Middle/Senior PHP software developer

About the project

A nonprofit library headquartered in San Francisco with an ambitious mission: to provide universal access to all the knowledge — books, web pages, audio, television, and software of our shared human culture. In its 25-plus years of existence, it has created one of the largest digital libraries in the world, working with hundreds of national and international libraries, archives, museums, universities, and non-profit organizations.

About the project

We are looking for a software engineer to join one of our customer’s core infrastructure team, specifically the group responsible for managing the content of the client’s repository cluster. Software developed by this group adds new data to the cluster, validates it, extracts additional data from it, makes it available to our external systems for general distribution, and ensures its long-term integrity.

The work involves a long-lived codebase; portions have been used and actively developed for 15-20 years. Since this code base is also constantly in high volume, changes should be made according to current activities. Accordingly, this position requires someone who will enjoy improving and perfecting a venerable system while it works; which sees the appeal in refactoring and adding features rather than building entirely new systems from scratch.

Responsibilities

Work with the core infrastructure team to maintain and improve the PHP codebase while keeping the system up and running
Diagnose and resolve operational issues as they arise
Manage data exchange between servers
Provide server support for user services developed by the front-end team Challenges presented
Help find ways to improve the performance of our systems to meet the ever-increasing volume of activity

Qualifications

Ability to work patiently and accurately, with attention to detail, both under the supervision and independently
Sound technical judgment
Strong problem-solving skills
Excellent written and verbal communication skills
Ability to remain graceful under pressure
Degree in Computer Science