Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2014)

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* What we do:

We take real world government data and research, and turn them into interactive data viz tools. The Atlas of Economic Complexity is our current online tool that lets you interactively visualize a country’s trade and explore growth opportunities for more than a hundred countries worldwide. There are also other National Atlas projects in the pipeline, one for Colombia and one for Mexico. The idea is that countries provide us with their data and the Center provides them with economic policy advice based on our economic theories, and an interactive tool to explore their situation and make sound policy decisions at the regional level. If you're looking for a high-impact job, this is it!

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* What we want to do:

We want to focus on building features around this idea of storytelling with data (see example at the end), as well as re-do our UI and design to be cleaner and up to modern standards, and to add better visualization capabilities. We look at NYtimes / WaPo data driven articles with envy. We salivate when we see Tufte's work. We need you, dear frontend engineer, to make all that a reality!

We use d3.js for the visualizations. We know that at least the visualization part would be ideally suited for a single page app, and we'd love to implement something along those lines with Angular / Backbone / etc. We want to rethink our designs and how the frontend works in general.

Especially with the new national projects with Colombia and Mexico, you'll have free rein over the creative process and the technological aspects of your work.

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* Our stack:

We use python, django, mysql (hopefully postgres soon), elasticsearch, ansible for the back end. For the frontend, it's jquery / d3 for now. Everything we do is open source: https://github.com/cid-harvard and we use Github for bug/feature tracking.

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* Work environment / goals: Coming from the startup world, the work environment is pretty laid back, but everyone is expected to hold their own and get their work done without being micromanaged. No late nights and weekends, although I've been known to do that once in a blue moon because I felt like it.

We're a small engineering team (me and a data viz researcher, plus a new super talented designer), but we work with a large group of brilliant doctoral / postdoctoral researchers from diverse backgrounds like econ, public policy, physics, international development. I've been here only for a few months, but I've been given responsibility to fully overhaul and clean up the backend, which speaks towards the kind of autonomy you'll have.

I'm looking to build out our burgeoning team into a small but strong group that specializes in turning ideas into reality. We have great plans and dreams for the future of this site, and we need people to help. We'd love to hear more about you and see work samples if possible! To get in touch: mali underscore akmanalp at hks dot harvard dot edu.

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* Demo of the current atlas:

An example of how the atlas is useful take this story here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/21/world/europe/h...

The EU recently placed sanctions sales of oil equipment, but not on oil imports. Why could this be? Almost 70% of russia's exports are petrol products:

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/rus/all...

And Russia exports the overwhelming majority of its petroleum products to Europe:

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/rus/sho... and http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/export/rus/sho...

The big blue chunk is europe, meaning a sanction would really hurt Russia. However, when you look at who else the EU could buy from, the situation is grim:

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/tree_map/net_export/sho...

There’s practically no one who’s a real political ally that Europe could depend on, save for Norway. It’s interesting how it’s practically impossible to buy oil from a country that’s relatively stable and doing well on the HDI front. It’s worse if you consider the cost of transporting it, and how close Russia is:

http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/map/net_export/show/all...

Which probably explains why EU hasn't placed sanctions on oil imports from Russia.

You need help with the front end or the back end ?

MaidSafe is currently looking for C++ open source software engineers based at our headquarters in Troon, Scotland. If you, or someone else you know fits the bill and would like to work at MaidSafe, please get in touch with us: justine.mclevy@maidsafe.net

Role

Can you imagine a new decentralised Internet, free from corporations selling your personal details and private information for their profit, where all data is secure, private and anonymous? What if this new network was comprised of the spare computing resources of the world’s Internet users and has already seen over three years of cutting edge C++ 11/14 source code written for it? What if the company building this new platform was based away from cramped, expensive London on Scotland’s tranquil, beautiful and rugged South West coast, yet with excellent transport links to major cities and just a few miles from an International airport?

The company implementing the replacement for much of the Internet’s services is called MaidSafe and they plan a public launch of the platform later this year. This new network has generated much interest from the world’s technology press.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/23/maidsafe/

The Server Needs To Die To Save The Internet

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/04/08/beyond-bi...

Beyond Bitcoin: Crypto-Ownership Companies Hope You're Ready To Decentralize Everything On The Internet

Welcome to the age of crypto-ownership, where any kind of data can be encrypted and managed by a decentralized network of computers.

MaidSafe recently raised over $8m from one of the first ever cryptocurrency-based rounds of financing. As the company approaches product launch, they are looking to strengthen their team with C++ engineers experienced in open source software to help nail bugs and add that final polish. Your initial role will be to familiarise yourself with MaidSafe’s implementation libraries and once you are comfortable with the code, you will become a key part of MaidSafe’s core development team. Please have a look at the quality of work for yourself at https://github.com/maidsafe. Leading Boost and ISO C++ committee members have contributed to the code; it is an exemplar of modern practice and is written exclusively in C++ 11! You may also find MaidSafe’s Continuous Integration testing dashboard of interest: http://dash.maidsafe.net/index.php?project=MaidSafe.

Mandatory requirements:

- Based at MaidSafe’s HQ in Troon, Scotland, 5 miles from Glasgow Prestwick International Airport.

- At least 90 days where you sent a commit of C++ code to an open source code repository which we can verify.

- At least 180 days where you sent a commit of anything to an open source code repository which we can verify.

It would be great if you could supply us with a github.com or sourceforge.net or equivalent account for us to have a look through (the more the better).

Good to have:

- A proven track record of submitting quality bug reports to open source issue trackers, preferably with bug fixes. Some links to examples would be great.

- Proven CI configuration experience,preferably Jenkins though Travis and others are fine, although it would be even better if there is a place on the internet displaying evidence of your experience in this.

- Proven experience with unit testing frameworks, preferably Google Test although others would be fine too. It would be very useful to provide some links to test code that you have written.

- Proven experience with writing code for at least two of Microsoft Windows, Linux, Apple Mac OS X, Android, iOS or WinRT. MaidSafe code is expected to run on all of these. Again links to examples would be great.

- Proven experience with writing C++11/14 code, especially using the C++ 11/14 STL. Links to examples please! - A presence on Stack Overflow, where you have asked or answered hard questions and been recognised by others for your answers.

- At least a minimum of experience writing C++ which works on Microsoft C++ compiler. MaidSafe code needs to work on Visual Studio 2013, so you would have to constrain your C++ to that feature set whilst awaiting Visual Studio 14 to be released.

Lovely to have

- Proven experience with code correctness checking tools such as valgrind, Purify, clang sanitisers and equivalents. Examples of where you have used them would be great.

- Proven experience with code peer review tools such as Gerrit or equivalents, with links to examples if possible

- Proven experience with CMAKE on both Windows and on POSIX, again with examples to links if possible

- Proven experience in writing and debugging multithreaded code, again any links where you wrote or debugged some multithreaded code would be very useful. In an interview, we would certainly ask for details on this as the MaidSafe code base is multithreaded.

Ideal to have (don’t worry if you don’t)

Proven experience in the Boost C++ libraries and C++ STL. Examples may include:

- History of posts to mailing lists.

- Stack Overflow answers.

- Books written on C++ theory or practice.

- Papers submitted to ISO C++ standards committees, preferably WG21.

- Your own code that has passed an open source community review (or even submitted for a review and was rejected). Presentations or lectures given at computer science related conferences. Links to the video of your talk would be superb.

- Academic papers on computer science theory or practice. Rejected papers are welcome.

Working at MaidSafe

MaidSafe is a small and highly innovative open source technology company where your role is likely to be more varied than the highly specialised roles typical in a corporate employer. They are developing a decentralised and global computing platform that will fundamentally change how the Internet works for millions of users, delivering privacy, security and freedom for everyone. This role provides the opportunity to work for a cutting edge Open Source company with a big future, as well as the freedom to push your skills to the limit.

The location

MaidSafe are headquartered in Troon, on Scotland’s beautiful West Coast. Troon is a small and affluent town and has an excellent choice of independent bars, restaurants and shops, with first class transport links including a rail link and an international airport .

The area is a popular with families and is within easy reach of a number of excellent state and private schools, serving both primary and secondary students. There are also a number of Universities within easy reach and it is worth mentioning that University education is free of tuition fees for Scottish residents. Troon is well known for its large expanse of sandy beaches and those who prefer an active lifestyle will find first class golf, rugby, fishing, football and cycling on their doorstep. Located just 30 minutes from Glasgow, Scotland’s largest and most vibrant city, there is easy access to some of Europe’s best shopping and a lively nightlife.

Compensation

Being located in Scotland has advantages beyond the clean air and stunning scenery. Household expenditure is just 60% of that in London and average rental payments are 46% below the UK average. Similarly, mortgage payments are 17% below the UK average, while Scotland is estimated to have the 14th best standard of living anywhere in the world, based on GDP. It is also worth noting that the UK median gross annual income within the Information and Communication sector was just under £36,000 in 2012, the highest of all industries.

Further to a 3 month trial period, the salary at MaidSafe is £40k per annum. New employees will also become part of the employee benefit trust, an ownership scheme that currently distributes more than 25% of the company’s shares amongst a team of 15.

How to apply

Please supply MaidSafe with a list of URLs of evidence showing them why you would be a great hire, explaining the context of those URLs where necessary and the company will get back to you if we would like any additional information.

== Who we are ==

Everyone has a right to keep their digital content private and secure. We founded Virtru because we believe that exercising that right should be easy and convenient.

Virtru allows you to send end-to-end encrypted email using your existing email address and email provider with the flip of a switch.

Our browser extension for Chrome and Firefox allows you to send and receive encrypted email directly from Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.com. Our Android and iOS mobile apps and Outlook desktop plugin work with any provider that uses IMAP.

Our full time team of 16 is currently 50% engineers. We value automated testing, readable/maintainable code, documentation, and code reviews. We run in 2 week sprints and dedicate about 20% of total capacity to things the dev team thinks are important (technical debt, refactors, exploring a new technology, etc) while the rest goes to feature development and addressing bugs.

We are well capitalized with investments from Bessemer Venture Partners [0] and private investors.

== Current positions ==

- Full stack NodeJS/Javascript developer. Our backend runs on NodeJS (with dabbles of Python), our frontend uses Angular and Backbone (looking to consolidate!), and our browser extensions use our internal javascript framework to run in Chrome and Firefox.

- Android developer

- iOS/Mac OS developer

- .NET developer to support our Outlook desktop plugin

I work on the backend, so I can provide some details on that role. Our client facing API services are built on Express.js. We run in the AWS cloud and are looking for someone with deep experience deploying/maintaining services/infrastructure who can also help add new functionality to the application layer.

Some things we play with on the backend: NodeJS, ExpressJS, passport, AWS (EC2, SQS, ElastiCache), Packer, Salt Stack, ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana), HAProxy.

Some more information is listed here: https://www.virtru.com/careers.

== Get in touch ==

If you care about privacy and are interested in creating security products at a company which thinks that user experience is a first class citizen, please get in touch! Send a secure email (using Virtru!) to feedback@virtru.com with subject “HN who is hiring response” and tell us what interests you about Virtru. It would be great if you can provide some sample code that we can check out (github, bitbucket, etc).

If you have any questions, I’ll monitor this thread and/or you can email me directly (email in profile).

[0] http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/virtru

There’s a lot of great educational software out there - think Oregon Trail, Math Blasters, and Carmen Sandiego - but teachers can’t use it in schools. Teachers would love to use programs like these, but synchronizing data between their school’s database and external software applications is a huge problem that results in wasted time at the start of class and frustrated, bored students… which leads to software being abandoned entirely. 80% of K-12 teachers would use more software in classes if getting students logged in weren’t such a hassle, and a quarter of all class time that’s supposed to be dedicated to software is wasted on logins alone.

Developers have a similar problem: they love clean APIs, but in the education industry, they haven’t had one. Most K-12 schools house their student data in ancient legacy databases that make integrations a nightmare. If you’re a five-person startup and you’ve built an app that revolutionizes the way third-graders learn fractions, there’s simply no way to get your product in front of students.

Clever (YC S12 - clever.com) is solving these problems by building a modern, developer-friendly API for schools… which we give them for free. Developers love being able to plug into schools without having to write a complex integration for every single district they’re working with, so they pay us for access to the platform. This business model has helped us grow quickly; we’re now in 1 in 5 schools in America (over 30,000 schools), and our product is used by millions of students every day.

Our goal is to become the education identity company. The first step in that direction is our Instant Login single sign-on platform: a universal login that allows students to access all of their learning applications in one place. (This is a big deal if you’ve ever seen a second-grader try to manage fifteen different usernames and passwords.)

Right now we’re a team of 40 people (17 engineers) based in downtown San Francisco. We’re looking for full-stack engineers who can hack in Node, Go, and Python (or are willing to learn), but more importantly, we’re looking for people who share our passion for improving education. If you’re interested, we’d love to hear from you.

Other stuff we like: -Tech talks. Every other Tuesday, we do “Clever Talks” during lunch where one of us will give a presentation on anything he/she’s interested in. Recent talks have covered exoplanets, neuroscience, hacking big-company customer service interactions, and what’s wrong with American high school history education. -Bughouse chess. We play pretty frequently, although not always with Magnus Carlsen: http://screencast.com/t/xD7umWfo -Picking up new skills. We offer unlimited Amazon credits for learning.

Check us out: https://clever.com/about/jobs

At Clever, we want to work with the best people - applicants of all backgrounds and beliefs are welcome to come improve education with us. We're committed to making our office a safe and comfortable environment for all employees.