We’re no longer accepting applications.
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) is searching for a Remote Project Manager for a three-quarter time position for 6 months or half time position for 9 months who will help us plan our technical architecture, direct development, and coordinate with volunteers and other organizations around our Website Monitoring project. Unfortunately, we’re only able to offer this position to US citizens. The position will begin in September.
EDGI is a distributed collaboration operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the non-profit, Public Lab, with volunteer members across North America. EDGI working groups:
- monitor changes to tens of thousands of web pages across federal agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy) to trace how environmental data, information, and their presentation change (this is the project you’ll be working on)
- interview long-time federal employees to provide a human and nuanced perspective on impacts of the current administration on agencies;
- run public campaigns on and analyze environmental, energy, and climate policy and regulation, focusing on changes in agency’s governance of scientific information and data; and
- archive scientific data and web pages from federal agencies, working with partners.
As a Remote Project Manager, you will prioritize and assign design and development tasks, maintain a whole view of the software development project, and coordinate discussion on various communication channels. You will direct volunteer effort effectively and provide partner organizations and other teams within EDGI with a consistent point of contact.
Here are some of the things you’ll do
- Set software development priorities for EDGI’s diverse community of open-source volunteers using protocols of horizontal governance
- Facilitate and participate in group calls and conversations with subgroups, including volunteer analysts, developers, and partner organizations during business and off-peak hours across North American time zones
- Maintain and communicate an overall picture of the project’s direction
- Represent technical concerns and needs to other EDGI working groups and committees
- Represent needs and concerns of other EDGI working groups in technical decision-making
- Ensure EDGI has a reliable process for deploying software updates and responding to emergency issues. This may mean deploying software yourself or making sure others have a reliable process to follow and are willing and signed up to do so
Qualifications and skills we are looking for
- Project management experience
- Experience working within volunteer and/or open source development communities
- Interest in working with a horizontal and collaborative organization that values diversity and respectful online spaces, in line with our Code of Conduct
- Proactivity in organizing, documenting, and communicating effectively with stakeholders
- Good written and verbal communication skills
- Availability to work across North American time zones during business and off-peak hours to support remote volunteer development community (we use Slack and Zoom extensively)
- Ability to balance scalability and long term goals against immediate and concrete needs
- A preference for simple, broadly-understood, and well-tested solutions over complex ones and strong opinions about when to build custom tools
- Experience writing software in at least one of: Ruby on Rails, Python, or JavaScript
- Comfort with git and GitHub
You might also have
- Experience deploying to Heroku, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, or other cloud infrastructure services
- Experience organizing or working on an open-source software project
- Programming skills (in languages specified above) required to fill gaps in volunteer capacity by performing code reviews or contributing code to address high-priority issues
Application Process
Please email us at hiring@envirodatagov.org with:
- CV
- Cover letter outlining why you are a fit for the position
- Short project recap of a problem you solved coordinating a remote team, working on an open-source project, or managing volunteers. We want to know how you thought through it, what didn’t work (not just what did), and what you learned. It should be more than just a short paragraph. If you can express this best in a slide deck, video, or some other format besides writing, that’s ok, too
- Let us know how you heard about this position (which job board, listserv, etc.)
- Please confirm that you are a US citizen
EDGI strives to acknowledge and reduce barriers for members of equity-seeking groups through fair hiring practices in line with Public Lab. We expect everyone to follow our Code of Conduct and principles of friendliness, respect, empathy, and open communication.