Backend Developer - Data Processing


  • Full Time
  • Montreal
  • Posted 9 months ago

Website Transit App

Transit data is the lifeblood of Transit App. From thousands of sources to only one UI, help us fetch, clean, merge, compress, enhance and perfect the data. Your goal: our users should feel at home, regardless of where they live and regardless of the messiness of the data sources. The limits: your creativity and your skills.

You will use OpenStreetMap, schedule data in multiple formats, real-time APIs of vehicle locations, bus and train ETAs, service alert feeds, data from Wikipedia, from transit agency websites, and from any credible source you can find or think of… Merge them, bind them, enhance them, process them to extract and produce more perfect data.

Your best reward we’ll be that “wow, this is amazing” that the users will experience whenever they open the app.

Responsibilities
Study the functioning of public transit in foreign cities in order to build a tailored user experience.
Use existing tools and your creativity to improve the data of existing cities in any relevant way.
Add new cities and new countries, irrespective of the distance and the language differences to understand how the user thinks about their own urban transport system.
Improve the backend tools to automate the processes and improve the quality of the data.
Work with the App Team to help build newer visions of the app, which will enable new use of existing the data and the addition of new data sources in Transit App.

Requirements
Knowledge of object-oriented programming
Extremely detail oriented. Your precision helps ensure that transit riders have a reliable commuting experience. Our users depend on you!
Be sharp, be smart, be creative. Obstacles can be overcome or bypassed. You’re going to be fighting with data and documentation in unknown languages, or often with data without any kind of documentation… Think out of the box to find a good solution and improve key portions of the app. Makes a big difference.
Satisfactory written communication skills in English (and ideally, French) to be in touch with users and transit authorities. You won’t be handling tech support, but you will be emailing users and agencies when there are data quality issues.

Would-be-great-if section
Linguist! The more languages you can speak, write and understand, the better.
Knowledge of Node.js, Regular Expressions and shell scripts (with bonus points for C++).
Familiarity with Git and Github.
Familiarity with transit data formats like GTFS, NEPTUNE, TransXChange, Hafas…
Passionate about cities, urbanism, public transit, design, technology, or all the above.
Experience working in a Mac environment.
Photoshop and pixel-snapping skills would really be the cherry on top.

How to apply: Send your resume, GitHub account and other relevant info to [email protected].

To apply for this job email your details to jobs@transitapp.com.

Apply using webmail: Gmail / AOL / Yahoo / Outlook