Staff Software Engineer

Watch Duty is a non-partisan, non-profit, and non-government organization focused on disseminating public-safety information in real time from verified sources. Our mission is to publish only the facts that provide true situational awareness in case of emergency. We are always looking for passionate individuals-both volunteers and professionals-to help us build our platform and expand our reach to keep communities safe.

** IMPORTANT NOTE** - Watch Duty is hiring for this role, but won't begin interviews/outreach until the middle of October. 

Who we are

We are a small team of motivated engineers trying to solve real-world problems. Watch Duty provides critical natural disaster information to the public and first responders, driving a significant impact on safety and improving the quality of life for millions of people (15M in 2025). We are passionate about solving these problems, and about building a world-class product backed and enabled by great tech.  We are a small team with a flat structure, we value open and direct communication, and having a good time while doing so. We try not to take ourselves too seriously, but we take our work very seriously.

We communicate on Slack and use Linear, Figma, Github and CI/CD for development workflows. All engineering work is peer-reviewed and product tested before release.

Who you are

You are a motivated, pragmatic engineer with a proven track record of finding solutions and getting things done.

You like owning a full problem space and working with stakeholders to develop the simplest solution for the inherent complexity and risk in a problem. From requirement gathering to technical design, to project planning and delegation, through final testing and release monitoring, you are involved from start to finish. An eye for "boring tech" and the trade-offs that complex solutions cost is an instinct you've honed in the past. 

You are able to work independently and manage your own time, but also value teaching and learning from your colleagues and are open to feedback and multiple points of views on the best way to get things done. 

Requirements

8+ years of software engineering experience and a proven track record of impact.

US work visa required. 

Our current tech stack

We believe in picking the simplest and lowest maintenance solution until a complex problem dictates a more complex solution:

Our tech stack and areas of work include:

- Django monolith

- RDS MySQL/Postgres + Postgis

- Fastly caching for network level caching

- Redis for application level caching

- Dagster data orchestration pipeline for geospatial processing

- Single Typescript codebase with CapacitorJS bridge to native apps

- Extensive automation integrations with Slack to empower our reporters

- New Relic, Sentry, Sendgrid, Mapbox, and Firebase Cloud Messaging

Compensation & Benefits

The salary range for this role is 200-220k USD/year.

We believe in a strong work-life balance that leaves you motivated, enthusiastic, and productive. We believe in results over hours worked and will trust you to find a flexible schedule that works for yourself and the team. We back each other up for on-call duties and ensure that there is a balance between the critical nature of our work and a life outside of work.

Watch Duty is fully remote organization.

We offer medical, dental & vision benefits.

What we’ll create

We are expanding our technology platform to better serve the public. We build whatever it takes to help citizens be safe in the face of natural disasters and offer it for free. We believe that software and an organization of dedicated people can combine to create something uniquely helpful in the world. 

Impact by the numbers:

- 8M MAU+

- 1.3B push notifications sent in the past 90 days

- 27B API requests in the past 30 days

- 86 NPS (Net Promoter Score)

- Our app has a rating of 4.9 stars on 50k reviews in the app store

- Countless lives affected and improved

Your work at Watch Duty will have a huge impact for people in the path of natural disasters. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Equal Opportunity Employer

Watch Duty is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic as outlined by federal, state, or local laws.  This policy applies to all employment practices within our organization.