Environmental Software Developer

About Drexel 

Drexel is a comprehensive global research university ranked among the top 100 in the nation. With over 24,000 students, Drexel is one of America's 15 largest private universities. Drexel is one of Philadelphia's top 10 private employers, and a major engine for economic development in the region. Drexel has committed to being the nation’s most civically engaged university, with community partnerships integrated into every aspect of service and academics. 

Job Summary 

One of the core focal areas in carrying out the mission of the Patrick Center for Environmental Research Environmental Data Science (EDS) Section is providing software development capacity to those working to improve water quality and our natural world.  Our team’s goal is to build products that empower our conservation partners and enable them to be more effective at their mission focused work.  Software Developers filling this position are a vital part of helping the EDS actualize its vision and mission.  The prospective developer must be focused on creating software products that are truly innovative in the environmental space, balance user specified requirements with organizational mission, and ensure products are deployed as a means to improve our natural world. 

Essential Functions 

• Leadership & Management:
• Ensure ongoing excellence of product and service delivery.
• Actively engage and energize project stakeholders in integration of EDS’ core products into our partners’ programmatic work.
• Lead, manage, and collaborate openly with other developers of varying skillsets on EDS team and within our network of project partners.
• Ensure product development meets the overlapping needs of EDS partners and stakeholders.

• Project Management:
• Successfully create project briefs and project plans.
• Within budget and timing constraints, accurately forecast estimate project milestone and completion dates.
• Manage client scope and expectations.
• Conduct weekly status updates on progress toward project deliverables.
• Design:
• Create accurate and detailed user flow charts that capture and outline how individuals will leverage new and existing products and features.
• Create low and high-fidelity UI/UX specifications that reflect fulfilment of the product requirements.
• Collaborate with designers within the EDS network to ensure development specifications fulfill user need.
• Product Development:
• Expand revenue generating product lines for EDS that help fulfill common software needs among local, state, and federal government as well as non-governmental agencies.
• Manage and enhance current product roadmaps for EDS.
• Lead the ongoing design and development of functionality enhancements as they relate to the EDS product roadmaps.
• Maintain all server and repositories as well as conduct systematic updates as required to ensure all EDS products/services are available to their respective users.
• Design and deploy software iteratively in web and mobile environments.
• Conduct research on new and trending approaches and code libraries that can be used opportunistically to improve EDS suite of services and products.
• Maintain and expand the organization’s inventory of mission focused products to generate revenue that supports operations and development.

Required Qualifications 

• A minimum of 2-3 years of experience in a similar role
• Strong drive to build outcome-oriented software that improves the environment
• Exemplary knowledge and desire to understand policy issues facing water quality and the environment
• Effective communicator
• Approaches problem solving in an open and collaborative way
• Willingness and ability to manage and communicate effectively with EDS development team
• Deep understanding of applying software development in the environmental space
• Effective manager possessing the ability to keep projects on track and mitigate scope creep.

Preferred Qualifications 

EDS’ software developer works on a variety of development projects ranging from mission focused product development, data journalism/visualization, as well as research and development.  The following skill sets outline suggested proficiencies:

• Experience leveraging the following tools (or equivalent) for managing software development projects
  • OmniPlan
  • OmniGraffle
  • Basecamp
  • Github for organizations
  • Deploy.io
• Experience in web development using the following languages:
  • HTML
  • JavaScript
  • CSS
  • Python
  • Java and/or Swift
• Experience deploying project using the following or comparable resources/approaches:
  • PostgreSQL
  • Flask Restless or comparable
  • Custom API development
  • D3js.org
  • AngularJS
  • Jupyter Notebook
• Experience creating web mapping applications using the following products, services, and frameworks:
  • Docker 
  • QGIS and GDAL
  • Mapbox APIs