SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

Hiring: Senior Software Developer
Company: Open Food Network
Location: Remote, anywhere in Canada

About the Open Food Network

Founded in 2012, we’re a group of not-for-profit organisations and cooperatives focused on building a new food system that is fair, local, and transparent.

We believe a sustainable and resilient food system needs to reconnect producers and consumers. We aim to empower people and communities and give them the tools and knowledge to develop the food systems they need for their community.

Our open source software platform makes it easy for farmers, producers, farmers markets, and other value-aligned enterprises to sell their products online. People have used the software to create farmer food collectives, manage food hubs, to take their farmers’ market online, and more. Our vision is to revolutionise the food supply network, and build a world in which short, sustainable distributed food systems thrive.

Our approach to achieve these aims is quite radical. We do not aspire for platform dominance – the one platform to rule them all. Instead we aim to build an ecosystem in which different tools can interoperate to transform our broken food system.

We are a global network of people and organisations working together to develop open and shared resources, knowledge, and software to support local food enterprises all over the world. We know that good food can transform our planet and our society. We also know that making values-driven food enterprises work takes commitment, perseverance, partnerships and support. We are farmers, software developers, house builders, asylum seekers, gardeners, herbal lore learners, climbers, bakers, weight lifters, capoeira trainers, dog, cat and chicken keepers, partners, parents, carers, and most importantly, we’re good people. We are definitely a workplace where you bring your whole self to work.

Working with us

We are currently looking for senior developers to join our team and help take us to the next stage of our journey.

You will be working on a totally open source project that embraces the idea at all project levels: knowledge sharing, open discussions, public code, etc. Among others, we encourage and take great care of contributors, successfully participate in Hacktoberfest and organize hackathons. As the rest of the dev team you’ll be participating in the development process from inception to release: from the product discussions, implementation, code review and to the actual release and deployment.

Our app is built with Ruby on Rails on the backend plus AngularJS on the frontend, which we have decided to evolve to Reactive Rails. We have a good automated acceptance tests suite backed up by unit and integration tests that run on our CI system. We have weekly releases with automated deployments.

Current Priorities – We are currently investing heavily in our API and in improving the platform for developers. Now is a great time to join the team and assist in a transformation of the code toward data standards, interoperability and refactoring. As a senior developer you’ll have a lot of steer in creating a beautiful codebase.

Key Responsibilities – You will work with our global delivery team to build features and maintain our application. Our work is prioritised based on input from our community of users, our developers, our designers, our testers and our product team.

Contact hours – In general we ask our paid contributors to commit 30hours a week on the project. However we understand that many with other paid and caring commitments would prefer part time commitments and we are always open to discussions. Our goal is to create a flexible working environment that celebrates the complexity of navigating this world.

Given the global nature of the product, there will sometimes be the need to work outside of normal business hours. The commitment changes at different times of year as global daylight savings time shifts. We strive to work to everyone’s needs, but for everyone this often includes some early mornings and late evenings. We’re a super flexible workplace, other than time zone accommodation there’s no set expected contact hours. You define when you work, and fit in sessions with others when convenient for all involved.

Package - We have a transparent salary policy, where the team working on the product are paid based on their level of experience, their geographical location and their personal need. Most of the global team is contracted on a self-employed basis, meaning you are responsible for your tax and other requirements. Some OFN Instances can offer employment contracts, including Canada, France, the UK and Australia. The current version of the salary table is in the OFN contributor handbook, and is usually organised as a freelance contract where individuals invoice for the hours done. We encourage everyone to take a needs based approach to calculate your hourly rate.

Our Stack

• The application is written in Ruby and built on Ruby on Rails.
• The original app was extended from Spree Commerce, and much legacy code still exists.
• Frontend currently includes AngularJS, we are switching to Reactive Rails using StimulusReflex
• We use a PostgreSQL database
• Our deployment is managed through Ansible scripts
• Builds are hosted on Semaphore
• We use Github for version control, issue tracking and development pipeline management
• Our community uses Discourse and Slack for discussion and deliberation

About you

You’ll identify as a senior developer. Ideally you’ll have at least one year Ruby on Rails experience, however senior devs without Rails experience who are willing to learn are welcome.

Alongside you’ll probably be familiar with at least some of our stack. While our community is very supportive we don’t have the capacity to teach people how to code or to teach new languages/frameworks. It’ll be a pretty steep learning curve if the whole stack is new to you.

You’ll enjoy working with us if you are the kind of person that takes initiatives and gets stuff done.

We love working with people who are values-driven, empathetic, proactive, and imaginative.

You’ll need your own computer, phone and internet connection.

And most importantly, you deeply believe in our mission of building a better food system by empowering community food enterprises.

Interested?

Great! You need to fill in this form telling us a little about yourself and why you’re applying for the role. And if you have any questions, join our Slack workspace and come say hello in the #join-ofn channel. We’ll be available to answer any questions you have there.

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