About the Position
We’re looking for a software engineer to join our professional services team, helping RT users extend and enhance RT to meet their business needs.
RT has extensive interfaces to allow users to customize and add functionality, starting with configuration options and extending to writing custom code to add completely new features. Our professional services engineers work with RT customers to create new automation via scrips, configure custom workflows, and write new custom code in extensions to extend RT to meet their business needs. Often these extensions become part of RT in future releases.
This role involves working with customers to understand their needs and determining the best way to meet those needs with RT. This often involves writing code to create new features. It also includes building interfaces with other systems via APIs as integrations are a common need. As part of this role you will also work directly with customers, via email and Zoom, to help flesh out requirements and determine how RT can help. If you like to know that the code you write actually helps someone, this is a great role for you, as we usually get direct feedback from users when we deliver projects.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or related field) or 3+ years of practical experience
- Good understanding of web technologies, ideally Perl, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, and SQL
- Experience using APIs to interact with systems (REST, JSON, tokens, etc.)
- Can develop high-level customer requests into more detailed technical specifications
- Strong knowledge of git, version control concepts, automated testing
- Experience with ticketing systems, workflow, or related software products, even as an active and interested user
About Us
We are Best Practical Solutions, the people behind Request Tracker (RT), one of the most popular open-source ticketing systems in the world, and its companion application, Request Tracker for Incident Response (RTIR). RT and RTIR are used by organizations large and small, across all industries including: private and public companies, security teams, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits. We’ve been around since 2001 and are entirely self-funded. We are both contributors to, and beneficiaries of, the free software ecosystem; you can find all of our code on GitHub.
RT, being free software itself, is absolutely free to download, deploy, and even modify. We’ve built a business around providing a full range of services to help our customers get the most out of RT. We offer managed hosting, commercial enterprise support, professional installation and upgrades, and custom development where we bring our expertise to address an organization’s specific set of challenges. All of our engagements, whether sponsored by a customer or done for our community, provide the satisfaction of knowing we’re helping people solve real problems every day.
We are a 100% remote company (we were before COVID and will remain so after) so you should be comfortable working with a remote team via tools like Slack, Zoom, and of course Request Tracker. When working at BPS, you can also count on endless opportunities for career growth. With RT’s large codebase, overall breadth of use cases, and variety of services we offer, you will have many opportunities to expand your skillset. In addition to writing code, we also help our customers with a full range of business process support including configuring RT, setting up workflows, and making RT better for people. Not to mention, because everything we do is open source, all of your contributions will be, too.
How to Apply
Send something approximating a cover letter, a resume in plain text, HTML or PDF, and a sample of some code you’ve written to resumes@bestpractical.com. If you’re involved in open source development of one kind or another, please tell us about it. If you have a CPAN ID, tell us what it is; we won’t consider applications without some sort of code example to look at. We’ll be paying particular attention to readability, comments, and tests. Whether you’re involved in open source development, putting together some personal hobby projects, or making your mark on the world through your career, we would love to hear all about what you’re excited to be working on.