Job Description

Competitive salary. Equity. Great team. Quadcopters. Legos. Puppies and Sunshine. We have them, but so do lots of companies out there. So why should you work for us?

We’re solving a real problem:

Two million Americans develop skin cancer every year. With 3Derm, dermatologists can review images taken at medical kiosks and other referral sites to efficiently monitor high volumes of patients’ lesions while reserving in-office appointment times for those patients whose images indicate a more alarming condition. 3Derm cuts down on wait times, reduces healthcare spending, and saves lives.

We have real customers:

Software should be developed with a customer in mind – or even better, with customer input. 3Derm is in close contact with a number of large health systems, dermatologists, nurses and primary care physicians. We have an involved network of customers and advisors who continue to help us craft our system. We’re not a product development contractor, but we operate like one: the only source of truth is our customer base.

We use serious technology:

Scalable, Cloud, Multitenant, Service-Oriented Architecture, AWS, Git. And that’s just the software. We’ve developed a stereoscopic skin camera that delivers an unparalleled level of detail to dermatologists. Our system spans everything from SmartTV’s to MATLAB image processing and even an iPhone app. Our color science and optics are done by some of the best image scientists in the world. We walk uncharted territory and invent what we need.

Our team is experienced and committed:

We’re all engineers. Even the business people. Our CEO got her first paper published in high-school. Our CTO has done everything from artificial intelligence work at Stanford to smart prosthetics research at Johns Hopkins. And our VP of business development was the project manager of a space telescope (among other amazing things). We’ve been at this for four years and have learned a thing or two. Being employee number five is serious business, but you’ll be in good company.

The value of our company is growing quickly:

We don’t measure our growth in company size. Anyone can get a seed round and hire ten marketing interns. Our company is measured in lines of code covered by tests and high performing devices. It’s measured in interested/committed customers and strategic partners. And these metrics are going through the roof.  That piece of equity you get will be worth a heck of a lot more in two years.

Best practices are standard practice:

We don’t compromise. We know that being a small company means holding ourselves to higher, not lower, standards. We follow a strict test-driven development methodology to ensure high quality code (statist when possible, mockist when not). When something breaks we don’t just fix it, we write a test to ensure it never happens again. All of our software development is derived not just from specifications, but from the underlying customer requirements. We use the good parts of agile, but we heavily value architecture. We write no extraneous code, so every line of code you write will matter.

You will be essential:

We’re recruiting for programmer number three. We’re not looking for someone temporary. We’re looking for an integral part of the company. While this role has a backend focus, it will involve everything from being part of integrating with health systems to building our code deployment and backup tools.

You will not be alone:

Programming should not be done in a vacuum. As well as the suffocation risk, its also just not that fun or productive. We have daily stand-up meetings and almost any time you need to put something on a whiteboard, you’ll have company. There are also periodic code reviews (or as often as you want them). You will have responsibility, but we don’t waste time assigning blame. We are all responsible for the quality of the software.

We don’t take things too seriously:

We fly drone obstacle courses, take field trips to amusement parks, and even take road trips to Worcester! We’re friendly and there are often baked goods in the office. Our office is in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Kendall Square, so we have a pool table, ping pong and chocolate-covered cashews. Also avocados.

Except our product:

Clean Code is basically our manifesto. We will give you a copy when you join. We value function and clarity above super high performance. If you like to write code like this:

#define _(D,E,F,G,H)B D();Y(D/**/f,E)Y(D/**/g,F)Y(D/**/h,G)Y(D/**/i,H)Y(D,(*(*d->d)(D/**/f,D/**/g,D/**/h,D/**/i))(d,e))

we all think you’re very clever, but you’re probably not a good fit.

You will get to define your own role:

You might notice that there is a lot of text before the requirements. While we require high coding proficiency and a willingness to learn and adapt to a variety of technologies, we are flexible enough to let you define a position that suits you. If you think you should lead our server team, that’s a possibility. If you are a more junior coder who wants to do something real, we can provide training opportunities.

Required

Computer Science Degree or substantial theoretical computer science knowledge

Two or more years of work experience.

When we say shell, you shouldn’t think turtle. While no one expects you to live in vi, you should be comfortable with all the standard concepts and operations (for the infrastructure part of the job).

Experience and comfort with a strongly typed object oriented language: C# or Java is preferred. Advanced C++ or Objective-C would also qualify. The concept of building a medium size application in C# should not scare you.

Strong written and communication skills

A willingness to learn and adapt to new technologies. We operate far out of the comfort zone for even experienced programmers. An ideal candidate should consider this a benefit, not a drawback.

Preferred

A strong knowledge of testing/test driven development or a strong desire to learn.

Cloud experience: AWS, Azure, Rackspace, etc

Experience or strong interest in the healthcare/medical device space (Design controls, etc).

The correct answer to would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or 1 horse-sized duck