Overview

Survival and Flourishing Corp is seeking a highly numerate Full-Stack Software Engineer to enhance and maintain the existing grant evaluation software used by the Survival and Flourishing Fund. This platform helps philanthropists delegate grant-making discussions and decisions to trusted advisors, driving more effective and impactful giving.

The application is at the bottom of this page.

Qualifications

Strong numeracy, including existing familiarity with:

• Calculus
• Numerical computing, for example with Numpy or Pytorch
• Utility theory

Experience or clear skill with:

• Full-stack web development
• Management of user accounts, roles, and access controls
• Database management and ensuring the privacy, consistency, and correctness of sensitive data

Prior experience with:

• Prioritizing and tracking the completion of features and bugs through a ticketing system
• Maintaining code quality by testing, linting, and code review
• Monitoring service health and participating in an on-call rotation
• Communicating with leadership about progress, estimates, implementation tradeoffs, and the impact of design decisions

Tech stack

We use these technologies (it’s nice, but not necessary, to have experience with them):

• Typescript and React
• Python and Bash for scripting
• NixOS running on GCP
• Socket.IO and Express
• Tailwind
• Sentry
• Postgres and Prisma
• GSuite and AppsScript
• GitHub and Linear
• NextJS and Vercel
• Elasticsearch
• Cursor and OpenAI Codex

You’re a great fit for our team if you are:

• Self-driven: you can own projects and get things done without outside prompting
• A great team member: you stay in sync with team priorities through communication, and support/unblock the work of teammates
• Rigorous: you’re detail-oriented and thorough in places where consistency and correctness are key
• Pragmatic: you understand when rigor is unnecessary and can move quickly
• Opinionated: you have clear taste and can justify your ideas to teammates
• Open-minded: you care more about becoming right than having been right in the first place
• Versatile: you may be an expert at performance engineering, but you can also write React or AppsScript

Current state of development

The software in its current form has been used by several philanthropists to date, including Jaan Tallinn, Blake Borgeson, and the Future of Life Institute, via the S-Process of the Survival and Flourishing Fund. Our main focus now is on making the app more information-dense and less cognitively taxing for philanthropists, enabling them to engage in more impactful giving.

Why this position exists

Over the past few years, we’ve developed the application to a stable state, with a track record of consistent functionality and high uptime. Now, we have a clear roadmap of high-value features, and we’re excited to expand the team so we can build more, faster.

Duties of the position

This position will work on app development full-time, in collaboration with SFC Co-Owner Andrew Critch, CEO Ethan Ashkie, and Lead Engineer Joel Burget. Activities will include:

• Implementing and adjusting mathematical formulas for combined decision-making
• Prototyping and designing visual user interfaces for manipulating grant evaluations, utility functions and collective decision-making algorithms
• Meeting with Ethan and other team members as needed (3-8 hours a week)
• Being a team player! Running any project sometimes involves tasks that are not exciting from an R&D perspective. On the margin, we want team members who are excited to chip in and do whatever is needed to keep things moving for our client(s) (currently Jaan Tallinn).

Salary and benefits

The annual salary will be between $250,000 and $350,000 and can be negotiated upward to remain competitive with other roles in data science and full-stack web development.

Benefits include:

• Fully funded individual health, vision, and dental insurance
• Majority premium coverage for additional dependents
• Available health/wellness discounts and perks through the health insurance provider
• 6% Safe-Harbor 401(k) matching
• 9 weeks off per year, including PTO and holidays
• 12-week paid family leave

Organizational culture

SFC is a small team that works fully remotely; we do meet 2-4 times a year for an in-person week, usually in the Bay Area. We have a clear vision that we are ready to execute, and are looking for a talented builder to help make it happen.

Work authorization

SFC does not have a standard process for applying for visas, but we can hire remote contractors to live and work outside the United States.

Application