SparkFun Electronics is an online shop for the do-it-yourself electronics enthusiast. Our customers include inventors, artists, students, hobbyists, and just plain curious individuals looking for some fun tinkering with electronics.

SparkFun is also very committed to bringing electronics education into the mainstream by curating free educational materials and working with schools and institutions around the country to bring electronics into the classroom. Lastly, SparkFun is a staunch advocate of the open source movement, most recently being a leader in Open Source Hardware.

Collaborate with a team of web developers in an open source company to build cool stuff that matters!

About the Department

SparkFun's Information Technology department is responsible for the continuous development of all SparkFun web properties. This includes the primary ecommerce website (sparkfun.com) and the primary educational resources website (learn.sparkfun.com). Also included is Sparkle, SparkFun's custom-built ERP system which is used to manage all content on the aforementioned web properties as well as order processing, customer management, shipping, inventory controls, manufacturing, etc.

Where possible (which is most everywhere) open source languages and tools are used and where possible code developed by SparkFun IT is given back to the community as open sourced libraries.

The Daily Workflow

The Development Project Manager is the air traffic controller for the dev team. Candidates in this position would work directly under the Director of IT and above the development team to coordinate all small and medium-sized projects. Coordination involves managing the documentation of development requests filed by employees in all departments, steering developers through different projects that fit with their specializations and the priorities of the organization, and working directly with project stakeholders to coordinate testing and review of patches and feature branches.

The Development Project Manager is also responsible for continuous improvement of the process for managing the dev team projects list. This may manifest by drafting and implementing new policies or procedures, training, and selecting, installing, or even directly developing new tools to streamline operations.

Required Qualifications

• Experience directly developing or working with developers on medium to large scale web applications
• Experience organizing multiple concurrent projects with interdependencies
• Familiarity with the general mechanics of modern web-based languages and technologies (e.g. HTTPS / HTML / JavaScript / CSS / web server languages like PHP / relational databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL)
• Familiarity with modern version control systems such as Git
• Detail-oriented and diplomatic written and verbal communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience developing any software whatsoever, especially anything web-based, Unix-based, or both
• Experience administering software issue tracking systems like Bugzilla or similar
• General understanding of the MVC software architecture
• Competence working in a Unix-based environment
• An innate understanding of Brooks’s Law

Workplace Benefits

Note: all benefits become available after an initial on-boarding period of six weeks.

• Health, dental, and disability insurance (with FSA and HSA options)
• 401k matching up to 5%
• Eco pass
• Full on-site gym
• 2 weeks paid vacation to start, 3 weeks after one full year of employment
• $1000/year continuing education/professional development fund
• $25/month gym/massage benefit

Perks

Note: some perks only become available after an initial on-boarding period of six weeks.

• Flex time – days/hours in the office can be a compromise between work life and home life
• Liberal work from home / work remote policy (note: not interested in permanent remote employees for this position)
• Free and/or deeply discounted access to tools, parts, and education to tinker with electronics and physical computing
• Frequent Lunch and Learns – presentations by other employees and special guests on all manner of topics (often catered)
• Occasional opportunities for travel to technical conferences and other professional development opportunities
• A generous stipend to build a custom workstation upon hire