engineering
Most of our software is written in javascript. We prefer to write simple, vanilla
code, with as few dependencies as possible. We mostly shy away from frameworks, but we’re
not religious about it. We’re especialy interested in full-stack engineers with
experience in distributed systems, NodeJS, Electron (Atom Shell), Elasticsearch, Kibana,
Stripe, and AWS (EC2, SQS, S3, etc). Soon, we’ll start building our mobile apps,
so iOS and Android expertise are also high on our priorty list.
linguistics
We’re building sophisticated tools for writers, using statistical NLP to develop a
model of literary prose, so that authors can objectively
evaluate their own writing style and make side-by-side comparisons with authors or books they
admire. Some of the projects in our backlog include: automatic genre classification, contextual
thesaurus, statistically improbable phrases, and hedonometer integration (to name just a few).
Bonus points for people with experience in deep learning, hidden markov models, naive bayes
classification, semantic vector spaces, td/idf vs. cosine similarity, lexicometry and vocabulary
analysis.
design
We’re proud of SHAXPIR’s uniquely modern user interface, and we’re looking
for UX designers to continue expanding and refining our design language, as well as adapting
those conventions to our upcoming mobile apps. Expertise in data visualization and typography
(both on screen and in print) and are particularly relevant.
literature
At the heart of our business is a deep appreciation of literature. It’s just not possible
to develop excellent tools for structuring narratives unless we, ourselves, know narrative
structure cold. And we can’t expect to help an author break through her writers block
unless we’ve experienced the same state of mind ourelves. So the ideal members of our
team will be avid readers and writers, with a passion for understanding what makes a great
story tick.
gameplay
There’s a fine line between great tools and great toys, and we think game designers
(especially of tabletop games) have unique insights about designing social interactions
that are both productive and fun. At SHAXPIR, you’ll create the rules for new
writing contests and design feedback mechanisms between authors,
editors, and curators. You’ll develop the economic incentives that ensure liquidity in
our collaborative marketplace and invent casual games for mobile devices to help authors
sharpen their vocabularies.
filmmaking
We believe TV and cinema are just as “literary” as novels and short stories.
Your expertise as a filmmaker will help guide our product development, as we implement
support for screenplay and storyboard authoring within SHAXPIR.