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Now Hiring: Open Source Maintainer

Help guide one of the hottest web frameworks around!

We’re not currently accepting new applications for this role, but if you’re interested in future positions you can send us an email at jobs@gatsbyjs.com.

About Gatsby

Gatsby is a remote-first, community-focused team working to build a high-performance, fun to use, astonishingly flexible presentation layer for any data source. Our core values include transparency (we work in public most of the time); creating a safe, high-trust team; building incredible developer experiences; maintaining a healthy working environment; and helping deliver web experiences that feel amazing to use on every device and connection type.

We provide full-time employees with full benefits including medical, dental, and vision coverage with available coverage for spouses or domestic partners and children, stock options, 401(k), generous holiday and sick paid time off, and parental leave.

We’re currently hiring an open source maintainer to help us improve Gatsby core, the Gatsby ecosystem and support the community.

Details of this role:

  • Type of work: Full-time (contract possible, if you prefer)

  • Start date: immediately

  • Location: Remote, applicants outside the US may apply

Why we’re hiring

Gatsby is growing fast, and we need help improving the general health of Gatsby OSS, assist with OSS automation processes, work to make Gatsby more approachable to outside contributors. We also need help keeping up with the community, guiding developers to answers, and just generally being a positive presence in the open source community.

What you’ll do on a day-to-day basis:

  • Review and provide feedback on pull requests. Our community is incredible, and we receive a huge number of pull requests each week. You will be responsible for reviewing pull requests, providing constructive feedback and support to contributors, and ultimately making the call on what is merged into our repos.

  • Help guide architectural decisions. The future of Gatsby’s various repositories is discussed and planned in our public issues and RFCs. You’ll be helping drive these conversations and guiding Gatsby toward the best possible solutions.

  • Convert high-level ideas into detailed specifications and actionable issues. You will provide the required context to allow community contributors to quickly and effectively pick up issues.

  • Improve the quality of Gatsby’s codebase. You will work to identify and implement opportunities for refactoring, improving test coverage, and otherwise making Gatsby better.

  • Act as an “Open Source Gardener”. Gatsby has hundreds of open issues. Many of these may be solved, stale, or duplicates. You will be helping understand the existing issues, close issues that are no longer relevant, and rekindle discussion and action on stalled issues.

  • Help ensure the success of developers using Gatsby. You will validate bug reproductions, request additional info, and guide developers to the appropriate docs, requirements, and support channels. You will do this by helping us follow and improve our issue submission templates and processes.

  • Help define and uphold community standards. You will be an example to the entire Gatsby community, both with the quality of your code and the way you treat people in the community. You’ll be expected to set a stellar example in both.

You’ll enjoy this role if:

  • You’re curious and like using your critical thinking skills. When you run into an issue that sounds odd, you’re ready and willing to investigate. You want to figure out what happened and how to reproduce the bug. You don’t take things at face value, but want to investigate and do the detective work. Relates to inquisitive.

  • You pride yourself on doing the best work you can do. Although perfection isn’t ultimately achievable, you want to get Gatsby as close to perfect as possible.

  • You enjoy helping other people. You want people to have a good time with Gatsby and are empathetic about developers running into issues. You love working on code to create opportunities and possibilities for others.

  • You’re proactive and ask questions. You don’t like sitting around waiting for issues to appear. You’re happy to jump in and actively start working on improving other things. Once you’re aware of pain points and you’re happy to go out on your own and make improvements or fix documentation without being asked.

  • You’re flexible and responsive. We expect you’d be available in Slack while working, but of course don’t expect that you’d be online after normal working hours. Our main goal is to make sure people are actively helping internally and not blocking the work of others.

To succeed in this role, you’ll need to:

  • Have thorough, clear, and concise written communication skills. You’ll spend a significant portion of your day responding to issues and pull requests on GitHub, so it’s critical that you’re able to communicate in written media with clarity and empathy.

  • Have excellent reading comprehension and ask clarifying questions. Not all Gatsby contributors are great writers, so sometimes issues are confusingly worded. Many of our contributors are not native English speakers, which sometimes requires a little extra effort to understand. You’ll need to be able to read between the lines and to ask excellent clarifying questions to understand their intent and problems.

  • Be extremely well organized. Our issue queue is large, and it will only get larger as Gatsby continues to improve and attract more developers. The ability to keep track of multiple issues, ensure that processes are being followed accurately and thoroughly, and avoid letting issues slip through the cracks is critical to your success in this role.

  • Be comfortable digging through source code and validating bug reproductions. Each bug will require a minimal reproduction repository. Your ability to clone, run, and validate these repositories is essential for success.

  • You have previous experience with React, Node.js, and GraphQL. Gatsby is built on React, Node, and GraphQL, so you should be experienced with usage and the syntax.

Nice to have, but not required:

  • You’ve maintained an active repository before. Maybe you’ve helped maintain a popular open source repo, or maybe you’ve worked on internal repos that saw contributions from multiple teams. Previous experience with highly active repo workflows is a definite plus for this role.

  • You have experience with modern build tools such as Buck or Bazel. Gatsby’s architecture is in many ways inspired by these tools and we incorporate ideas from them into core on a regular basis.

The best parts of this job

  • You’ll be at the cutting edge of website development — working on one of the fastest-growing site building frameworks on the market, digging into the Gatsby’s innovatively architected codebase and build system, using modern tools such as Node, React, and GraphQL.

  • You’ll be part of an active, open, friendly community of developers that are really excited about building high-performance, fun-to-use websites.

  • You’ll be working in a safe, open environment of talented engineers who have a broad range of experience.

The worst parts of this job

  • We are still learning how to manage processes at scale, so things are a bit chaotic at times. We don’t have all our systems written down.

  • You will likely have to chase someone down to get answers sometimes.

  • There’s a lot happening, and it’s not always clear what the priority is.

  • Because we’re remote, it can sometimes feel like you have no idea what’s going on.

  • Open source is a non-stop deluge of bug reports and support requests, and it can sometimes feel pretty overwhelming.

Our Company Values

We want to make sure our company values are emulated by everyone on our team, and they’re summarized below. You can see our Company Values in more detail here.

  1. Do the right thing when no one is looking

  2. Work in the open

  3. Set and manage clear expectations

  4. Go slow to go fast

  5. Always prioritize developer and user experience

  6. Embrace growth

  7. Experiment with cool ideas

  8. You (yes, YOU!) belong here

You’ll enjoy working at Gatsby if

  • You’re ready and willing to ask questions. If you’re comfortable saying you’re unsure, asking for help, and reaching out then we want to work with you. A lot of our communication is written, so these questions will take place in Slack, on GitHub, and in meetings.

  • You have a willingness to help. Since we encourage asking questions, we’ve also got a great group of people who like jumping in and offering whatever help you can. That means reaching out when someone asks a question, and if you don’t have the answer, helping the person figure out who to go to.

  • You’re open to giving feedback. Since we’re doing work asynchronously, we all need to be happy and confident giving constructive feedback directly to the person who’s asking for it.

  • You’re a good listener. The most effective communication is done through focused, active listening. You like listening to others and using what you learn to ask questions and offer help to the team.

Additional details about Gatsby

Gatsby Inc. is a venture-backed, Delaware C-corporation. We offer equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability or genetics. In addition to USA federal law requirements, we comply with applicable country, state, and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment in every location in which the company operates. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment.

We expressly prohibit any form of workplace harassment based on race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status. We don’t tolerate or ignore harassment: anyone at our company who violates our code of conduct will be disciplined and/or terminated.

How to apply for this job

If this is the job for you, please email jobs@gatsbyjs.com with your resume, portfolio site, and/or GitHub profile, as well as a description of work you’ve done in the past that required you to organize, follow a process, and/or pay attention to detail.

Please note: we understand that some jobs don’t allow sharing source code, and that not everyone codes in their free time as a hobby — please don’t let a lack of public projects stop you from reaching out. But please be aware that we do need to assess your technical skill level somehow, so be ready for a (paid!) sample project.

If you have questions or want to learn more about Gatsby or our team, please visit https://gatsbyjs.com or check us out at @gatsbyjs on Twitter.

© 2023 Gatsby, Inc.