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BASTA launched six years ago with the audacious goal of closing the employment gap for first-generation college students of color. We launched in what was then a nascent field, with only anecdotal results, and few organizations that had proven outcomes in supporting students to launch great careers. As a first-mover in a growing field, we have directly supported more than 500 college students, over 75% of whom are securing career pathway jobs upon college graduation. We wanted to demonstrate that first-gen college students of color can thrive in white-collar jobs in blue-chip companies and are now poised to scale our growth to impact thousands more students across the country.

Since 2016 we’ve codified a suite of career readiness content, tools and resources specifically for first-generation students. Those tools are already supporting the broader field through a range of partnerships with brand name organizations. We’ve leveraged technology in new and innovative ways to accelerate a young person’s journey from career exploration to first job; most recently, we developed a first-of-its-kind career readiness assessment that provides the K-16 ecosystem a shared language and data framework with which to transform career outcomes for first-generation college students.

ABOUT THE SEEKR APPLICATION

The Basta Product Team has been developing the application to house this assessment, called Seekr, since Summer 2020. Seekr is a first-of-its kind web application that delivers personalized job search readiness content to first-generation college students after they submit a readiness assessment. Early versions (Proof of concept) were built with low code tools (e.g. Formstack, Airtable, Qualtrics, & Google Sheets). The latest version was build in partnership with a U.S.-based development shop that has been rebuilding it with modern tools and technologies (Full CI/CD pipeline, React, Django, & Heroku).

The Person

Basta is looking for a developer to work closely with the U.S.-based dev shop to build and maintain the backend and frontend of the Seekr application. You will join a small but growing Product team that is in charge of building an application with ambitious, impact-focused goals, using an iterative development approach.

You will do this by:

• Frontend: Make UI improvements and build new features to add to the student-facing frontend using JS React and Django web framework.
• Backend: Develop and maintain the Seekr production app database; Build data pipelines from our current database, MongoDB, and from our current content management system, Airtable.
• Connect the tech stack: Stitch various software systems together with APIs using GraphQL.
• Collaborate with non-technical staff: Work with Basta’s student-facing direct service staff to understand the problems they face, and the inefficiencies in our tools as they currently exist, and strategize with product and UX teams to propose, test, and implement improvements.
• Technology strategy: Contribute to technology selection decisions, make vs. buy decisions and regular process improvement decisions.
• Maintenance, improvements, & automation: Fix bugs on a case-by-case basis; Refactor existing code to allow for the implementation of new use-cases; Automate engineering tasks such as builds, tests, and deployments. 

The Tangible Good

We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package* which includes medical, dental, vision, short-term disability, long-term disability, life insurance, retirement matching, paid parental leave, and more. We also offer a generous paid time off policy, including 15 paid vacation days (20 paid vacation days after your first year), all federal holidays and an end of year shut down annually