Software Engineer

We build software for people who work criminal cases, including detectives, crime analysts, and prosecutors. Our main product, CANDOR, transforms raw investigation data such as phone carrier records, cell site location information, device extractions, and social media returns into maps, timelines, and reports that investigators can use and defend in court. We also build a public tip line, a training platform, and CANDOR Edge, a self-contained version for agencies whose data cannot leave their building. This is a full-time entry-level role reporting to our Director of Engineering or Chief Technology Officer, and we offer a hybrid remote work location in Phoenix, Arizona, along with health and dental insurance.

Requirements

- We seek 1 to 3 years of professional experience building web applications; a strong internship or co-op may count toward this. - We need working knowledge of a server-side web framework; Rails is preferred, though Django, Laravel, Express, or a similar framework is acceptable. - We require comfort writing SQL and working with a relational database, ideally PostgreSQL. - We need solid fundamentals in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. - We expect everyday fluency with Git, including commits, pull requests, and resolving merge conflicts. - We value the habit of writing tests as part of the work rather than after the fact. - We need a methodical approach to debugging: reading logs, forming a theory, testing it, and being transparent when the answer is not yet known. - We require clear written communication for tickets, commit messages, and explanations for non-engineers. - We need sound judgment and discretion when handling sensitive information. - We require the ability to pass a criminal background check. - Preferred: experience with Ruby on Rails, especially Rails 7 or 8 and Hotwire. - Preferred: experience with Docker. - Preferred: exposure to Kubernetes, Jenkins, or another CI/CD platform. - Preferred: experience parsing and cleaning messy real-world data in CSV, Excel, XML, JSON, or PDF formats. - Preferred: familiarity with geospatial data or with charting and mapping tools such as D3 or deck.gl. - Preferred: curiosity about how large language models and retrieval-augmented generation work in practice. - Preferred: any exposure to digital forensics, cellular networks, or the criminal justice system. - Preferred: a bachelors degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

- Build and maintain features across CANDOR and our other Rails applications, from database migration through the view layer, along with the tests that support them. - Write and improve importers that process investigator-uploaded materials such as carrier call detail records, tower lists, spreadsheets, PDFs, and phone extraction reports. - Investigate bugs reported by customers and our support team, reproduce the issue, identify the root cause, fix it, and add a test that would have caught it. - Develop front-end functionality with Hotwire, plain JavaScript, maps, timelines, and charts that may render hundreds of thousands of records. - Create and maintain automated tests and help keep the CI pipeline green. - Assist with moving code from development to test to production, and monitor it after release. - Collaborate with our support staff and investigators, many with law enforcement backgrounds, to understand how the software is used on real cases. - Use AI coding tools in daily work and review their output as carefully as a teammates pull request. - Update documentation and runbooks when changing how something works.