UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
UNOCHA, the United Nations office that coordinates the international response to humanitarian crises around the world, is looking for remote Javascript developers at both junior and senior levels to develop the web applications that all humanitarian organisations use to work together to plan, monitor and present their life-saving activities (including the data apps that drive hum-insight.info and fts.unocha.org).
Guided by our tech lead and depending on your skills, experience and strengths you will work on front-end apps built in Angular and React, and our back-end built with Node, PostgreSQL and GraphQL. Our codebase is written in Typescript. On a typical day you might:
– Work on implementing new UI features in an existing app, or a new API data endpoint
– Respond to an urgent request to find and fix a bug causing incorrect data to be saved
– Suggest and implement ways to improve coding practices or use a different approach to solve team challenges
– Review the code in a colleague’s PR
– Participate in meetings with app users at HQ or in the field to troubleshoot technical challenges
– As a senior developer, provide guidance to junior developers to improve code quality
Key outcomes for this role:
– Within 1 month, you have a good overview of our codebase, and begin to complete some smaller tickets.
– Within 2 months, you have a good understanding of the humanitarian activities and users we support and the purpose and functioning of the different apps, and work on larger tickets improving existing apps.
– Within 3-6 months you participate in the planning and design of new apps and take on responsibility for their development and documentation.
– After 12 months, your expertise is counted upon by the entire team to quickly identify the best solutions, proactively propose improvements and anticipate and address issues before they arise.
What we offer:
– A small team of 6-8 developers, led by a tech lead and project manager, with an engaged and tech-savvy field support team guiding development, backed by an excellent infrastructure team.
– The opportunity to work on core tools used by thousands of organizations worldwide, critical to effective humanitarian action and directly supporting donor decisions worth billions of dollars.
– A lot of responsibility and freedom: we trust you to deliver excellent results with little handholding.
– Flexible location and working hours – it’s the results that count.
– 30 days of leave per year, plus statutory holidays and sick leave.
– Occasional fully paid travel to Geneva or Istanbul for design workshops with key users.
– A rolling contract renewed every year – the right team members will stay with us for several years.
Job requirements
Reach out if:
– You like a challenge, can work autonomously, teach yourself new skills quickly and can survive occasional periods of high workload and high stress (e.g. prior to launching a new app)
– You are intelligent, well-organized, and efficient – able to turn around many different tickets quickly without compromising code quality, and to review others’ code
– You have a high attention to detail and ability to adapt to – and suggest improvements to – team-agreed coding standards and approaches
– You communicate well and to-the-point in standups and sprint plannings, and can write clear and concise documentation in good English
– You have proper experience working in a remote team and know that it brings out the best in you
– You have at least 2 years (junior dev) or 5 years (senior dev) of coding experience with Angular, React, Node, GraphQL, PostgreSQL or Typescript and know you can learn the others quickly
– You’re either a full-stack dev, or a front/back-end specialist with the experience and willingness to work on the other end when needed
– You have either a university degree in computer science, software engineering or a related area, or additional years of coding experience beyond the minimum
– The idea of working in the humanitarian world – a non-traditional sector for software development – is a real motivator and not just a short-term sabbatical to ‘give something back’
Your contract
– US$48,000 – $96,000 per year depending on location and seniority.
– International Individual Contractor Agreement administered by UNOPS (The United Nations Office for Project Services) on behalf of OCHA
How to apply
– Send your CV as soon as possible to [email protected] with the subject line ‘Javascript developer position’ and a short cover letter, providing clear evidence for the specific skills and experience we’re looking for, as well as your intended geographic location and salary expectations.
– This job opening will remain open until the right candidates have been chosen. We aim to finish the recruitment process by the end of 2022.