Want Your Code To Matter? Come Hack At Ushahidi

Ushahidi
Dec 4, 2013

We are looking for a full-time senior developer to help launch a new project to make crisis data more available to citizens, media, and responders.

david-carbon

What we are looking for:

Experience designing scalable applications. We need an architect, not a code-monkey.

Experience building back-end data management platforms, ideally in Python.

Some experience building front-end data visualizations (D3, etc.).

Independence. Ushahidi operates under a de facto system of commander’s intent. That is, the team agrees upon a goal, but how it is accomplished is left largely up to everyone. Nobody will be leaning over your shoulder telling you what to do everyday, we expect you to be able to do that yourself.

Intrinsically motivated. Ushahidi is based in Nairobi, but team members work all around the world. If you need to come into an office and talk to your boss everyday to stay motivated, this job is not for you. If all you need is a crazy cool project, wifi, great colleagues, and coffee, then you’ll fit right in.

Why the job is awesome:

The code you put down will make a difference in people's lives. We don't work for profit margins, we work for the social good.

We generally don’t care where you live. As long as you have Internet access, live where you want. Ushahidi team members currently live all over the world: from Japan and New Zealand, to Nairobi and San Francisco.

We don’t care when you work. There are no “business hours” at Ushahidi, work whenever it lets you get the most done.

Quality of life. Ushahidi attracts workaholics, so we all work hard to make sure everyone has a work-life balance.

Ushahidi started as an ad-hoc group of Kenyan bloggers hammering out code in a couple of days from various locations, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the 2008 post-election violence in Kenya. In the space of a few weeks over 300 crowd-sourced reports were received and the site had approximately 40,000 hits.

From those grassroots beginnings, Ushahidi is now a non-profit technology company with 501(c)(3) status. We make software to help journalists, governments, humanitarians, civil society groups and others gather, manage, analyze, and visualize crowdsourced data. Our tools have been used by tens of thousands of individuals and organizations fighting for social causes in over 159 countries — whether for monitoring election fraud in Zimbabwe, mapping where help can be found for people caught in a blizzard in Washington DC, or reporting harassment in Egypt.

We believe our place is at the bleeding edge of the fight for social good. Everyone at Ushahidi comes to work here because we know that every day people around the world use the tools we build to improve the lives of millions. In other words, in the fight for a better world, we aren’t 007, we’re Q.

How you can apply:

To apply, send a short note, a resume, and a link to your GitHub page to chris ushahidi com