We'd prefer a candidate in the Pacific Northwest, but for the right candidate we'd consider other locations in the US. Our employees work from anywhere, but everyone on our team is currently an Oregon or Washington resident.

Who We Are

Cast Iron Coding is a web development firm in Portland, Oregon. We create web applications (and sites) for clients that spread knowledge and contribute to the common good. Most of our work is with universities, state governments, arts institutions, foundations, and other non-profits. Sometimes, when a project helps us sharpen our skills, we choose to work with for-profit, values-aligned companies.

We work with groups that tackle important problems, and we work hard to elevate the design and build quality on these projects. That work makes us proud because we’re contributing to something bigger than ourselves.

Founded in 2005, we’re currently a team of 14, which includes developers, designers, account managers, and project managers. We’re entering a growth period, and are hiring talented people who are excited about the kinds of work we do. We offer our team autonomy and a respectful, transparent, and humanist management style. In return, we hold the team to high standards around integrity, collaboration, craft, and personal accountability.

What We Care About

As craftspeople, we care deeply about the quality of our work. We expect our designs to be honest, ethical, intelligent, user-centric, and joyous. We listen carefully to our clients, but we’re not afraid to push them to bring their best effort to their projects. We resist and address head-on any constraints—unreasonable deadlines, poorly articulated requirements, insufficient resources—that prevent us from doing our best work. Our humanistic approach means we attend to users by paying particular attention to accessibility and user experience. We continuously learn and adopt new technologies, and we enjoy working on the ever-changing and growing web.

At Cast Iron, we seek profit for human ends, rather than for its own sake. In practice, that means we take work-life balance seriously and believe that maximizing employee well-being also maximizes productivity. We treat employees with respect and dignity, and provide choices about where and how our employees work. We care about employee growth, and offer professional development, advancement opportunities, regular goal setting, and mentoring to support that growth. We take a deliberate approach to project management that aims to support our designers and developers without reducing them to issue-closing cogs in a machine. We do this because their active voices are critical to our success. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we cultivate a culture of trust and collaboration by supporting each other as we learn new skills, tackle new challenges, and grow as individuals.

What We're Looking For

Cast Iron is seeking a Backend Developer with at least three years of experience with Ruby on Rails, preferably for an agency or a non-profit organization. This individual will work with our current backend team to maintain and develop web applications we've built for our clients and also contribute to new development on current and future projects. With new projects, we typically use Rails as an API-only framework for creating GraphQL backends backed by PostgreSQL databases. Our older projects generally include a REST API and, in some cases, also utilize the Rails view layer. This individual will work on a variety of projects, but generally not more than 3 or 4 at a time, and will work closely with our senior backend developers, our project manager, and our frontend team.