Hi! We're Forerunner.

The engineering team at Forerunner strives to be small but dedicated, working tirelessly to help local governmental bodies and their floodplain managers reason about the flooding risks that all communities face in the USA. The domain is complicated, nuanced, and rapidly changing, and we at Forerunner break down this complexity for our users so they can do what truly matters - fight against climate change and the possible loss of homes in the case of flooding. Learn more about our product and what we do here.

Job Summary

Engineers at Forerunner can work remotely from anywhere in the United States, so long as they are willing to work on either Eastern or Central timezones. For the most part, we offer schedule flexibility and ask for accountability in return. We are also not sponsoring H1-B visas at this time, so permanent residency or citizenship is required.

Our tech stack and other engineering tools include, but are not limited to:

• Typescript / React.js frontend with jest / cypress for testing
• GraphQL API powered by a Node.js Typescript backend, also with jest for testing.
• Postgres as our database, alongside heavy use of postgis
• git, Github and Github Actions for code review and CI
• Deployment to Heroku / AWS Batch using Docker containers
• A variety of other cloud providers, such as GCP

Expertise with all of the technologies above is by no means necessary, although familiarity with two or more of them are nice to have.

We strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply - the problem of climate change impacts all of us, and we want to reflect that within our team's composition.

Responsibilities

A mid-level engineer at Forerunner has the following responsibilities:

• Build, test, and review software on a day-to-day basis, working in all areas of the application. This means working on a postgres query one day and on a React component the next, all the while making sure this work is adequately tested.
• Do the occasional dev-ops work. We use Heroku as our cloud-provider, but we have no dedicated SRE or dev-ops team, and so sometimes engineers may have to work outside their comfort zones to help with the plumbing.
• Occasionally pair-program. This means hopping on a Slack or Zoom call with another engineer to collaborate on a particularly thorny piece of code or to talk through different approaches that can be used to solve the problem at hand.
• Help plan small to medium sized projects. The engineering team values building up its more junior members by giving them opportunity to guide projects with adequate support from more senior members.
• Communicate clearly, whether in a stand-up meeting, planning meeting, or otherwise. We're a small team working entirely remotely, which requires us to be prompt and clear with both written and spoken communication.

What We Offer

Forerunner is a seed-stage company with an interdisciplinary team. We are motivated by seemingly intractable problems and work hard to support one another.

We're mission-driven. Our mission orients our business strategy and pushes us to work with a sense of urgency. We’re in the weeds - our entire team spends time engaging with our partners in the field to better understand the real-world problems they face.

We're a small team. As a member of our growing team, you will quickly become an invaluable part of our organization and have a meaningful impact on our business and technical direction. We welcome unique perspectives and backgrounds. Your opinion matters and we hope you'll share it.

We build each other up. A team works best when its members are adequately equipped with the tools to tackle the problems they are facing. Forerunner strives to provide adequate feedback and appropriate learning opportunities to help all its team members expand their skills.

We want you to be happy and healthy. Forerunner offers competitive compensation, health/vision/dental coverage (we pay 70%), a 401k plan, and one expensed lunch per week. We also have a quarterly wellness reimbursement so that you can have flexibility in defining what “health” means to you.

If all of the above is appealing to you, please send an email to sam@withforerunner.com with your resume.