Senior Software Engineer-phila.gov

Job Description

Job Description

Company Description

With a workforce of over 25,000 people, and opportunities in more than 1,000 different job categories, the City of Philadelphia is the fifth largest city in the United States and one of the largest employers in Southeastern Pennsylvania. As an employer, the City of Philadelphia operates through the guiding principles of service, integrity, respect, accountability, collaboration, diversity and inclusion. Through these principles, we strive to effectively deliver services, to resolve the challenges facing our city, and to make Philadelphia a place where all of our residents have the opportunity to reach their potential.  

The Office of Innovation & Technology (OIT) is the central IT agency for the City of Philadelphia headed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO). OIT oversees all major information and communications technology initiatives for the City of Philadelphia - increasing the effectiveness of the information technology infrastructure, where the services provided are advanced, optimized, and responsive to the needs of the City of Philadelphia’s businesses, residents, and visitors. OIT responsibilities include: identifying the most effective approach for implementing new information technology directions throughout city government; improving the value of the city’s technology assets and the return on the city’s technology investments; ensuring data security continuity; planning for continuing operations in the event of disruption of information technology or communications services; and supporting accountable, efficient and effective government across every city department, board, commission and agency. Over 7 million people visit the City of Philadelphia’s website, phila.gov, every year. Whether they’re looking for information on the Philadelphia Marathon, checking whether trash pickup is on-schedule, looking for after school activities, or applying for public assistance programs, for many Philadelphians, their experience on phila.gov represents the image they have of government. For the past few years, we’ve been working closely with content creators, City colleagues, and the public to rewrite service information and to design features that better meet the needs of City residents. You can see the progress at

This role sits within OIT’s reimagined Software Engineering group. Created in 2019, OIT Software Engineering team is a talented group of engineers reshaping how the City develops, procures, and maintains custom software. Our projects have a huge range and a huge impact - from operating and extending the front door to the City at phila.gov, to building the City’s Campaign Finance tracking system to building world class GIS applications like atlas.phila.gov.

We’re developing more standards and frameworks for ourselves and for other developers to use; we use modern tooling and are a highly collaborative, productive team. As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll join the City’s internal development shop and work on critical business and resident-facing applications. You’ll work alongside UX professionals, content strategists and other members of the Digital Services team. Your leadership will guide the implementation of City standards for phila.gov. You’ll be

primarily responsible for building out new features on our new headless CMS, Directus and the frontend PhilaUI Vue.js applicatio as we migrate from our current Wordpress implementation.

You’ll get to work alongside stakeholders in a variety of different departments as you help design solutions-both from a tech and process perspective. As a Senior Engineer, you’ll be expected to help mentor other engineers who aren’t as far in their careers and provide a safe space for code reviews and help foster a collaborative work environment. You’ll join a city government that has the largest GitHub organization among citie(github.com/CityOfPhiladelphia), works in the open, and leverages open-source tools and cloud infrastructure to improve the experience of interacting with City government online.

Essential Functions

This job is primarily a full-stack role, with the opportunity to work across the stack to fill in gaps. You’ll be collaborating with other team members to design and develop new features and APIs for phila.gov as well as doing UI development. You’ll be responsible for reviewing the code of other team members in our Git flow process, writing unit tests, monitoring features you’ve launched, and supporting the WordPress platform you and others have contributed to. You’ll also be responsible for working with stakeholders at OIT and other departments as part of our agile software development process.

• We care more about what you can do than where you learned how to do it. That said, completion of a bachelor’s degree program at an accredited college or university with major course work in Computer Science, a related engineering field, or equivalent experience is a good foundation for the work. Boot camps or alternative pathways are also accepted and encouraged.
• At least 3 years of experience developing modern web applications in a production environment.

Competencies, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

The following are must haves:

• You have experience writing and establishing software patterns for an enterprise CMS

o Experience with SQL or Postgres databases

o You have deep experience working alongside other developers

o Strong experience with Vuejs is preferable, but not required

so long as you can demonstrate competency with another component based web framework.

• Strong full stack development skills

• Strong background working with AWS and cloud infrastructure

• You’re someone that loves to learn; you’re proud of your Google-fu when encountered with obscure

error messages

• You’re able to see projects holistically and identify – and break through – roadblocks; you feel a sense of

ownership in the projects you’re working on

• You’re able to take unclear / incomplete requirements and ask the right questions to develop solutions

• You believe that unless your code is tested, it doesn’t count

• You care about the other engineers on your team and work hard to ensure they are supported

It would be awesome if you:

• Have experience deploying – and supporting – applications on AWS

• Can demonstrate your background writing clear technical documentation for other engineers

• Have strong opinions on the right way to do things – but an openness to change your mind as you

encounter new information – and share these in your code reviews

• Have built, maintained or supported a CMS for a large organization

• Know how to debug complex problems using logic and following a clear pattern

Salary Range: $85k-$94,860k

Salary cannot exceed $94,860k

All applications must include a cover letter. Applications without a cover letter will be considered incomplete. 

Work Setting: in-person (onsite)

Did you know?
● We are a Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program qualified employer : 25% tuition discount program for City employees (and sometimes spouses and dependents as well) in partnership with area colleges and universities

● We offer Comprehensive health coverage for employees and their eligible dependents
● Our wellness program offers eligibility into the discounted medical plan
● Employees receive paid vacation, sick leave, and holidays
● Generous retirement savings options are available

*The successful candidate must be a city of Philadelphia resident within six months of hire
Effective May 22, 2023, vaccinations are  no longer required for new employees that work in non-medical, non-emergency or patient facing positions with the City of Philadelphia. As a result, only employees in positions providing services that are patient-facing medical care (ex: Nurses, doctors, emergency medical personnel), must be fully vaccinated.

The City of Philadelphia is an Equal Opportunity employer and does not permit discrimination based on race,
ethnicity, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, marital status, source of income, familial status, genetic information or domestic or sexual violence victim status. If you believe you were discriminated against, call the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations at View phone number on ziprecruiter.com or send an email to faqpchr @phila.gov. For more information, go to: Human Relations Website: