Software Engineer -Transit Data (Contractor Position)

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority•Boston, MA

14h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Software Engineer is an independent contributor who delivers features end-to-end, contributes to team-level improvements, and operates effectively across multiple parts of the tech stack. The position shapes technical solutions, refines requirements with Product Managers, and improves code quality and code maintainability leveraging software engineering principles and practices. This is a term-limited and project-specific contractor position that is not employed directly by the MBTA. This hybrid position requires being in the office at least two (2) days per week.

Requirements

Two (2) years of relevant professional experience in software engineering.
Experience independently delivering features end-to-end to solve problems.
Experience applying software engineering principles and practices to quickly and creatively achieve team or project goals.
Experience with monitoring, on-call, incident response, and reliability engineering.
Strong debugging and investigative skills.
Experience with software testing best practices and CI/CD.
Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into technology.
Strong communication skills.
Demonstrated proficiency in at least one or more programming languages.
Ability to participate in on-call rotation of technology systems and services.

Nice To Haves

More than four (4) years of relevant professional experience in software engineering.
Solid understanding of APIs, data flows, and failure modes.
Experience with Elixir.
Experience with AWS.
Experience in public sector, transportation agency, and/or civic technology team.
Experience with Terraform / OpenTofu / Infrastructure as Code tools.
Experience in agile software development practices.
Knowledge of transit data standards (such as GTFS, GTFS-RT, TODS, TIDES).

Responsibilities

Perform a wide variety of software engineering tasks primarily in Elixir and/or TypeScript.
Deliver and maintain well-architected features from design through implementation.
Demonstrate strong fundamental coding and debugging skills by writing reliable, maintainable code while demonstrating a strong understanding of possible tradeoffs to meet deadlines by effectively articulating impacts and proposing solutions.
Contribute to on-call rotations and address routine incidents.
Follow engineering standards, including code reviews, documentation, and testing.
Participate and offer constructive feedback to improve.
Improve maintainability and reduce complexity through refactoring.
Investigate defects and lead feasibility assessments to identify improvements.
Protect data security, compliance, and privacy across all work activities by following secure coding practices.
Participate in team rituals (stand-ups, planning, retros).
Work collaboratively with UX and PMs to refine requirements for difficult problems and reduce unnecessary scope.
Participate in on-call rotation of technology systems and services.
Perform all other duties and projects that may be assigned.
Additional responsibilities may include focus on one or more departments or locations. See applicable addendum for department or location specific functions.