Clojure developers: Work with us on the Public Data Platform

Seeking developers for the CFPB Technology and Innovation Fellowship

The CFPB is now recruiting talented, motivated people for positions in design, cybersecurity, data, and development. I’m Marc, a back-end developer in the first round of Fellows, and our dev team is looking for a few good Clojure developers in the second round of the Fellowship to help build technology infrastructure to support the Bureau’s work.

With the support of the tech fellows, this year the Bureau launched an easy-to-use online tool that enables consumers to explore public information about the mortgage market. This set of web-based JavaScript applications run on top of an API we built using our own Clojure-powered tool.

In January 2014, the platform launched. This platform supports the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data from 2007–2012, representing roughly 113 million rows of deidentified mortgage loan application records. Mortgage lenders have collected HMDA data since 1975, but the data was only available online in raw form, limiting its usefulness. This new platform allows users to filter and aggregate the data in ways previously unavailable because of the size and complexity of the data. The data is now easier for the public to access, navigate, and analyze.

We continue to make improvements to the platform, and we’re excited about its potential to make information easier for the public to access and use. That’s where you come in.

Qu (https://github.com/cfpb/qu) is our open source software, written in Clojure, and it is the heart of the Public Data Platform. To continue our important work, we need talented Clojure developers.

Some of our high-priority tasks are:

• Pluggable backends. Right now, the platform runs on MongoDB, but we think it should run on multiple databases, including RDBMS.
• Improved, simplified data loading.
• Admin dashboard for easier insight into platform behavior.
• Improved automation, such as Docker containerization, for a much better “getting started” experience.
• Anything that makes it easier to put open, publicly-available data in the hands of the public to promote our consumer financial protection mission.

As a Technology and Innovation Fellow, you can work from anywhere in the U.S., including on-site at our headquarters in Washington, D.C. We put a premium on communication and collaboration, and we’ve learned a lot about successful remote working working. You’ll join a team of creative, dedicated developers and designers scattered around the country, and we’ll help you stay connected.

If this mission appeals to you, and if these software challenges excite you, please apply at http://www.consumerfinance.gov/jobs/technology-innovation-fellows/. If you’re not a Clojure developer, but all of this sounds fantastic, take heart: We’re also hiring for talented Python and JavaScript devs, graphic designers, UX and more, and we encourage you to apply.