Purism SPC is rapidly expanding and is in need of a developers with Ruby application experience. If you are eager to be part of Purism’s growing team, and have professional experience developing Ruby applications, please apply. This role is full-time and remote with a decentralized team across many timezones.

Learn more about Purism.

Scope of work (i.e. what you have to worry about)

Reporting to the Director of Trustworthy Services, we are looking for team members with experience in sustained development of Ruby applications that keep end-users safe and make sysadmins happy. In general, we extend and enhance existing applications that meet our strict criteria. This role will focus on Smilodon, our complementary fork of Mastodon, which powers Librem Social, our opt-in public network.

Primary objectives:

• maintain Smilodon, pulling in stable upstream changes in a timely manner
• enhance Smilodon to meet our strict opt-in and privacy requirements, and/or patch them to be configurable
• collaborate with upstream, preferring to deliver enhancements to upstream so that all Mastodon syadmins and users can benefit
• evaluate Florence Mastodon as a potential upstream

We have detailed posts outlining our philosophy on social media, consider these required reading 😉

• https://puri.sm/posts/introducing-librem-social/ (the friendly introduction)
• https://puri.sm/posts/opt-in-no-ads-and-no-tracking-solve-a-lot-of-problems-in-society/ (the philosophy)
• https://puri.sm/posts/control-freedom-and-harm/ (the problem statement)
• https://puri.sm/posts/with-purism-products-you-are-in-control/ (the solution!)

See also our quick guide to staying safe online and the Librem One code of conduct.

Secondary objectives:

• prepare Smilodon for continuous integration, packaging and deployment (in collaboration with the sysops team)
• prepare Smilodon for PureOS packaging (for example, replacing non-libre dependencies) — actual packaging is handled by our PureOS team
• adding unit tests to existing applications

Non-objectives:

• this is not a marketing position, a social media presence is not required, social media analysis is not required
• this is not a sysadmin position, you will not have access to the production system
• this is not a moderator position, you will not handle harassment reports
• this is not a strategic position, we develop policies with domain experts (EFF, ACLU)
• this is not an architectural position, the groundwork for Mastodon is fairly well laid out and we will be sticking to that in the short-to-mid-term

Of course your input in any of these areas is welcome! We just want to make it clear that this is a development / engineering position.

Requirements

• prioritising end-user privacy, opt-in workflow, and an everyday user experience
• comfortable working asynchronously and via written instruction (email, ticket tracker…)
• comfortable in and committed to an inclusive work environment with zero-tolerance for workplace harassment
• demonstrable professional experience with Ruby applications
• eagerness to take part in ACLU/EFF training sessions about public discourse
• previous experience with free/libre software in general and Mastodon in particular is not required, but a willingness to engage in ethical software development is

Some details for applying

Please use this template as your email:

• Subject line: “Ruby application developer – your_name_here“
• List what you’re good at, or what you would like to help us with.
• Tell us how you got good at it, or how you’d like to help us.
• Let us know: why would you like to be involved with Purism?

Please note that it will take some weeks for us to review applicants and get back to you.