Nava is at the forefront of reimagining how our government serves its people, and we’re looking for experienced designers and developers to help drive this mission forward.

You will work on small teams to build scalable infrastructure for our government -- designing, implementing, and delivering services that millions of Americans depend on. You care deeply about working on technology that improves people’s lives, but don’t think technology is always the answer. You are passionate about building large-scale systems that are inclusive, well-designed, fast, scalable, and secure, and you'll help set high standards for our teams in terms of simplicity, empathy, and accessibility.

You can work remotely, or work from one of Nava’s offices in DC, SF, or NYC.

Opportunities and Challenges

Nava provides opportunities to do meaningful, impactful, mission-oriented work. As a public benefit corporation, we have a social mission written into our founding charter. The people who work at Nava have a fiduciary duty to our stated mission: to improve access, effectiveness, and simplicity of government services. We see this as an opportunity, but it is also important to highlight the challenges we face in advance.

You will be working within the government ecosystem, which means working dynamically, with other government contractors and civil servants. Working with people outside of your company means you'll likely encounter different working styles and cultural norms. At the same time, working as part of a larger team allows us to deliver on projects of larger scale and complexity.

The government also imposes a level of bureaucracy that is typically not present in a company of our size in the private sector. We operate in a regulated environment, where checks and compliance is built into the process of building software. This can make the path to production slower and some decisions, such as tools and processes, lie outside of our control. However, beyond writing code, finding and recommending ways to improve the way government software is built is one of the highest-leverage ways we help fulfill our mission. While our work is to build new systems with up-to-date technology, we have to do that within an existing ecosystem. Our work is building functional, resilient software for production. We don't build flashy prototypes that don't work for real people.

What you'll do

• Collaborate with the product team, government stakeholders, and other contractors to build new systems and make improvements to existing systems.
• Design and spec out major functionality and flows.
• Drive ideas from concept to production, from sketching and wireframing to implementation and launching to production.
• Participate in planning and breaking down requirements into tasks.
• Review code and give feedback on technical specs.
• Make improvements by proposing new tools and practices.

What we're looking for

• At least two years of experience working in an agile, multidisciplinary team environment, preferably designing and building medium or large-scale web applications
• Experience mapping and driving systemic improvements within complex service environments
• Understanding of web and mobile user interface design best practices
• Significant experience in JavaScript, CSS, and responsive design
• Demonstrated ability to design, build, and test semantic, accessible, Section 508 compliant web applications.
• Understanding of inclusive design methodologies
• Some experience with a modern JavaScript framework, such as React, Vue.js, Angular or Ember
• Familiarity with a JavaScript testing framework such as Jest, Jasmine, or Mocha
• Tenacity to dive into problems and iterate in working code
• Equal parts systems thinker and advocate for users
• Highly resourceful, reliable, and detail-oriented
• Ability to think strategically around trade-offs and short term vs. long term benefits
• An adaptive, empathetic, collaborative and positive mindset
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, technical and otherwise

Things that are not important to us

• Whether or not you have a CS or engineering degree.
• Whether or not you have GitHub contributions. (It's great if you do, but we don't expect it.)
• Whether or not you have worked at a well-recognized company.

Other requirements:

• Education: Due to contractual requirements, this role requires a Bachelor's Degree (in any discipline).
• Residency: Lived in United States at least 3 years out of the last 5 years

We're a small team working to radically improve our government, so everyone that joins us has a direct impact on the direction and success of Nava. We are stewards – we hold a deep responsibility towards the systems that we work with. We are a community – we value collaboration both within our teams and with the many hardworking people within government. We offer generous benefits and equity.

We care deeply about diversity and inclusion at Nava. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Note: We participate in E-Verify. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. This role is required to work from the contiguous United States.

Apply