes that journalism is essential to democracy and a more equitable future. You take on new opportunities and tough challenges with energy and enthusiasm. You build partnerships and work collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives. You are able to clearly communicate technical ideas to colleagues with varying levels of proficiency.

Our ideal candidate has 3-5 years of experience in the following:

• Working experience of WordPress:
  • Setup and installation
  • Configuring and updating plugins
  • Troubleshooting issues and finding solutions or workarounds
• Familiarity with PHP/HTML/JS/CSS stack:
  • Familiarity with HTML5+
  • Ability to reason about layout issues
  • Familiarity with CSS3+: precedence order, selector specificity, grid, flexbox,…
  • Familiarity with both legacy and ES6+ JavaScript
  • Familiarity with both legacy and PHP8+
• Familiarity with best security practices:
  • OWASP and beyond
• Comfortable with multiple Operating Systems:
  • Windows and macOS preferred
  • Familiarity with Linux/UNIX
  • Experience using command line/TUI
  • Ability to troubleshoot basic OS-level issues
• Ability to communicate technical issues to non-technical audience
• Ability to recognize hard technical issues and escalate them to the rest of the team
• Organized / self-driven fast learner

Other desired proficiencies include:

• Experience with Version Control Systems: Git preferred
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with *NIX shell scripting and task automation
• Experience with Test Driven Development / code-testing in general
• Experience with one or more of the following is a plus: WordPress Block Editor (“Gutenberg”) and React; New Relic or other APM solutions; AWS or other cloud computing services; web application development via Express or similar frameworks.
• Familiarity with different programming languages and paradigms (Imperative vs Declarative approach, OOP vs FP, Abstractions, Factories, Dependency Injection, etc.)
• Familiarity with front-end testing
• Familiarity with DevOps and Infrastructure-as-Code

This position can be based in our offices in Chapel Hill, NC, or Washington, D.C., or fully remote. Authorization to work in the United States is required. At this time, States Newsroom is unable to provide visa sponsorship.

ABOUT OUR CULTURE

States Newsroom is dedicated to producing journalism at all levels — from quick hit to investigative — but not at the expense of burning out its employees. We are supportive, exciting, welcoming and positive. We believe in creating sustainable careers for journalists on the crucial state government beat.

States Newsroom’s mission is to connect people to the power that shapes their daily lives through relentless reporting and incisive commentary on state government and policy. Journalism is a powerful force for social change, uniquely suited to challenging systemic inequality and racism. Our goal is to build an organization that fulfills that mission.

At States Newsroom, we believe we strengthen our work and improve our insights when we incorporate the perspectives of people who come from different backgrounds and have had different experiences. We are committed to diversity and prioritize equity in all recruiting and hiring. We are always working to better represent our communities and are supported in these efforts by a network-wide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice committee.

States Newsroom is the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization, with reporting from every capital. Our work provides key insight on policy and politics at no cost to the reader — no pop-ups, paywalls or ads. After completing our expansion in 2024, States Newsroom now employs more than 220 full-time editors, reporters, and support staff covering 39 states; in the remaining 11 states, we partner with and support already-established nonprofit newsrooms. As our organization continues to pursue new avenues to create and distribute our vital reporting, we are seeking a collaborative and creative Software Engineer to help enhance our existing systems and support our growing product development needs.

Our generous benefits package includes:

• Premium-free platinum healthcare for employees (and 75% of medical premiums covered for qualified dependents)
• 4 weeks of vacation per year
• 2 weeks of personal leave per year
• 20 hours of paid volunteer time per year
• 11 paid holidays per year
• $75 monthly cell phone reimbursement
• $200 cell phone replacement benefit every two years
• $75 monthly fitness benefit
• 401K with up to 3% match
• 12 weeks of parental leave
• Full-service EAP

New laptop and any necessary equipment will be provided by States Newsroom.