Once in a while, we get emails from people in the community who want to know what they can do to increase their chances of getting hired at Great Scott Gadgets (GSG) when we do happen to open up a position. We really appreciate this enthusiasm! Below we outline some of the skills and topics we assess when hiring someone to join our small, completely-remote team.

1. Know our products and projects. Our products are listed on our website. The Software and hardware details for our products and projects are in the repositories on our GitHub. When we interview we ask which of our products you are familiar with, if there are any you are excited to work on, and if you have experience with any of them. While it is not required for an applicant to have used our products, it really helps when applicants have an idea of what our company does and what they would like to do when they join us. Yes, we often hire with a specific project in mind, but we do want to make sure the position fits the person and can often make adjustments.

2. Have skills in the tools and languages we use. Take a look at our GitHub repositories and see what technologies and programming languages we use. We are a company dedicated to open source and most of our development happens in the open by team members forking a repository, making changes in a branch, and then submitting a pull request just as anyone in the community is able to do. We do like to see GitHub contributions from new team members within the first few weeks of working at GSG so it is important to know at least one of the languages we work with well enough that you can jump right in.

3. Contribute to open source or build a project to talk about in interviews. Our interviews do not have any whiteboarding, homework, or any other excessively long skills testing process. We currently assess applicants on two phone screens and on code, projects, documentation, and writeups you have posted publicly. We do understand that some of the people eager to join GSG are coming from a career filled with NDAs or restrictions on personal projects and contributing to open source. If you don’t have public materials for us to review, please let us know and we’ll work with you to make accommodations.

If you have more questions about working at Great Scott Gadgets or our hiring process, please reach out to careers@greatscottgadgets.com.

Please welcome the Great Scott Gadgets summer interns, Ellie Puls and Jacob Graves. They joined us at the beginning of June, and we are thrilled to have both of these bright students on our team. Ellie is a junior at CU Boulder and Jacob is a senior at CU Denver, and they are both majoring in Computer Science. They plan to write a short blog post every couple of weeks over the summer to let you know what they've been learning and what kind of projects they've been working on. Here's what they've been up to in their first couple of weeks:

"We helped finish a project in Python that fetches information about wireless devices from the Federal Communications Commission's website. We were able to take the information and put it into the user's home directory as well as into a user-friendly database. Additionally, we learned how to use the Lasersaur laser cutter and cut packaging for the new HackRF acrylic cases. Finally, we learned how to test HackRFs to look for any firmware or LED issues on the boards."

Going forward, we want to involve Ellie and Jacob in several of our software and firmware development projects (including GreatFET). They will be mentored by Mike and Dominic, and we hope that their time with us will amount to a meaningful educational and professional experience that they can take with them into their future careers.

Are you (or do you know someone who is) a match for our open position for a summer intern? See our new jobs page for details. Keep an eye on this page for future job opportunities at Great Scott Gadgets!