Accessibility Engineer

Agile Six is a people-first, remote-work company that serves shoulder-to-shoulder with federal agencies to find innovative, human-centered solutions. We build better by putting people first. We are animated by our core values of Purpose, Wholeness, Trust, Self-Management and Inclusion. We deliver our solutions in autonomous teams of self-managed professionals (no managers here!) who genuinely care about each other and the work. We know that’s our company’s purpose – and that we can only achieve it by supporting a culture where talented people feel valued, self-managed, and love to come to work.

Agile Six is looking for an Accessibility Engineer to join a new team partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to build a new, integrated patient portal on VA.gov. The mission of this effort is to integrate VA’s digital patient experiences currently provided by My Healthevet (MHV) with VA’s other digital tools to give Veterans one place to manage their VA health care, community care, disability benefits, and other VA information. This role will focus on ensuring that user interfaces and user-facing artifacts developed by the team are 508 compliant and accessible by all Veterans, and providing guidance and support to the team regarding accessibility requirements, tools, and best-practices.

The successful candidate will be contributing to the following GitHub repository, and potentially others within the VA ecosystem:

• https://github.com/department-of-veterans-affairs/va.gov-team/tree/master/products/health-care/digital-health-modernization/mhv-to-va.gov

• Serve as an accessibility advocate and resource as part of a cross functional Agile team that is working on large, scalable web applications in an open source ecosystem
• Write components using Ruby on Rails, React and/or Javascript as needed, leveraging software development principles and best practices
• Design and build software with an eye towards modular, extensible, and scalable design
• Provide expert guidance to the team on WCAG standards, accessibility best practices, accessibility testing tools, and other tools and practices to support the creation of accessible user interfaces
• Leverage the US Web Design System, CSS, and other front-end styling systems and frameworks
• Identify problems and solutions to deliver accessible content for large, complex applications
• Develop user support guidelines and documentation
• Create 508-compliant UI components
• Demonstrate strong communication and team collaboration skills
• As an agile team member, support the team and Product Owner to ensure that work is accurately described and appropriately prioritized, including providing input into user story acceptance criteria and sizing
• Support the practice of engineering within the larger company as needed through such things as participating in an engineering community of practice and assisting in outreach, recruitment, and hiring efforts
• We expect the responsibilities of this position to shift and grow organically over time, in response to considerations such as the unique strengths and interests of the selected candidate and other team members and an evolving understanding of the delivery environment.

• Expert level 508 experience as it pertains to compliance, accessibility, testing, and tagging
• Expert level understanding of accessibility requirements, best-practices, and tools
• Experience with screen readers and/or supporting research with screen readers
• Experience creating accessible and 508-compliant user interfaces and artifacts
• Ability to complete some medium to high complexity tasks and stories with assistance from more senior engineers using at least one of the following programming languages or frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Javascript, React, Node.js
• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript
• Experience working on an Agile team and demonstrating an Agile mindset
• Solid understanding of software development principles and fundamentals, and how to apply these effectively in day-to-day software development
• Understanding of (and ideally, experience executing) quality assurance testing and processes
• Ability to complete high complexity tasks and tickets independently
• Experience in an open, collaborative development environment
• Has lived and worked in the United States for 3 of the last 5 years

• Familiarity with the US Web Design System
• Experience working in or with government agencies, especially the VA
• Experience with continuous integration/deployment systems, Jenkins or Github Actions
• Experience working with GitHub or other git repositories
• Experience developing in the AWS cloud
• Experience with container platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes
• Previously contributed to at least one open source project
• You are a U.S. Veteran

To promote equal pay for equal work, we publish salary ranges for each position.

The salary for this position is $131,941 - $138,708

Our benefits are designed to reinforce our core values of Wholeness, Self Management and Inclusion. The following benefits are available to all employees. We respect that only you know what balance means for your life and season. While we offer support from coaches, we expect you to own your wholeness, show up for work whole, and go home to your family the same. You will be seen, heard and valued. We expect you to offer the same for your colleagues, be kind (not bossy), be caring (not directive) and ready to participate in a state of flow. We mean it when we say “We build better by putting people first”.

All Sixers Enjoy:

• Self-managed work/life balance and flexibility
• Competitive and equitable salary (equal pay for equal work)
• Tenure-based profit sharing
• Employee Stock Ownership (ESOP) for all employees!
• 401K matching
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• Employer paid short and long term disability insurance
• Employer paid life insurance
• Self-managed and generous paid time off
• Paid federal holidays and Election day off
• Paid parental leave
• Self-managed professional development spending
• Self-managed wellness days

Hiring practices

Agile Six Applications, Inc. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, pregnancy, disability, work-related injury, covered veteran status, political ideology, marital status, or any other factor that the law protects from employment discrimination.

Note: We participate in E-Verify. Upon hire, we will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the U.S. This role is required to work from the contiguous United States. Unfortunately, we are unable to sponsor visas at this time.

If you need assistance or reasonable accommodation in applying for any of these positions, please reach out to [email protected]. We want to ensure you have the ability to apply for any position at Agile Six.

Please read and respond to the application questions carefully. Interviews are conducted on a rolling basis until the position has been filled.