Web Applications Specialist

Reports to: Director, Global Technology Hub (Works closely with the VP, Technology Solutions and Service)
Start date: ASAP
Location: U.S, UK, or France preferred (other locations may be considered)
Type of contract: Permanent
LoE: 100% (full-time)
Salary range: Commensurate with experience

About Internews:

Internews works to ensure access to trusted, quality news and information that empowers people to have a voice in their future and to live healthy, secure, and rewarding lives. We envision a world where everyone can communicate freely with anyone, anywhere, and exchange the news and information they need to shape their communities and the world.

For 35 years and in more than 100 countries, we have worked with our local partners to build hundreds of sustainable organizations, strengthened the capacity of thousands of media professionals, human rights activists, and information entrepreneurs, and reached millions of people with quality, local information, improving lives and building lasting change. On issues ranging from health and the environment to conflict and governance, Internews has developed approaches that harness the power of media and information to create positive change.

Internews is a charity operating internationally, with administrative centres in California, Washington DC, London, and Paris as well as regional hubs in Bangkok and Nairobi. Formed in 1982, Internews currently has offices in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America.

Our commitment to a culture of belonging:

Internews is passionate about our core values and about supporting positive change in the world. We pride ourselves on our commitment to innovation and flexibility. We believe that diverse teams are strong teams, and work to support an ethic of belonging, dignity, and justice for all people. Our current team includes a mix of genders, parents and non-parents, the self-taught, and people of multiple races, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourage candidates of all races, genders, ages, abilities, orientations, ethnicities, and national origins to apply, and actively welcome those with alternative backgrounds and experiences.

About the role:

Internews’ Global Technology Hub and Technology Solutions and services departments are seeking an experienced web applications specialist to join our dynamic organization, supporting a diverse range of online platforms and web development projects, This new and exciting position will lead web projects to help keep trusted information sources online and help drive our commitment to ensuring the organisation maintains and builds upon standards for producing secure, usable websites across the organisation.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Overseeing the technical components of public facing websites, including installations, updates and security patches, search optimization, inclusion of Google and other analytics as needed, external vender coordination, and hosting management, as needed.
• Identifying, benchmarking and incorporating extension modules or plugins for sites to perform new functions, when needed.
• A mix of hands-on website support and overseeing user acceptance testing and quality assurance of externally provided work.
• Develops website standards for the whole organization and ensures all websites are developed and maintained at this new standard.
• Evaluating program and team requests for new Project websites, and managing the process from concept, through build, sign-off and launch.
• Ensuring all sites are maintained, and sun-set when appropriate.
• Support in the writing of RFQs, TORs or other procurement documents for web development and in the short listing and selection of providers.
• Developing with relevant teams a set of standards and best practices for website development and management to be normalized throughout the organisation.

Essential skills and experience:

Candidates should possess 5+ years’ experience in web platform development and support, strong methodological approaches , and the following experience, skillsets or backgrounds:

• Fluent in spoken/written English.
• Excellent writing, documentation and reporting ability.
• Solid understanding of current web landscape and new trends.
• Experience with technical project management including management of partially outsourced projects.
• Experience overseeing and ensuring timely and quality work by small, distributed teams and external providers.
• A strong understanding of the internet’s building blocks: DNS, SSL, IP, etc.
• Comfortable working with HTML, Markdown, css, php, and sql.
• Incorporating 3^rd party services and use of APIs.
• Previous experience in WordPress, Drupal and other php content systems.
• Knowledge of web optimization for performance and speed, SEO, and responsiveness.
• Knowledge of flat-site generation systems (Hugu, Jekyll, etc.)
• Experience in best practices for web platform security/hardening, access control, backups, and recovery.
• Knowledge of secure workflows and practices for development, maintenance and management of online platforms.
• Using anti-DDOS services and other attack-mitigation technologies (Cloudflare, Deflect, etc.).
• Managing hosting environment for website installations and migration.
• Managing domain records.
• Familiarity working with git workflows.
• Comfort working in command line.
• Web development experience, from scope to build to QA and handover.
• Ability to work in team, to plan for flexibility at a program design level, and to handle change.
• Ability to explain complex technical subjects in lay language to less technically experienced people.

Beneficial but not required:

In addition to the above, it may be helpful (but not essential) if candidates have the following:

• Understanding of non-English languages or dialects.
• Fluency in one or more programing languages (Python, Go, etc.).
• Experience developing web platforms for audiences in low-access, low speed environments.
• Understanding or experience in use of hidden services for site mirroring (Tor, i2p, ipfs, webtorrent, etc.)
• Experience or interest in working with charities and NGOs, nonprofits, media, human rights and/or civil society groups.
• Project Management experience.

Application

Candidates must submit a succinct covering letter of no more than 2-pages explaining how they satisfy the requirements of the person speciation in addition to a CV highlighting relevant experience and links to relevant samples of work (Git repositories, online platforms or other recent examples of work). The successful candidate will also be asked to provide three professional referees, one of whom must be from their most recent employer.

Extra submission materials:

Any related writings or other creations or proof of experience and/or skills are helpful, if you have them, but not essential to the application process.

Recruitment timeline:

The above noted job description is not intended to describe, in detail, all the tasks that may be assigned but rather to give the job holder a general sense of the responsibilities and expectations of his/her position. As the nature of business demands change so, too, may the essential functions of this position.

This position can be based in various countries and therefore a successful applicant must be able to demonstrate their right to work in the chosen country and be based there for the full length of employment.