SHOCK THE SYSTEM FOUNDATION Senior Developer Remote · Full time Company website

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We build tools for connection. Communities build the rest. Every community has people who show up for their neighbors. They materialize with shovels after storms. They coach teams on weekends. They deliver meals, sort donations, and organize cleanups. What's been missing is a way to connect it all. The systems meant to help communities function haven't kept up with the scale of what people are willing to do. Communities have been left behind. The technology we have at our disposal has never been meaningfully applied to the real challenges they face. Shock was founded to change that.

About Us

Shock the System Foundation is a nonprofit technology startup built on a simple belief: communities are worth investing in, and technology should make it easier to act on that. We build tools that help people get off their phones and back into the real world — connecting neighbors, supporting local action, and putting people at the center of the causes they care about. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.

Why join Shock

Every community has people who show up for their neighbors. Shock builds the tools that help them find each other. We’re a Vermont nonprofit of about twenty people. Our Product Team is small and dynamic, and you’d be one of the people who has real influence in what we make.

We’re in a season of real momentum, with a family of tools in active use and development: Bee, our community discovery app, is live across 215 Vermont towns. Meadow, our volunteer engagement platform, is in the field with nonprofit pilot partners. And we’re building a tool to support how communities organize in response to emergencies and disasters.

About the Role

Every community has people who show up for their neighbors. Shock builds the tools that help them find each other. We’re a Vermont nonprofit of about twenty people. Our Product Team is small and dynamic, and you’d be one of the people who has real influence in what we make.

We have a family of tools in active use and development: Bee, our community discovery app, is live across 215 Vermont towns. Meadow, our volunteer engagement platform, is in the field with nonprofit pilot partners. And we’re building a tool to support how communities organize in response to emergencies and disasters.

Why this role

Things are rolling at Shock! Our tools are reaching more communities every month, building what comes next, and we’re growing the team to match. This role is for a developer who loves shaping how things work: join in the fun as we design thoughtfully, review carefully, and build data foundations that will still make sense years from now.

You’ll be a developer who moves between our products, sees how they connect, and helps each one thrive.

What you’ll do

Build across our products

• Write and ship code across our Product range, moving between them as the work calls for it
• Turn product ideas into scoped, buildable work inside our Product Team
• Take features from a rough sketch to something users enjoy

Shape our data and architecture

• Design how data moves between our products, with an eye on what we’ll need next year, not only this week
• Build schemas, data flows, and integrations that stay legible as we grow
• Help design and implement architectural decisions, documenting the reasoning

Care for quality and security

• Review code closely, your own, your teammates’, and artificial intelligence contributions, knowing when something is ready or when it needs another pass
• Treat security and privacy as part of your quality and craft, because data belongs to real people in real communities
• Keep releases calm, steady, and predictable

Think creatively with Artificial Intelligence

• Work alongside Claude and Claude Code every day, for building, reviewing, and thinking problems through
• Bring creativity to how we work with intelligence agents, not only speed: framing problems, exploring approaches

Thrive inside our team

• Be one of the defining voices in how our Product Team works together
• Explain technical tradeoffs clearly to other Shock teams and stakeholders who aren’t engineers

What success looks like in your first six months

• You know our codebases well enough that product conversations get faster and more grounded because you’re contributing to them
• Releases keep their calm, confident rhythm as we grow
• Our data architecture keeps getting clearer and better documented as we build
• The team works with intelligence agents more thoughtfully because of practices you helped shape and implemented
• Our users feel the difference!

What we’re looking for you to bring

• Experienced portfolio of building and shipping production software
• Real strength with data: relational databases, schema design, and how data moves through a system
• Comfort in a modern TypeScript stack
• Fluency with modern and emerging coding tools, and the judgment to tell good output from plausible-looking assisted output
• Curiosity that travels well between products and problems, to people and user experience
• Clear writing, since much of our collaboration happens asynchronously

Wonderful additions, but not required

• Experience with SvelteKit, Svelte 5, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, or Capacitor for iOS/Android
• Mobile app development experience
• Time in a nonprofit, mission-driven, or small-team setting
• Roots in, or real love for, Vermont communities

This role is for you if

• You like being close to the people who use what you build
• You’d rather do a few things well than many things fast
• You see AI as a creative partner, not only a productivity tool
• A small team where your voice shapes the structure sounds like an opportunity

It probably isn’t for you if

• You want to specialize deeply in one product or one layer of the stack
• You’d prefer a large team with established processes already in place
• You’re looking for fully remote work

Compensation & Benefits

$105,000 to $125,000, depending on experience. This range is our good-faith estimate at the time of posting. We review compensation at the six-month mark, with the opportunity for an increase based on growth in the role.

• Comprehensive benefits such as full coverage health care, dental, life insurance, and 401k
• Unlimited Paid time off
• Hybrid work model with in-person office days once a week in Central Vermont
• Professional development: we invest in your growth, whether that’s a course, a conference, or a skill you want to build.