This Week in Jobs: Take these 24 tech career opportunities for a spin
Happy World Bicycle Day!
The celebration was originated by Professor Leszek Sibilski, a Polish-American social scientist and cyclist whose academic project on bicycles and sustainability became a global initiative in the 2010s. It was declared by the United Nations in April 2018.
Bicycles, invented in Germany more than 200 years ago, have stood the test of time as a simple, affordable and reliable means of transportation that is good for environmental sustainability and health.
Since 2020, the popularity of bicycles, including electric bikes, has exploded. During the COVID lockdowns, when people were seeking safe outdoor activities for fitness and mental health, many cities saw record-breaking purchases and rentals — notably, the Citi Bike system in New York City saw a 67% increase during the early part of the pandemic.
The popularity of bike-sharing programs didn't end with the lockdowns. In fact, their popularity continues to rise: Between March 2024 and March 2025, docked bike-share trips in major U.S. cities experienced a 17.5% increase.
Riding a bike is kind of like a job search: balance, momentum and the occasional hill climb are part of the ride.
The News
Check out this roundup of South Philly small business entrepreneurs, including artists, chefs, activists, app developers and more.
Track Pittsburgh aerospace startup Astrobotic's rise from CMU spinout to NASA moon partner.
Philly's Fore Biotherapeutics raises another $38M for cancer drug trial.
Developers aren't discounting the tech industry — but say companies must value humans over AI.
What does Pennsylvania stand to lose if federal research dollars dry up? More than just the funding itself.
Client Spotlight
'What's great about being at Comcast is that we can turn an idea into a product,' said software development engineer Jaylen Sanders.
'I brought an idea to my manager, we demoed it across the organization, and a year later, we were able to create, ship and launch the product.'
The Jobs
Greater Philly
Penn Medicine is seeking a Senior Manager Data Engineering and a Cybersecurity Identity Management Senior Engineer.
Law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius is looking for an IT Product Manager.
CubeSmart is hiring a Database Engineer and a Technical SEO Analyst.
Vanguard has several listings open:
Machine Learning Engineer
Public Relations Consultant, Senior Specialist
Senior Product Manager
The CIGNA Group needs a hybrid Workday Talent Solutions Analyst.
DC + Baltimore
Kite Pharma in Frederick is seeking a Senior IT Engineering Specialist
Microsoft is hiring for hybrid Technical Support Engineering in DC.
Maryland Department of Information Technology is hiring an IT Accessibility Specialist.
Siemens in Chantilly is looking for a Building Automation Service Specialist.
Software company Navigator in Frederick needs a Client Software Specialist.
Pittsburgh
Ford Office Technologies is hiring an IT Technical Account Manager.
The City of Pittsburgh has a listing for a Technology Implementation Specialist.
Meta is searching for a Technical Program Manager, XR Tech.
Biotech company Softwriters needs a hybrid Technical Support Specialist.
Remote
Brooksource is looking for a remote Salesforce Helpdesk Technician.
Bath & Body Works is looking for a remote Lead UX Designer.
MrBeast is in need of a remote
Netflix has a listing for a remote Full Stack Engineer (L5), N-Tech Software Engineering.
The End
In the words of Professor Sibliski: 'Have passion, perseverance, and be relentless!'
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Technical.ly
a day ago
- Technical.ly
Lula brings mom-and-pop stores into the online delivery age
When the COVID pandemic hit, Adit Gupta didn't expect that helping his parents add an online component to their New Jersey convenience store was going to be as hard as it was. Gupta, a Drexel University graduate student in computer science at the time, realized that for small retail business owners, getting set up with ecommerce was a barrier to 21st-century business growth, with so many consumer delivery apps and expectations. 'Customers expect you to have a website and an app,' Gupta told 'They expect you to show up on Uber Eats and DoorDash and Grubhub.' Gupta found no existing platform to help business owners cover all of the bases. So he and cofounder Tom Falzani decided to create one. Gupta and Falzani's startup, Lula Commerce, provides a platform for small retailers to offer online shopping and delivery to their customers using popular apps like DoorDash, UberEats and GrubHub, making it easy for their customers to do business with them online. With Lula, stores that may not have the resources to hire their own team of developers can have a site that integrates multiple ecommerce channels, direct customer service, inventory and returns. In the four years since its founding, the company has rapidly expanded to serve thousands of locations across 44 states. A pandemic-era need turned everyday small business necessity Though he fell into small business ecommerce by accident, Gupta was always a part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Drexel, where he just recently completed his doctorate in philosophy with a focus on AI. It can take months for a small retailer to establish itself online, from connecting with all of the delivery channels to managing website ecommerce. Clients who sign up with Lula get a website with an AI voice agent that can take secure orders over the phone and analytics to track everything. 'It connects your inventory to every single way a shopper might want to order your inventory,' Gupta said. As Lula has moved to work with retail chains, it has taken some inspiration from Falzani's onetime employer, Wawa — a big company that has had its own branded website and app for years, which have evolved with technology. 'We enable that Wawa type of outcome at a small fraction of the cost and a small fraction of the time, and democratize enterprise technology for every retailer so that they can turn on their ecommerce experience,' said Gupta. Orders, whether they come from DoorDash, GrubHub or a business's own website, go into Lula's centralized platform, called Lula Hub, which keeps track of inventory and consolidates the financial reporting, so all ecommerce is managed in one place. Every day, about 1,000 locations use Lula, Gupta said, and the number is growing. A slow start that paid off Convincing small businesses in 2021 that they needed what Gupta and Falzani were offering wasn't always easy. 'We know that ecommerce is how consumers will shop in the future, and they are even shopping primarily through ecommerce now,' said Gupta. 'But having an ecommerce portal to your store [today] is like saying in 1997, 'hey, I have a company — maybe I should build a website?'' In the early days, Gupta and Falzani went door-to-door, walking into stores in South Philly, trying to convince store operators to pay them $50 to try online sales. It took a year to get 10 stores. As it grew, Lula was accepted into the SOSV Food-X accelerator in New York, leading to its first round of funding. Other early supporters included Chuck Sacco from Drexel's Close School of Entrepreneurship, Mel Baiada of Drexel's Baiada Incubator and Dean Miller of Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies. 'We ended up using that money to grow from like 10 to 30 stores, and we ended up raising a pre-seed round of friends and family and colleagues,' Gupta said. 'Cumulatively, we ended up raising a little more than half a million to build this vision.' It became a full-time job — plus jobs for a team of between three and four other developers. By the time Lula was a year and a half old, it had about 100 stores and in 2022, it had its first big venture capital round at $6.5 million (per Pitchbook), having proved that the platform met a need. 'The phase that we're in now is like, we know this works,' Gupta said. 'Now we're in the continuing to scale phase, but also, we continue to evaluate how the world is changing with AI.' AI, he said, can help small businesses grow by taking necessary tasks that they don't want to do — things like filling out paperwork for refunds — and help automate them, saving them time that they can use to better focus on other parts of the business. The next goal, Gupta said, is to reach 10,000 stores, a milestone he thinks they can reach within the next few years. 'I think of our impact through two measures,' Gupta said. 'How many customers are we serving, and how much are we serving each customer?'
Technical.ly
5 days ago
- Technical.ly
A majority of workplaces do not have a mental health strategy
The Covid-19 pandemic's disruptions of traditional office dynamics forced more companies to consider workers' well-being. The progress made since then still isn't enough, per a recent study. Boards of directors are not engaged in mental health strategies, and C-suite members don't model healthy behaviors, according to the annual report One Mind published this spring. The Napa, California-based nonprofit pulled data from 91 organizations' self-assessments, representing feedback from about 2.5 million workers at employers of all sizes and industries. Three out of four companies do not have a mental health strategy, per the index One Mind developed. That's the core struggle for most firms trying to improve mental health among workers, explained CEO Kathy Pike at a recent briefing for journalists hosted by the National Press Foundation. Only 60% of executives say they've established mental health as a priority. 'When you don't have a mental health strategy and you don't know what problem you're solving for,' Pike told journalists, 'it's very hard to know whether what you're doing matters.' Eighty-six percent of firms have at least one executive tasked with overseeing this strategy. But that's often a 'default' plan that Pike said can backfire on a company. 'That's the most expensive strategy because when you don't pay attention to mental health and well-being,' said Pike, who's also a psychology professor at Columbia University, 'the cost to your people and the cost to your organization are unknown risks to you and not calculated.' Pike outlined at the briefing more downsides to ad hoc policies, the need to give employees holistic resources and the necessity of data to substantiate it all. Collecting quality data is necessary for change When you don't have a mental health strategy and you don't know what problem you're solving for, it's very hard to know whether what you're doing matters. Kathy Pike One Mind focuses on collecting and analyzing data about employers' wellness practices, as well as helping organizations implement the best methods. Pike believes that other firms need to set similar priorities to get this data about themselves, lest they lose what mental health programs they do offer. 'If you don't have data to demonstrate that what you're doing matters … you're going to be at the front of the line for the chopping block,' Pike explained. She acknowledged the overall lack of data on workplace mental health, which puts many business leaders at a loss for where to start building their strategy. Data is important for tracking impact and guiding decisions, per Pike, especially because many workplace leaders get thrown into leading mental health programs with little to no clinical training. 'We want leadership to have data to guide their decisions,' she said, 'so that they spend their time … in ways that are going to have the greatest impact.' Moving beyond simply 'providing' Pike sees fostering wellness as divided into three aspects: provide, protect and promote. Historically, 'provide' is the sole component focused on in workplace mental health. That means providing guidance for treatment or information, per Pike. But there's a lot more to wellness strategy, she asserted. Employers need to protect their workers from potential harm or negative impacts stemming from their work. Promoting healthy habits is also key, through actions like offering flexible work times. Leaders struggle with modeling healthy habits, per the index. Just 41% of them say they set positive examples. But leaders are essential to fostering healthy working environments, Pike explained, through their role in such essential functions as structuring the workday and how communications about promotions or raises take place, for example. 'If you don't have leadership support, it's just not going to survive and have the real impact that you want,' she said. The top of the corporate hierarchy similarly struggles to embed workplace mental health into its governance. Boards are not involved in mental health strategy, per the index — just one in 10 boards surveyed have formally defined roles related to it. Leaders are overwhelmed by individual solutions Pike found that HR professionals specifically get inundated by products claiming to be the solution for their employees' mental health. But workplaces need systemic, not pinpointed, solutions, she said. Those solutions include normalizing difficult conversations about stress and resilience. Products or tech focused on single conditions or issues are not going to change the overall landscape, per Pike. 'If your workers were your garden, and the majority of your plants were wilting, you wouldn't pick one up and say, 'What's wrong with this plant?'' Pike said, adding: 'You would understand that there's something wrong with the conditions.'
Technical.ly
5 days ago
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Let's Rallie brings Philadelphians together IRL — with a little help from their phones
For Robbie Verna, business is all about community. The 29-year-old, originally from Delaware County, has been reimagining how communities connect and celebrate through event technology platform Let's Rallie since 2021. His cofounder, Wendy Verna, a longtime entrepreneur and founder of Octo Design Group, also happens to be his mom. Both companies are located on South Street in Philly. 'We started it during COVID as a fun little startup,' Robbie told 'Since then, we have pivoted the business to our current business model with the same mission, to drive commerce to different neighborhoods.' The platform is an app to to help users navigate in-person community events, serving local organizations, nonprofits and community groups across the Philadelphia region. It supports everything from festivals to brewery tours, providing interactive features like scavenger hunts, voting and custom event maps. Embracing the city's community vibes Verna left his hometown of Media for college at a Connecticut university, where he studied marketing and entrepreneurship. After graduating in 2018, he was ready to move back home, but instead of suburban Delco, he moved straight into the city of Philadelphia and has been there ever since. Verna embraces life in Philly, from the strong sense of community to the easy access to networking events. Depending on the weather, he bikes, walks or takes the bus from where he lives in the Graduate Hospital area to the office. His desire to see the city's communities thrive fueled Let's Rallie. 'Our mission is to drive traffic to local businesses and also support neighborhoods and their operations,' he said. 'Our goal is to help different community teams with their event technology [and] to keep people in those areas, exploring new things.' Let's Rallie's bread and butter, Verna said, is a software service for local organizations looking for technology for their events. Some of its clients include The South 9th Street Italian Market, Manayunk Development Corporation and CampusPhilly, as well as regional clients including the New Jersey Tourism Association and Harford County, Maryland. Attendees download Let's Rallie to their phones, where they can access features like schedules, interactive maps, push notifications, raffles and scavenger hunts. A voting feature allows events to interact with attendees, who can use it to participate in things like pet costume contests at a Halloween event. 'We do a ton of festivals,' Verna said. 'We've done ice sculpture festivals, food truck festivals, the Italian Market Festival, and we also do a lot of tours and crawls, like a burger crawl, a seafood crawl. We're right now doing a brewery tour.' Now, he said, Let's Rallie is expanding into multi-day events like restaurant weeks and soccer tournaments, too. 'We started out in the East Falls and Manayunk area, and they took a chance on us,' Robbie said. 'And then from there, some people from South Philly heard about us, and it just snowballed.' Born into entrepreneurship Both of Verna's parents are business owners, something he says has been a benefit as he launched his own startup. 'It was certainly helpful to have both of my parents in my corner,' he said. 'It let me know that it was possible, and made it a little less scary.' Wendy Verna's 25 years of doing business in Philly and making relationships gave the business insight into how things work in the city, like having a built-in mentor. Logistically, the Vernas had to start by building the app, which they did with the help of a friends and family round of funding. Since then, they've been bootstrapping. 'We did join an accelerator with Philly Startup Leaders early on,' Verna said. 'They helped us with our business model and making sure everything was buttoned up and ready to go. They were certainly a big help, with connections as well, so that helped us grow.' As clients started signing up, they learned to listen to their needs to keep the business growing. 'As we got those clients, we reinvested that money back into what would be helpful for them, so trying to be as nimble as possible,' Verna said. 'We're ear-to-the-ground, listening to clients, and making sure that we weren't just building something and trying to make it fit.' Ultimately, he said, the clients are communities, in a city and region where community is a big part of its identity. 'The creativity and the true community energy that the city has, and the willingness to help each other, is definitely something that has been very beneficial to our business,' Verna said. Rallie -ing to the future In the future, Verna would like to see the app evolve into an all-purpose events tool that community members can take with them and use, even after a specific event has passed. The map feature, for example, could be used to show a user all of the events happening in the area on a given day. A tool that a user can open when they go to a new town in the region — or, eventually, beyond the mid-Atlantic. 'We're growing, one relationship at a time,' Verna says, 'and now, with people expecting an app for their events — we're right where they want us to be.'
