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Senior Technical Lead

Reports to: Director, Technology Innovation

Contract Terms: 40 hrs. Monday - Friday. Schedule flexible; with a minimum of 3-4 hours overlap with US East Coast business hours required; Employee 1 yr. Initial contract

Travel: Up to 20% international, including to HOT field project locations

Estimated Start Date: July 31, 2020

Work Location: Remote

About HOT

Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a US-based NGO and global community of thousands of volunteers working together to use maps and open data for humanitarian response and the Sustainable Development Goals. As the world’s preeminent participatory mapping NGO, HOT has fostered a global mapping community composed of more than 200,000 people with ground operations in eight countries. When major disaster strikes anywhere in the world, HOT rallies this global network to create the maps and data that enable responders to reach those in need.

About the Role

HOT’s Senior Technical Lead will serve the organisation through the technical leadership of the implementation of HOT’s technology strategy. Reporting to the Director of Technology & Innovation, The Senior Technical Lead guides the technical team to ensure seamless operation and evolution of HOT’s open-source software tools and workflows, to ensure they effectively meet the needs of HOT’s community of users and support our vision of enabling every person to contribute to a collective map of our world. The Senior Technical Lead will advance HOT’s mission by operationalizing the HOT_Tech core ethics:

  • Human: Our Human ethic is our commitment to people as our priority. At the centre of all our technology sits a human. The ultimate purpose of our technology is to improve human conditions. We use technology to enable and amplify human efforts.

  • Open: Our Open ethic permeates all we do. Our actions reflect radical openness and transparency. We encourage open inputs and outputs. Our team and technology openly welcomes and engages community, collaboration and contribution.

  • Team: Our Team ethic reflects our loyalty to our people. We support them at personal and professional levels. We invest in their well-being and their growth. We provide security and stability. When our people thrive, so do we. HOT_Tech Principles > Can be found here

The Senior Technical Lead will remotely manage an expanding team of up to 15 staff members including engineers, designers, and agile development teams across multiple time zones. This team is responsible for the development, maintenance, and support of 10 open source apps and tools that enable collaborative editing, analysis, and visualization around OpenStreetMap. These tools are relied upon by dozens of humanitarian and development sector partners including UN agencies, the World Bank, Red Cross societies, Médecins Sans Frontières and other NGOs. In line with HOT’s Strategic Plan, the Senior Technical Lead will have a significant role in advancing the t20 // HOT_Tech strategy for the organization, community of volunteers, and partner organizations relying on HOT tools. This includes dramatically scaling the quantity and quality of data produced by the HOT network through the introduction of machine learning and shifting toward mobile-first workflows as we aim to map an area home to 1 billion people over the next three years. To succeed in this role, the Senior Technical Lead will work closely with the Director of Technology and Innovation, the HOT field programs and community teams, remotely and with occasional travel to HOT program locations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Responsibilities and Priority Areas for Action

  • Strategic Input and Implementation: With a vision to expand HOT’s global impact, a new HOT technology strategy is currently in development. The Senior Technical Lead will be integral in making technical inputs to this strategy to bring together the needs and requests of the HOT and OSM communities with the goals of the strategy and the broader organisation. Once the strategy has been finalised through an open community feedback process, the Senior Technical Lead will be responsible for the successful implementation and evolution of the technical aspects of this strategy.
  • Staff Leadership: The Senior Technical Lead will be responsible for identifying and expanding the current team’s resources. This includes hiring and training new staff and ensuring a strong and welcoming team culture. The Senior Technical Lead should also be connected to sector developments and best practices to ensure HOT is well established in the current ecosystem and prepared for future changes.
  • Improvement of Technology Process: HOT as an organisation and the bootstrapped tech team has experienced significant success and growth in recent years. As a result, the team has not had the capacity to evaluate, develop and implement foundational processes. The Senior Technical Lead will bring their expertise to identifying and prioritising processes that will improve the technical team’s ability to operate effectively and consistently.
  • Product Evolution: Implementing the HOT_Tech Strategy, work with our community, product owners and stakeholders to ensure the products are developed and evolved in a way that reflect common goals, interests and open source principles. Additionally the Senior Technical Lead should ensure testing feedback is effectively incorporated into product backlogs and stakeholders are clear of how feedback is handled.
  • Monitoring and Evaluation: The Senior Technical Lead would ensure that sufficient process is in place to forecast, monitor and correct new and ongoing projects. The Senior Technical Lead will ensure that projects are delivered on time and on budget or be able to communicate and manage stakeholder expectations where deviations may occur.
  • Standards: Ensure that all products developed meet a minimum standard for quality code and open source product development practices. Products should also meet all requirements of HOT and OpenStreetMap codes of conducts and should promote inclusive design and digital development principles.
  • Community Contributions: The Senior Technical Lead should work with the tech team to ensure that HOT products and ecosystem are conducive to volunteer contributors. The Senior Technical Lead should have some experience with open source community management or contributions.
  • Fundraising/Finances: Develop and manage budgets that align with HOT_Tech global budgets. The Senior Technical Lead will also support technical inputs for potential funding opportunities that could extend the work and achievements of the HOT_Tech team. The Senior Technical Lead will also be responsible for managing the specific technology aspects of grant funded budgets implementations.
  • Infrastructure, Integration and Interoperability: The Senior Technical Lead will be responsible for ensuring that HOT products have a sound technical infrastructure and are compatible with OpenStreetMap standard tools and technologies. The ecosystem will support the ambitions of the organisation and also extend to supporting the objectives of OSMF and the OSM ecosystem.
  • Responsible, Open, Secure and Useable data: The Senior Technical Lead will uphold key tenets of Open Responsible and Open Data. They will contribute technical inputs to the HOT data and product architecture to ensure these standards and principles in all aspects of the design and implementation of HOT_Tech products.

About You

We are seeking a senior open source technologist with demonstrated experience leading open source technology development, community development, and product evolution. The Senior Technical Lead will be able to support individual and team growth through leadership and mentorship to an enthusiastic and rapidly growing team. Furthermore, you will be a great community facilitator that can draw out the needs and desires of a wider open source community including individual members, NGOs, private sector partners and multi sector donors. We envision the best candidate for this role will:

Qualifications & Experience

  • Possess 10+ years of relevant experience with 5+ years leading and managing technology teams.

  • Have demonstrated experience of translating and implementing organisational strategy to an operational and measurable

  • Have over five years of experience leading, working in or contributing to an open source project.

  • Have a minimum of 2 years experience working with the OpenStreetMap community and any associated OSM tools.

  • Have over five (5) years experience leading technical software teams including engineers, designers, agile development teams and others.

  • Have experience working in international humanitarian or development agencies/NGOs with a preference for geospatial sector experience/familiarity.

  • Be fluent in working in a fully or partially remote work environment, including management of diverse, geographically distributed teams and managing staff across multiple timezones.

  • Share an optimistic vision of our future tech, co-create and refine that vision with our network, and lead our community toward the end goal without acquiescing to roadblocks.

  • Have experience implementing projects in the $500k - $1m USD or greater range, including budget development, allocation and acquittal.

  • Bachelor’s degree in engineering, computer science or related field, or equivalent work experience

  • Masters degree preferred.

Role Specific Skills

  • Be able to convene and motivate others to deliver on open source projects, including a community composed of a mix of paid and volunteer developers and private sector tech partners providing in-kind developer hours.

  • Be driven by compassion, humanitarian ethics, and a sense of humor.

  • Demonstrated success in managing agile software engineering teams deploying solutions to support complex organizational processes

  • Passion for open source mobile-first solutions and appropriate technology that is user centric and built in and for constrained contexts.

  • Utilize strong verbal and written communication to articulate complex concepts across varied audiences to build consensus and lead change.

  • Speak and write English fluently; French or Spanish in addition to English are preferred

Compensation

All HOT salaries globally are set according to a framework detailed on our website. HOT offers a work-from-anywhere culture, flexible working arrangements, a variety of health care options, 401k retirement savings plans, and 24 days of annual leave for all full-time employees.

To Apply:

Please complete the linked form by July 10, 2020. Continue to the second page to upload your CV/resume. Your CV/resume should not exceed 2 pages.