Jan 23, 2020
Full time
*Recruiters, consulting shops, and outsourcing firms please do not respond*
Protect Democracy, a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to protecting US democracy, is seeking a highly motivated, mid to senior-level individual to join the VoteShield project as a DevOps Engineer. The new DevOps Engineer role will be responsible for the delivery, reliability, scalability, monitoring, and security of the VoteShield service.
What is VoteShield?
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s recent report on Russian election interference found foreign manipulation of voter registration databases to be the primary threat to the integrity of American elections. VoteShield is a system that monitors state voter registration data and applies machine learning analysis to detect anomalies and possible signs of interference or error. VoteShield is already monitoring the voter registration databases of dozens of states and hundreds of millions of voters. State and county-level elections administrators from both parties are currently using VoteShield to help protect their voter files, and we plan to significantly scale the tool in advance of the 2020 elections.
Our team is a small, growing group of individuals who care deeply about our mission and its success. We collaborate daily to improve our services, as well as challenge each other and our tools to build a better application and democracy.
Responsibilities
Strengthen our application and environment security, applying standards and best practices and provide tooling to make development workflows more secure.
Think through threat models and harden systems across services.
Plan for and implement disaster recovery.
Design and implement automation solutions for development, testing, and production environments.
Collaborate with our engineering team to improve automation of workflows, infrastructure, code testing and deployment.
Identify systems that can benefit from automation, monitoring and infrastructure-as-code and develop and scale products and services accordingly.
Document and create institutional knowledge on role responsibilities.
Occasional, but minimized work on weekends or nights to do critical deployments.
Requirements
*Even if you aren’t sure if you meet all required skills, we encourage you to apply, as our organizational structure focuses on providing mentorship and opportunities for professional growth.*
A passionate commitment to the preservation of democratic norms and institutions and ensuring those structures serve all people.
Excellent critical thinking skills, ability to reason through novel problems, and good instincts about how to get to optimal solutions.
Proficient oral and written communications skills. Collaborates well in a team environment.
3+ years in DevOps, Operations, SysAdmin, SRE, or equivalent role.
Expertise with AWS services such as IAM, Cognito, ECS, S3, RDS, and Lambda.
Proficiency with Docker.
Proficiency implementing continuous integration with tools such as Github Actions or Travis CI.
Expertise with infrastructure management using tools such as Terraform, Cloudformation, or Kubernetes.
Proven experience deploying and managing Python applications.
Fluency with scripting automation with languages such as Bash, Python, or similar.
Working knowledge of version control and management, specifically with Git and Github.
Understanding of system administration in Linux environments.
Experience managing and configuring relational (SQL) databases.
Experience implementing disaster recovery systems.
Proven experience implementing security best practices.
Strong understanding of core networking concepts and best practices.
Familiarity with monitoring tools such as Sentry or similar
Nice to haves
Experience managing machine learning pipelines and infrastructure.
Familiarity implementing continuous deployment.
Familiarity with databases such as Redis, ElasticSearch, or similar.
Experience with large data stores such as RedShift or BigQuery.
About Protect Democracy
Competitive pay and phenomenal benefits. All positions are full-time and offer a salary and benefits that are commensurate with experience. We pay very well and offer compensation packages at the leading edge of competitiveness for the social justice and non-profit sector nationwide. For example, our benefits include: three months of paid parental leave; a 401k plan in which we match employee contributions dollar for dollar up to 6% of salary; and full coverage for an excellent health care plan. In addition, staff are provided with the resources and funding they need to do their work excellently.
Open to applicants from all over the country. The only requirement is that your location be one that allows you to complete the demands of the position and mission. The VoteShield office is located in New York, but we have staff that work remotely from Washington, Philadelphia, and Michigan. We offer shared workspaces in those cities for those who enjoy working in an office environment.
Commitment to a diverse workplace. Protect Democracy is an equal opportunity employer. Our culture principles emphasize that there is strength in diversity as we believe diverse teams are more innovative, creative, and productive. Protect Democracy encourages applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, and veteran status.
Ample opportunities for personal & professional development. At Protect Democracy, we invest in our staff, and that includes fostering connections between members of the team and providing opportunities for training and continued education.
To apply for this position, send a resume in PDF format and an informal, brief description on why you are interested in the position to recruiting@voteshield.us with the position you are applying for in the subject line followed by your last name. Because of security considerations for this role, we may require a background check as part of the interview process, and we require that you are a US citizen or have been a legal US resident for at least 10 years.
Posted January 23, 2020. We are trying to fill this position quickly and will be reviewing applications as they come in; this job posting will remain up through 11:59PM ET on March 20, 2020 or until it is filled.