SparkFun Electronics is an online shop for the do-it-yourself electronics enthusiast that operates out of a purpose-built 80,000 sqft office in Boulder, CO. Our customers include inventors, artists, students, hobbyists, and just plain curious individuals looking for some fun tinkering with electronics.
SparkFun is also very committed to bringing electronics education into the mainstream by curating free educational materials and working with schools and institutions around the country to bring electronics into the classroom. Lastly, SparkFun is a staunch advocate of the open source movement, most notably being a leader in Open Source Hardware.
SparkFun is a growing company with $32 million in sales in 2014. Having never taken any venture capital, SparkFun grew to its current state entirely on its own ability to generate revenue. This affords SparkFun a high degree of autonomy and independence which fosters a startup-like environment in a well-established medium-sized company.
SparkFun's Information Technology department is responsible for the continuous development, maintenance, and security of all SparkFun web properties. This includes the primary ecommerce website (sparkfun.com) and the primary educational resources website (learn.sparkfun.com). Also included is Sparkle, SparkFun's custom-built ERP system which is used to manage all content on the aforementioned web properties as well as order processing, customer management, shipping, inventory controls, manufacturing, etc.
IT is also generally responsible for all server, network, computer, and software needs for the organization as a whole. This includes building and maintaining the campus network, deploying computers, printers, phones, and mobile devices to all departments, guiding the software selection and implementation process, and generally facilitating the flow of information throughout the company.
Development at SparkFun reflects the exploratory do-it-yourself culture of the entire company. All developers (including interns) take part in fixing small bugs and developing larger projects, as well as reviewing one another's code. Continuous improvement of the tool set provided to all users is emphasized as well as continuous improvement to the development process itself.
Collaborative development is highly encouraged and all developers have ample opportunities to work together on small, informal dev teams focusing on one project, feature, or subsystem. Developer interns are placed on a variety of dev teams based on personal interest and skill set. The day-to-day work of interns very closely mirrors that of full-time developers to provide an environment that encourages learning modern enterprise web development in the real world.
Web Developer Interns are expected to be able to work a minimum of 20 hours a week on-site at SparkFun Electronics headquarters in Boulder, CO.
- Must be an active full-time student
- Experience developing object-oriented PHP
- Experience working with modern HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
- Experience working with relational databases such as MySQL or PostgreSQL
- General understanding of the MVC software architecture
- Experience working with modern version control systems such as Git
- Competence working in a Unix-based environment
- Working knowledge of jQuery and Bootstrap
- Working knowledge of caching systems such as Memcache or Redis
- Working knowledge of NoSQL databases such as MongoDB
- A visible public track record of contributions to open source
- An eye for designing intuitive user interfaces
Note: all benefits only become available after an initial on-boarding period of six weeks.
- 401k matching up to 5%
- $500/semester tuition reimbursement (not to exceed $1000/yr)
- $25/month gym/massage benefit
Note: some perks only become available after an initial on-boarding period of six weeks.
- Flex time – days/hours in the office can be a compromise between work life and home/school life
- Occasionally work from home or work remotely (no permanent remote work)
- Free and/or deeply discounted access to tools, parts, and education to tinker with electronics and physical computing
- Frequent Lunch and Learns – presentations by other employees and special guests on all manner of topics (often catered)