Back End Developer

Description

About us 

Overton is a socially conscious startup focused on making government policy more transparent: we help researchers, journalists and the public to see the evidence and influences behind real world guidelines, laws and regulations.

Want to see the research behind national climate change plans, or the influences pushing different COVID policies? Overton is where you go.

Our customers range from UN & EU agencies to think tanks, big charities and dozens of universities. Our primary product is a large, searchable database of government policy that we text mine to pull out citations to academic papers and authors.

The founding team is experienced, friendly and genuinely cares about the space – we’d love you to join us.

Your new role

We’re looking to hire an enthusiastic and talented developer to help us further develop our data processing pipeline and web platform. You’ll be working closely with Euan, our founder, and Angel, our data scientist, and your strengths, interests and feedback will help to shape the rest of the development team as we hire over the course of the year.

We deploy daily and you’ll be making changes customers can see from day one. Some key projects on our roadmap this year include: 

• Overhauling how we scrape government data from the web – we look for new documents from every government department in over 185 countries weekly
• Figuring out how to run topic modelling algorithms over result sets and deliver useful insights in real time
• Improving how our processing pipeline fits together and runs across machines so we can see where bottlenecks are and scale up or down appropriately

You’ll be joining us at an exciting stage of development and though you’ll be focused on improving and extending our document processing code there’ll be lots of opportunity to try out new ideas, for professional development and to learn about developing a new product inside a start-up environment.

Ideally you’ll be fluent in Python (and optionally PHP) and have experience with one or more out of web scraping, working with messy data, data processing pipelines or large document databases, but while experience helps we’re not expecting you to know everything: your ability to learn is more important to us.

On that note it’d be helpful, but not essential, if you already have experience with network databases or algorithms, front end development, familiarity with scholarly metadata, bibliometrics and/or knowledge of the academic, think tank or research impact space.

Our tech

Overton uses a microservices type architecture making heavy use of Redis, Postgresql and Elasticsearch. A lot of the code is written in PHP, and we’re gradually shifting to Python which is what we use for our data science work.

How we work

We’re very open to different ways of working and the team at the moment is a mix of remote and hybrid practices. We have nice office space in London near Southwark for people who want to use it, and we get the whole team together in London a few times a year for face to face meetings.

How we hire 

1. Apply by emailing jobs@overton.io with your CV and a cover letter that explains why you are right for this role and why it interests you. We’ll get back to you within two working days.
2. We’ll follow up by email with any questions we might have about your application, usually around logistics or your expectations about the role.
3. We’ll schedule a 30-minute call for an initial discussion to discuss the role and your experience, to see if they look like a good fit.
4. We’ll schedule a more in-depth interview, which is typically two hours long. The first hour is discussion, and the second hour is based on a short, practical take home assignment (no memory testing whiteboard questions!) or exercise during the interview if you’d prefer.
5. We’ll make an offer. We’ll be interviewing a number of candidates so there may be a short delay, but we will try to keep you informed throughout the process.

Benefits

• Hybrid and flexible working with part time options
• A supportive, friendly work environment within a company that cares about its staff and its impact on the world (we are accredited by the Living Wage Foundation and the FSB Good Business Charter and we’re aiming to become net zero this year!)
• The chance to have a real, customer facing impact on the product and team from your first week here 
• Competitive salary – indicative range £60-75k (FTE) dependent on experience and location
• We’ll provide a new Mac, PC or Linux laptop along with a stipend for other equipment
• Enhanced employer pension contribution of 6%
• Generous annual leave entitlement of 28 days per year excluding bank holidays
• Enhanced family leave and pay policies (subject to full conditions, available on request) including:
  • After 6 months’ service, we’ll pay 90% of normal basic pay for the first 3 months of maternity leave and shared parental leave (less any taken as maternity/paternity leave)
  • After 6 months’ service, we’ll pay 90% of normal basic pay for 6 weeks of paternity leave
  • With no minimum length of service, you can take up to 6 weeks’ paternity leave, including 2 weeks paid at 90% of normal basic pay

If this sounds like your kind of thing, we’d love to hear from you! 

We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis so please get in touch as soon as possible if you’re interested. Interviews can be in person or virtual as preferred, at a time that suits you.

We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability or parental status. If you need any adjustments to allow you to fully participate in the application and interview process, please just let us know.