Data Systems Developer
Closes 19th February
We’re looking for a data systems developer to join our small co-operative team.
You will:
- Build and maintain open source tools to help with the preparation, publication, processing and application of open data to unlock its social and political potential;
- Develop and maintain data standards, and data standard extensions, for a range of data standards, including Open Contracting & 360Giving (JSON Schema) and IATI (XML Schema);
- Work as part of the development team to deliver both stable products and rapid prototypes for our partners, and to support key open data standards;
- Engage with growing user communities around data standards;
- Get involved in planning, deploying and testing code and user experience;
- Get involved in the wider work of the co-operative, supporting communities and organisations across the world to understand open data, to publish data using open standards, and to reuse data in accessible, user-centred tools and services
We have a strong commitment to free and open source software, rooted in our co-operative ethics.
A great candidate will be:
- Proactive, motivated and engaged — ready to work independently and as part of a team, prioritising and managing a varied workload, and committed to working on short and long-term projects with a social impact. We’re a distributed team, so you will mostly be remote/home working, with opportunities to travel locally and internationally to work with partners, and for regular team meetings and co-working.
- A team player — excited about the opportunity to be part of building an emerging co-operative, working in a rapidly developing field, and building on and contributing to emerging open technologies.
- A lifelong learner — familiar with many of the technologies we already use, and ready to learn the others. An understanding of the open data landscape and data standards will be helpful, as would experience working on small-to-medium sized collaborative software projects.
Responsibilities:
The core of this role will involve planning, developing and maintaining applications that work with open datasets in a range of formats and standards, and working on the ongoing technical development of those standards.
There are opportunities within this role to get involved in a number of short-term research and development projects: where we help partners to understand the potential of open data through workshops, collaborative work and code.
On a day-to-day basis you will be:
- Writing code;
- Reporting and responding to issues and fixing bugs;
- Deploying software to live, staging and development environments;
- Attending daily stand up meetings to prioritise work for the day;
- Contributing to software development roadmaps;
- Prioritising feature development;
- Clarifying tasks within the team and with clients;
- Working on updates to data standards and schema;
- Monitoring the use of software, using a variety of tools;
- Contributing to team meetings and the growth of the co-operative;
- Programming language & frameworks: Python; Django; Javascript; Bash scripts.
- Version control: Git
- Hosting: Linux; SaltStack; Apache; uwsgi; Server monitoring with Icinga (nagios fork)
- Testing and Continuous Integration: py.test, selenium and Travis CI
- Data formats: JSON, Spreadsheets (including CSV), XML.
- Database technologies: Elasticsearch, Relational databases behind Django’s ORM
- Documentation formats: Markdown; ReStructuredText
We practice agile software development, and work in the open through public issue trackers for many of our projects.
Contractual details
Location: We’re a UK-based distributed team and all work remotely, either from home or co-working spaces around the country. We have regular team meetings and co-working, often in Birmingham, Manchester and London. Current team members are located in or near Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, London, Stroud, Nottingham, Cambridge, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Belfast.
You must have the right to live and work in the UK.
Remuneration & benefits: As a collectively run and owned co-operative, we operate a flat rate of pay for all staff. This is currently set at £37,008 p.a.
Hours and holiday: We welcome opportunities to work out a flexible and family friendly schedule with you. Full time hours are set at 37.5 hours a week with 33 days holiday a year (including bank holidays).
More info about contractual details at https://opendatacoop.forms.fm/data-systems-developer
Restrictions
- Telecommuting is OK
- No Agencies Please
Requirements
We're passionate about how people develop new skills. We welcome people from a diversity of experiences and working history.
We recognise that there are many paths to becoming a competent software developer. We are more interested in demonstrable skills and experience than in qualifications, but if you have them we'd like to hear about them.
With that in mind, we’re looking for the following essential skills, knowledge, and experience:
- Experience developing complex data structures and algorithms;
- Experience of developing in Python or a similar language;
- Data manipulation and management;
- Use of version control tools to manage collaborative development;
- Understanding of open source;
- Ability to work as part of a diverse team: including interacting with clients;
- Strong communication skills: ability to communicate via email, video calls, ticketing systems, and collaborative documents.
- Ability to communicate one to one, in small groups, and meetings and via presentations.
The following skills and experience are desirable. Tell us about any you can bring to the team in your application.:
- Experience working with a large number of the current technologies we work with;
- Experience of working with or providing APIs and/or working with a data standard;
- Experience of software testing and deployment and systems administration;
- Experience of communicating with software users about bugs, upgrades, changes to code;
- Experience with multiple programming languages;
- Prior knowledge of the open data movement and community and/or understanding of open source software and content licensing;
- A demonstrated commitment to co-operative values;
We’re also interested in any other skills or experience that you think would contribute to the life and development of the co-operative.
About the Company
Open Data Services is a growing workers co-operative. We deliver sustainable support for world-changing open data projects, including the Open Contracting Data Standard, the 360Giving open philanthropy initiative and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
We’re an interdisciplinary team, with developers, analysts and researchers working together to create sustainable tools and services that help organisations publish and use open data for social change.
Since we started in 2015 we’ve grown from 4 to 15 members of staff based across the UK, providing family-friendly and flexible working. We’re creating a great place to work, whilst contributing to open data impacts across the world.
Desired Skills
Contact Info
- Contact Name: Ben Webb
- Contact Email: ben.webb@opendataservices.coop
- Company Website: https://opendatacoop.forms.fm
