About Benetech
Benetech is a non-profit social enterprise that develops technology to address pressing social needs. Today we build software to address literacy, human rights and environmental conservation. We combine a social conscience with Silicon Valley's talent to develop technology that has a lasting impact on critical needs around the world. At Benetech, we embrace a social enterprise business model that measures our success not in dollars, but in the number of lives we change. We are a technology company where social benefit, not profit, is the bottom line.
Benetech was founded 20 years ago and has 60 employees, most of which work out of our Palo Alto headquarters on California Av. (walking distance from Caltrain and Stanford University).
Benetechs flagship project, Bookshare (http://bookshare.org), opens new doors for people with visual and reading disabilities. Bookshare is the worlds largest accessible library of scanned books and periodicals. Bookshare offers more than 60,000 books in its online collection and gives people who cant read traditional printed books, access to a dramatically expanded world of information. You can think of Bookshare as Amazon.com meets Napster, meets Talking Books for the Blind - but legal! This project is funded by the U.S Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, to provide this service to all U.S. qualified students for free.
Responsibilities
* Design, develop and extend the software components of Benetechs applications, particularly Bookshare.org.
* Actively collaborate with other engineers, system admins, product managers, QA engineers and vendors. Provide mentorship.
* Bring thought, leadership, critical thinking and creativity to all phases of the product development lifecycle.
* Evaluate and integrate smart, open-source application development frameworks (and tools) that will accelerate our product initiatives
* Deliver passion, enthusiasm and humor to the work environment
Requirements
* 5+ years of Java Enterprise Edition development experience
* B.S. in Computer Science, a related degree or its equivalent
* Deep understanding of software development best practices, design principles, and software maintainability
* Ability to take a lead role in a SCRUM team
* Experience building consumer facing web applications
* Performance and scalability testing, analysis, and capacity planning
* Website and network security principles and best practices
* Expert understanding of relational databases including query design, full text search and ORM.
* Experience with OS, JVM, middleware, web services, distributed systems and cloud services.
* Java EE frameworks -- Spring Framework (e.g., Spring MVC); Freemarker, Velocity, JSP or comparable template solution; Relational databases and data mapping frameworks, such as iBATIS; XML technologies (XML, XSLT, and REST); Client side technologies (XHTML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX and other Web 2.0 technologies and platforms)
* Continuous integration tools and methods -- Version control systems used to branch and merge code lines. E.g., Bazaar; Bug tracking solutions (e.g., Jira) used to organize and delegate the engineering work; Build servers (e.g., Hudson) that continuously build and test the codebase
* A passion for making the world a better place!
Nice to Have
* Working knowledge of concepts such as security, e-commerce, scalability, content management, analytics/reporting, DRM and encryption.
* Knowledge of accessibility principles and technologies
Perks
* 20 days of Paid Time Off plus 10 paid holiday days!
* Employee bonus plan
* 401(k) plan with company match of 50% on the first 4% of salary deferral
* Educational reimbursement up to $1,500 per year for qualified coursework
* Excellent medical, dental and vision benefits
* Headquartered next to Caltrain Station on California Av in Palo Alto
* Sleep at peace every night knowing that you are building something great for humanity!
![]()
Benetech is a non-profit social enterprise that develops technology to address pressing social needs. Today we build software to address literacy, human rights and environmental conservation. We combine a social conscience with Silicon Valley's talent to develop technology that has a lasting impact on critical needs around the world. At Benetech, we embrace a social enterprise business model that measures our success not in dollars, but in the number of lives we change. We are a technology company where social benefit, not profit, is the bottom line.
Benetech was founded 20 years ago and has 60 employees, most of which work out of our Palo Alto headquarters on California Av. (walking distance from Caltrain and Stanford University).
Benetechs flagship project, Bookshare (http://bookshare.org), opens new doors for people with visual and reading disabilities. Bookshare is the worlds largest accessible library of scanned books and periodicals. Bookshare offers more than 60,000 books in its online collection and gives people who cant read traditional printed books, access to a dramatically expanded world of information. You can think of Bookshare as Amazon.com meets Napster, meets Talking Books for the Blind - but legal! This project is funded by the U.S Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, to provide this service to all U.S. qualified students for free.
Responsibilities
* Design, develop and extend the software components of Benetechs applications, particularly Bookshare.org.
* Actively collaborate with other engineers, system admins, product managers, QA engineers and vendors. Provide mentorship.
* Bring thought, leadership, critical thinking and creativity to all phases of the product development lifecycle.
* Evaluate and integrate smart, open-source application development frameworks (and tools) that will accelerate our product initiatives
* Deliver passion, enthusiasm and humor to the work environment
Requirements
* 5+ years of Java Enterprise Edition development experience
* B.S. in Computer Science, a related degree or its equivalent
* Deep understanding of software development best practices, design principles, and software maintainability
* Ability to take a lead role in a SCRUM team
* Experience building consumer facing web applications
* Performance and scalability testing, analysis, and capacity planning
* Website and network security principles and best practices
* Expert understanding of relational databases including query design, full text search and ORM.
* Experience with OS, JVM, middleware, web services, distributed systems and cloud services.
* Java EE frameworks -- Spring Framework (e.g., Spring MVC); Freemarker, Velocity, JSP or comparable template solution; Relational databases and data mapping frameworks, such as iBATIS; XML technologies (XML, XSLT, and REST); Client side technologies (XHTML, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX and other Web 2.0 technologies and platforms)
* Continuous integration tools and methods -- Version control systems used to branch and merge code lines. E.g., Bazaar; Bug tracking solutions (e.g., Jira) used to organize and delegate the engineering work; Build servers (e.g., Hudson) that continuously build and test the codebase
* A passion for making the world a better place!
Nice to Have
* Working knowledge of concepts such as security, e-commerce, scalability, content management, analytics/reporting, DRM and encryption.
* Knowledge of accessibility principles and technologies
Perks
* 20 days of Paid Time Off plus 10 paid holiday days!
* Employee bonus plan
* 401(k) plan with company match of 50% on the first 4% of salary deferral
* Educational reimbursement up to $1,500 per year for qualified coursework
* Excellent medical, dental and vision benefits
* Headquartered next to Caltrain Station on California Av in Palo Alto
* Sleep at peace every night knowing that you are building something great for humanity!
Source: Joel On Software