Job Opening: SWE to help improve grant-making software

post by Ethan Ashkie (ethan-ashkie-1) · 2025-01-08T00:54:22.820Z · LW · GW · 0 comments

This is a link post for https://survivalandflourishing.com/full-stack-engineer

Contents

  Full-Stack Software Engineer Position - (S-Process)
  Qualifications
  Current state of development
  Why this position exists
  Duties of position
  Organizational culture
  Salary and benefits
  Work authorization
  Application
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Full-Stack Software Engineer Position - (S-Process)

Survival and Flourishing Corp. (SFC) is seeking a highly numerate full-stack developer to improve and maintain existing grant evaluation software currently in use by the Survival and Flourishing Fund, making it easier for philanthropists to delegate grant-making discussions and deliberation to trusted advisors.

Annual compensation: $250,000 - $350,000

Application here.

 

Qualifications

• Strong numeracy, including existing familiarity with:
  • Calculus
  • Linear algebra and matrix operations
  • Game theory, mechanism design, and expected utility theory
• Experience or clear skill with:
  • Full-stack web development in Typescript and React
  • Command line scripting and data science in Python
  • Management of user accounts, roles, and access controls
  • Database management and ensuring the privacy, consistency, and correctness of sensitive data
  • Orienting on and iteratively improving a legacy codebase
• Experience managing technical projects:
  • Organizing tickets, code changes, design decisions, and documentation
  • Helping a team maintain technical standards, processes, and norms
  • Ensuring the health and quality of a codebase with multiple contributors
  • Communicating with leadership about progress, estimates, implementation tradeoffs, and the impact of design decisions

Current state of development

The software in its current form has been used by several philanthropists to date, including Jaan Tallinn, Blake Borgeson, and the Future of Life Institute, via the S-process of the Survival and Flourishing Fund. We believe it’s time to improve the software and make it into a self-contained app, with secure accounts for philanthropists, advisors, and applicants seeking funding.

Why this position exists

Over the past few years, the interest of large philanthropic donors in improving the long term future of humanity has drastically increased. SFC wants to develop our process into an easy-to-use app that makes it easier for philanthropists to implement the deliberation process used by SFF, in turn making deliberation about the future and how to improve it more principled, more engaging for groups of stakeholders with divergent views, and more action-oriented.

Duties of position

This position would work on app development full-time, in collaboration with SFC Co-Owner Andrew Critch, CEO Ethan Ashkie, and Lead Engineer Joel Burget. Activities will include:

• Implementing and adjusting mathematical formulas for combined decision-making.
• Prototyping and designing visual user-interfaces for manipulating grant evaluations, utility functions and collective decision-making algorithms.
• Meeting with Ethan and other team members as needed (4-8 hours a week).
• Being a team player!  Running any project sometimes involves tasks that are not exciting from an R&D perspective, and on the margin we want team members who are excited to chip in and do whatever is needed to keep things moving for our client(s) (currently Jaan Tallinn).

Organizational culture

SFC is a small team, working fully remotely, although we sometimes meet in-person in the Bay Area for hack-a-thons and similar sprints. We have a clear vision that we are ready to execute, and are looking for super-talented builders to make it happen.

Salary and benefits

Annual salary will be between $250,000 and $350,000, plus health benefits, and can be negotiated upward to be competitive with data science and full-stack web development.

Work authorization

SFC does not have a standard process to apply for visas, but we can hire remote contractors to remain living and working outside the United States. We can also partner with other mission-aligned institutions who may be able to provide a visa to work on this project.

Application

Apply here.

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