Software Engineer (Core Engineering) - Python/Django

About Pearl Certification

Pearl’s mission is to give homeowners the tools to improve their homes’ health, comfort, efficiency, resilience, and value. By tying energy-efficient home improvements to increased home value, Pearl incentivizes homeowners to make sustainable, energy-saving changes and scale decarbonization of the housing market, which is responsible for 20% of U.S. carbon emissions.

Pearl Certification is the gold standard in high-performing home certifications, bringing visibility to the increased home value provided by high-performing features, like insulation and air sealing, efficient heating and cooling, solar, and smart home devices. Now a Public Benefit Corporation, Pearl is the only national sponsor of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Home Performance with ENERGY STAR® program and is a partner with the National Association of REALTORS® Green Resource Council.

We are looking for a back-end software engineer highly experienced with Python/Django.

The overall purpose of this position is to contribute quality code to and help develop the functionality of Pearl’s back-end systems including the Certification App, data/API layers, third-party integrations, and related ancillary functions. This position will actively contribute to a large and growing Django/Python code base and well as help define and build new services and integrations.

Key goals for this position are:

• Understand, evolve, and contribute to a large and varied legacy code base
• Work with other members of the technology division to help clarify and understand business needs and requirements and then implement appropriately designed solutions.
• Develop new features and bug fixes using easily understood, well-documented code with reasonable test coverage

As the Python/Django Software Engineer, you will:

• Maintain, evolve, and improve Pearl’s back-end applications including internal/public APIs and Certification App, and related products and services
• Help engineering and product leadership clarify business needs and understand potential technology solutions
• Develop new functionality as directed by product ownership and senior engineering leadership
• Troubleshoot and develop remediations for reported bugs
• Work with product owners to clarify requirements and goals for development tickets
• Help identify technical debt in need of future refactoring to improve scalability and reliability
• Design, develop, test, maintain, deploy, and document code in a collaborative team environment supported by a senior engineer and the broader engineering organization
• Collaborate through effective communication and tool use including issue tracking (Jira) source code management (git), and general communication (slack, meet)
• Help onboard new engineering staff and mentor more junior engineers
• Contribute meaningfully and supportively in an environment diverse in perspective and experience
• Craft elegant, easily readable, secure, effective code
• Maintain meticulous documentation
• Ensure culture of camaraderie, excellence, and continuous improvement supporting one another to the highest standards
• Regular self education, writing, conference attendance, etc.

What we are looking for (Competencies/Skills/Abilities):

• 5+ years experience in web software development
• Expertise in Python and Django, especially in an API context
• Professional fluency in English
• Experience working in large, complex codebases
• Experience collaborating across time zones with diverse people in diverse business relationships
• A core belief in quality at all levels from user experience to code presentation
• Proficiency in SDLC tooling including build automation, testing infrastructure, code collaboration, issue tracking
• Experience developing and integrating APIs
• Computer Science or related field degree or equivalent experience
• Experience with a preponderance of Pearl’s core development tools including:
• Linux command line
• AWS Cloud Services
• (My)SQL
• Jira
• Git
• CircleCI
• MacOS
• IDEs (IntelliJ, VSCode)

Why work at Pearl?

• We are a mission-driven company: we love what we do and the impact we are making.
• Impact. Everything you do here will matter. Your opinions and contributions will make a big difference to the future of this company and our goal of making high-performance home value visible.
• Environment. Our company culture is supportive, team-based, and fun. We value candor, excellence, and collaboration while fostering creativity and camaraderie. We genuinely enjoy celebrating each others’ wins!
• Ownership. You will hold broad responsibilities with high autonomy in a fast-paced, evolving startup world.
• Equality between people. We support diversity, championing our differences, and most importantly, learning from one another. Pearl is an equal opportunity employer, and candidates from all backgrounds and life experiences are encouraged to apply.
• Benefits. 15 vacation days during the calendar year, plus holidays (including the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day), a floating holiday for your birthday, sick days, and country-specific benefits as provided through our talent management partner
• Flexible, remote work environment