Technical Lead Part-time

About OpenArchive

OpenArchive is an experienced research and development organization dedicated to the ethical collection and long-term preservation of mobile media. We work to promote freedom of expression and privacy on the internet by creating tools, guides, and workshops to protect human rights defenders and their media. Our work centers both large human rights focused NGOs as well as activist communities, researchers, designers, developers, academic institutions, and advocates to create and share best practices in order to advance internet freedom for marginalized and targeted communities.

We are part of a growing movement of human rights defenders working to ensure the safety of citizen reporters, NGOs, and their community and evidentiary media. This is a great opportunity for someone who is looking for professional growth and is interested in working within a highly compassionate, technical, and hard-working human-rights focused community in a collaborative and productive environment. To learn more about our culture at OpenArchive, we encourage you to review our Code of Conduct: https://openarchive.github.io/Code-of-Conduct/.

About the Technical Lead Position:

The Technical Lead manages the overall technical effort, overseeing the implementation and delivery of the development process and software. They are also responsible for key decisions on integration of the appropriate decentralized web and storage technologies into our flagship secure mobile archiving application Save app’s (https://open-archive.org/save/) architecture, ensuring the integration of the software development, user experience, testing and quality assurance processes. They provide guidance and expertise as needed and requested by the rest of the Save management, community and research teams.

This is a 3-year 25% contract position that can also incorporate added developer hours, depending on skills and availability: this would entail expanding the technical lead role to include direct software development on iOS, Android and server applications. The Technical Lead is ultimately responsible for the success, functionality, and longevity of the Save app, the integration with decentralized web technologies, and all of OpenArchive’s tools.

Compensation: $33k base contract rate at 25% time annually, plus $400/month for health benefits and 5% annual cost of living increase.

Contingent on availability and skillset, this position could also incorporate developer hours set at $50-$100 per hour.

Requirements:

• Meaningful experience managing remote development teams and process;
• Background in mobile application development (Android, iOS);
• Experience with at least one primary mobile development language, Kotlin or Swift, as well as Javascript or Typescript-based cross-platform frameworks;
• Asynchronous, remote, multi-time zone collaboration and management skills;
• Open-source project methodology and collaboration experience;
• Deep appreciation and respect for advanced security and privacy feature implementation and principles;
• Proven ability to not only meet deadlines yourself, but ensure that others you are managing do as well
• Exceptional operational, project management, and organizational skills including experience with project management tracking software such as Airtable, Asana, GitLab / GitHub projects, etc.;
• Interest in working within the archival, civil society, human rights, nonprofit, foundation, or NGO sectors;
• Experience working with highly-technical contractors;
• Familiarity with open-source principles;
• Up-to-Date Computer with a minimum of 16GB of RAM and a 1 GHz processor that can run multiple programs at once.
• Experience working for or with a nonprofit or at-risk or marginalized community groups with sensitivities to their localized needs (i.e., understanding their threat models, securing communications, and working well with diverse cultures).

Great to Have:

• Keen interest in and experience in peer-to-peer technology stacks (decentralized tech, IPFS, and libp2p are a plus);
• Continuous Integration, Delivery and Automated Testing;
• Threat Modeling, Analysis, and Response.

Working With Us:

OpenArchive aims to empower people to have more agency over the long-term preservation, privacy, management, and access to their mobile media. We are working on challenging, but compelling problems at the crux of privacy, usability, and long-term preservation of mobile media. If you are passionate about helping people create secure, robust, personal archives to preserve mobile media, especially media made by historically marginalized communities, or are just interested in making secure archiving tools more usable, we’d love to hear from you.

To apply, please submit your full application directly to jobs[at]open-archive.org:

• Your resume;
• A cover letter that explains your interest in the position and why you believe you are well-suited for the role;
• Two references and their contact information (email or phone);
• A link to an example of your relevant work that best represents the competencies outlined here. For instance, you could share a link to a project you owned or managed in the past. Please include a brief description of the work, the problem it solved, challenges and lessons learned, and how it relates to this position;
• Challenges and lessons-learned, and how it relates to this position;
• Clarification of whether you are interested in the part-time Technical Lead role only, or if you want to do any of the additional development work that is available at the hourly rate as well.

We will consider applications on a rolling basis; priority consideration will be given to those who submit their applications by December 15th, 2021.

Reporting:

This position reports to the Executive Director.

Location:

OpenArchive operates as a distributed team, with core staff based on the west and east coasts of the US, and others based in Africa, Latin America, and Europe. The position is virtual through the Covid-19 Pandemic and potentially thereafter, through time zones compatible with the US Pacific Time Zone (GMT-7) are preferred, due to location of key project staff there.

OpenArchive is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

Learn more about OpenArchive at: https://open-archive.org/