Software Toolsmith

Many of us in the Dept. of Computer Science identify as “toolsmiths”, as described in department founder Dr. Fred Brooks’ 1994 essay, The Computer Scientist as Toolsmith II. As such, we build software tools to help people do their jobs easier, faster, or more reliably. We have a number of positions for developers to help complete and maintain projects for both the computer science department and other departments on campus. The projects have different levels of development completed but all require significant development effort as well as deployment and maintenance. The projects require a range of development skills but we are willing to accept motivated students who want to learn the skills, including both technical skills (programming, using git collaboratively, deployment) and interpersonal skills (communicating project and task status, maintaining a project board on Trello, pair programming). Projects use various languages and technologies, including Clojure, Javascript, Python, HTML, CSS, and databases (SQL-based and not). Students do most of their work in a “pair programming” context, i.e. programming together with a partner. Note: this position can be paid if you are a work study student; otherwise, it is volunteer only.