Full-Stack Developer (Contract, 6 Mo) in JusticeText

JusticeText was co-founded by Devshi Mehrotra and Leslie Jones-Dove in January 2019 while they were both computer science students at the University of Chicago. The first iteration of the product was built in direct collaboration with the Cook County Public Defender's Office in Chicago. The company received initial funding from David Axelrod, former Senior Advisor to President Obama. Since then, JusticeText has rapidly expanded and held paid pilot programs with offices in California, Minnesota, Texas, Louisiana, and Nevada.

We were accepted as part of the Duke Law Tech Lab and Envision Accelerator for the summer of 2020 and are eager to onboard additional engineering talent onto our team as we continue to grow in the upcoming months.

We are hiring a full-stack engineer for a 6-month contract for 30-40 hours/week. In the event that we are able to meet our fundraising goals, there will be the opportunity to convert this position into a full-time role.

As a full-stack engineer at JusticeText you will be responsible for implementing the user-facing features that will increase the usability and helpfulness of the platform to public defenders. Most immediately, you will help improve the overall user experience of our editor as we migrate our backend to better support the machine learning capabilities of our platform. We additionally host regular feedback sessions with public defenders where we get to find out what is working and what isn’t in our platform. These sessions will be a unique opportunity to engage directly with key stakeholders in our criminal justice system and translate their feedback into defining a product roadmap for JusticeText.

As an early engineer, you will also help shape our engineering process to better maintain engineering excellence and speed. The faster we can get high quality, valuable features out the door, the quicker public defenders can help get people out of jail and give them the second chance that we all sometimes need and deserve.

Core Responsibilities

• Design and development tested UI features that tie in data from backend REST API endpoints
• Implement UI/UX changes from UI mocks
• Understand the overall JusticeText platform architecture and how that informs the frontend
• Reducing technical debt through good code hygiene and utilizing best coding practices

• Has kindness, compassion, and a passion for social impact
• Self-motivated and eager to be a thought partner in the development of the JusticeText product roadmap
• Experience working with our frontend tech stack, specifically React, Redux, Node, and JavaScript or TypeScript
• Familiarity with broader web concepts (i.e. CORS, REST requests, web security)
• Knowledge of design patterns and when best to use them

• Python and machine learning experience in natural language processing (NLP)
• Familiarity with Amazon Web Service and working in the AWS console