Software Engineer - Platform Engineering (Contractor Position)

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 120,000; Part time

Job summary

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is seeking a Software Engineer within Platform Engineering. This term‑limited contractor role focuses on building and maintaining platform tooling, pipelines, and infrastructure‑as‑code resources, using AWS and Elixir across MBTA tech teams.

The position is hybrid, with in‑office requirements two days per week, and may focus on one or more departments or locations as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree from accredited institution.
• Two years of relevant professional software engineering experience.
• Experience delivering features end‑to‑end to solve problems.
• Experience applying software engineering principles to achieve goals.
• Experience with monitoring, on‑call, incident response, and reliability engineering.
• Strong debugging and investigative skills.
• Experience with CI/CD and software testing best practices.
• Ability to translate business requirements into technology.
• Strong communication skills.
• As part of the selection process, candidates will complete technical assessments.
• Ability to participate in on‑call rotation of technology systems and services.
• More than four (4) years of relevant professional experience is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Perform a wide variety of software engineering tasks in the relevant languages.
• Deliver and maintain well‑architected features from design through implementation.
• Write reliable, maintainable code and justify tradeoffs to meet deadlines.
• Contribute to on‑call rotations and address routine incidents.
• Follow engineering standards, including code reviews, documentation, and testing.
• Improve maintainability and reduce complexity through refactoring.
• Investigate defects and lead feasibility assessments to identify improvements.
• Protect data security, compliance, and privacy through secure coding practices.
• Participate in team rituals (stand-ups, planning, retros).
• Collaborate with UX and PMs to refine requirements for difficult problems.
• Participate in on‑call rotation of technology systems and services.
• Perform all other duties and projects as assigned.

Skills

Elixir

AWS

Terraform/OpenTofu

Pulumi

CI/CD

APIs and data flows

On-call / incident response

Debugging

Software testing

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor degree

Tools

Terraform

OpenTofu

Pulumi

Job description

The Software Engineer is an independent contributor who delivers features end-to-end, contributes to team-level improvements, and operates effectively across multiple parts of the tech stack. The position shapes technical solutions, refines requirements with Product Managers, and improves code quality and code maintainability leveraging software engineering principles and practices.

[PLATFORM ENGINEERING]

The Platform Engineering specialization focuses on building and maintaining shared tooling, pipelines, platform capabilities, and infrastructure-as-code resources that improve developer productivity and system reliability across MBTA technology teams. This specialization enables product and application teams to adopt best-practice standards for quality, security, observability, deployment automation, cost efficiency, and operational resilience. Platform Engineers develop infrastructure-as-code models to use AWS-based resources and create other tools, patterns and automation that strengthens MBTA’s overall software engineering ecosystem.

This is a term-limited and project-specific contractor position that is not employed directly by the MBTA. This hybrid position requires being in the office at least two (2) days per week.

• Perform a wide variety of software engineering tasks in the relevant languages.
• Deliver and maintain well-architected features from design through implementation.
• Demonstrate strong fundamental coding and debugging skills by writing reliable, maintainable code while demonstrating a strong understanding of possible tradeoffs to meet deadlines by effectively articulating impacts and proposing solutions.
• Contribute to on-call rotations and address routine incidents.
• Follow engineering standards, including code reviews, documentation, and testing. Participate and offer constructive feedback to improve.
• Improve maintainability and reduce complexity through refactoring.
• Investigate defects and lead feasibility assessments to identify improvements.
• Protect data security, compliance, and privacy across all work activities by following secure coding practices.
• Participate in team rituals (stand-ups, planning, retros).
• Work collaboratively with UX and PMs to refine requirements for difficult problems and reduce unnecessary scope.
• Participate in on-call rotation of technology systems and services.
• Perform all other duties and projects that may be assigned.

Additional responsibilities may include a focus on one or more departments or locations. See applicable addendum for department or location-specific functions.

Physical Demands and Working Conditions

• The physical demands and work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• Available to work any and all shifts and/or locations as assigned or directed.
• Available to work as per assignment by the MBTA twenty-four (24) hours per day, seven (7) days per week as directed by supervisory staff for severe weather conditions, emergencies or any other circumstances that may potentially impact service or the safety of service.

Supervision

• No direct reports.

Minimum Education

• Bachelor degree from accredited institution.

• Two (2) years of relevant professional experience in software engineering.
• Experience independently delivering features end-to-end to solve problems.
• Experience applying software engineering principles and practices to quickly and creatively achieve team or project goals.
• Experience with monitoring, on-call, incident response, and reliability engineering.
• Strong debugging and investigative skills.
• Experience with software testing best practices and CI/CD.
• Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into technology.
• Strong communication skills.
• Demonstrated proficiency in at least one or more programming languages.
• As part of the selection process, candidates will be asked to complete and pass job-related technical assessments, which may include a software design diagramming exercise and/or a timed coding exercise.
• Ability to participate in on-call rotation of technology systems and services.

• More than four (4) years of relevant professional experience in software engineering.

• Solid understanding of APIs, data flows, and failure modes.
• Experience with Elixir.
• Experience with AWS.
• Experience in public sector, transportation agency, and/or civic technology team.
• Experience with Terraform / OpenTofu / Infrastructure as Code tools.
• Experience in agile software development practices.Knowledge of transit data standards (such as GTFS, GTFS-RT, TODS, TIDES).

[PLATFORM ENGINEERING]

• Experience building or maintaining platform-level tools that support development productivity, CI/CD workflows, or automated testing.
• Experience with AWS services used in platform or infrastructure automation.
• Experience using Infrastructure-as-Code tools (Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi) to manage cloud resources.
• Experience operating or building pipeline, orchestration, or observability tooling.
• Experience developing automation that improves reliability, deployment frequency, or operational consistency across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience implementing secure coding, cost-management, or resiliency patterns at the platform layer.

Substitutions

• A High School Diploma or GED with an additional seven (7) years of directly related experience substitutes for the bachelor’s degree requirement.
• An associate degree from an accredited institution an additional three (3) years of directly related experience substitutes for the bachelor’s degree requirement.
• A master’s degree in a related subject substitutes for two (2) years of general experience.
• A nationally recognized certification, or statewide/professional certification in a related field substitutes for one year of experience.

Job Conditions

• Adhere to rules, regulations, collective bargaining agreements (if applicable) and policies of the MBTA including the EEO, anti-discrimination, anti-harassment, and anti-retaliation policies.
• Ability to pass a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check, background screening, and the MBTA’s medical requirements, including a physical examination and drug and alcohol screening.
• Have a satisfactory work record for the two (2) years immediately prior to the closing date of this posting, including overall employment, job performance, discipline, and safety records (infractions and/or offenses occurring after the closing of the posting and before the filling of a vacancy may preclude a candidate from consideration for selection).