Senior Developer

Position Summary

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is the preeminent organization advancing the mission of the criminal defense bar to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. NACDL envisions a society where all individuals receive fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal justice system. The Association’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal justice system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level. NACDL is a professional bar association founded in 1958 with thousands of direct members in 28 countries – and 90 state, provincial and local affiliate organizations totaling up to 40,000 attorneys – including private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, military defense counsel, law professors, and judges committed to preserving fairness and promoting a fair, rational, and humane criminal justice system.

JOB SUMMARY

NACDL’s The Full Disclosure Project aims to disrupt the culture of secrecy that systematically and pervasively shields law enforcement misconduct by changing police secrecy laws and empowering the defense community to track police misconduct. The project assists select defense organizations (“sites”) with setting up an existing web application to track police misconduct.

We are looking for a Senior Developer to lead the technical strategy for the project.  The Senior Developer will be responsible for setting up instances of the application at each site and managing a centralized codebase.  They will also work to improve and refine the application based on site feedback and in consultation with the Director.  The ideal candidate will be adept at overseeing a long-term technical project but not afraid to get their hands dirty.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS & RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Manage initial site installation, including working with site’s information technology department to set up cloud hosting, webapp, and directory services connections
• Actively engage in user research with sites to prioritize product improvements
• Maintain organized and prioritized issue-tracking and feature requests system
• Research, develop, and implement system customizations, improvements, and new features
• Oversee, monitor, test, and evaluate any customizations to software made by collaborators including consultants, volunteers and at sites
• Push out software updates across sites
• Provide guidance and technical assistance to sites in making their own platform modifications and coordinate platform improvements/modifications among sites
• Develop public facing web portal pulling data from current application
• Develop protocols for sharing and aggregating data between sites and with external partners
• Assist Project Director in assigning and overseeing technical projects with volunteers, collaborators, and consultants
• Research additional open-source technology and complimentary projects useful for our work
• Create and maintain documentation and training resources
• Other duties as assigned

EDUCATION, EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCIES:

• A level of education that when combined with professional experience will show you have the capability to perform the responsibilities of the position. Candidates with post-secondary education in computer science, software engineering or similar, are encouraged to apply
• Demonstrated professional experience working in Python programming language
• Demonstrated professional experience working with the Django web framework
• Experience with PostgreSQL preferred
• Strong commitment to social justice and the mission of the project is required
• Strong communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical ideas and discuss the impact of technical decisions with precision to both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Strong organizational skills, including the ability to prioritize competing and at times complex technical changes across multiple projects
• Commitment to transparent, reproducible and clean code and documentation
• Experience working with confidential, sensitive, and large, messy unstructured data
• Knowledge of emerging technologies and techniques related to open source and information gathering

BENEFITS:

This position is remote but can work out of NACDL’s Washington, D.C. office if desired. The salary range is commensurate with experience. NACDL employees enjoy a generous benefits package including subsidized health, dental and vision insurance, company-paid life and disability insurance, flexible spending accounts, a pre-tax commuting subsidy, a 401(k) plan with generous company contributions, paid time off, and paid holidays.