Campaign Technologist 2022

Campaign Technologist (TypeScript and/or Ruby and/or React full stack Developer)

• Salary: £50,000 - £60,000 - mid range developer (to qualify for the top end of our salary range we’d expect substantial experience)
• Location: UK wide, with hubs in London & Edinburgh
• Hours: Full time (40 hours a week)
• Contract: Permanent
• Closing date: 13/05/2022

38 Degrees has a flexible working arrangement, where staff can work remotely or from our office in London. We are open to applicants who would like to work remotely in the UK on a permanent basis.

Applications received for this role are reviewed on a weekly basis and interviews are also held weekly. To be successful in your application you must meet the essential criteria for this role and complete the set tasks which are part of the selection criteria. Without completion of the tasks your application cannot be considered.

About us

38 Degrees is one of the UK’s biggest campaigning communities, involving over 2 million supporters who campaign to make the UK a better place. We’re united by a shared vision to create a fairer and more respectful UK and a more sustainable world.

In the space of a week, millions of supporters could be campaigning on anything from protecting our NHS and stopping cuts to Universal Credit, to saving local green spaces and protecting our democracy.

38 Degrees is fiercely independent. We don’t take donations from political parties, or big donors. We’re run on hundreds of thousands of small donations from the public. This independence means we never have to hold ourselves back from taking on those with power and can truly listen to our supporters.

Why you’ll want to work here

The 38 Degrees culture is honest, kind, supportive, courageous, and respectful. We move fast, and frequently change plans to respond to events. We work hard but we also have fun. We regularly enjoy team away days and social hours.

Benefits include:

• 9-day fortnight (office closed every other Friday, 4pm closure on the alternate Friday)
• 27 days holiday per year (plus bank holidays)
• Office closure between Christmas and New year
• Flexibility to work abroad 90 days per tax year (30 day maximum per travel in any location as per approval process)
• One month paid sabbatical leave after 5 years of service
• Employer pension contribution
• 24 hour employee support line
• Enhanced family leave policies
• Cycle to work scheme
• Free annual flu vaccination
• Rental deposit loan
• Contribution to eye tests/glasses
• Learning and development budget

Application process

To apply for this role you need to:

• Send in your CV
• Complete the two tasks below and send this to us with your application – it shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes in total:

1. Programming exercise (should take 10-15 minutes at most): Please write a Ruby and/or TypeScript programme which will print the numbers 1 to 100 on separate lines, except for if the number is divisible by 3, in which case it should print ‘People’, or if it is divisible by 5, in which case it should print ‘Power’. If the number is divisible by both 3 and 5 then it should print ‘People Power’.
2. Replies to the following should be somewhere between 1 or 2 sentences and 1 or 2 paragraphs:

• Of the projects you’ve previously worked on, which was your favourite, which was your least favourite, and (in each case) why?
• What are the key skills and lessons you’ve learned from them that would help you in this job?
• Describe to a non-technical person what an API does
• What does the proverb “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” mean to you in the context of software development?
• What do you think are the key ethical responsibilities of a software developer

You can apply for this role by emailing your CV and answers to the above questions to [email protected]

Campaign Technologist – What’s the role?

As a Campaign Technologist at 38 Degrees, you will design and build software that helps our supporters and our colleagues campaign to create a fairer and more respectful country and a more sustainable world.

In the last few years we’ve built dozens of new tools, including:

• A custom CRM that holds data on the millions of members who take part in our campaigns
• A second CRM that holds data on MPs and other politicians
• A website that helped hundreds of our members organise their own local picnics and fundraising events to support their local parks
• A tool that guides people through the process of calling their MP to discuss a forthcoming Parliamentary vote

Together with our campaigning staff, we’re always working on ideas for what to build next. You’ll need to communicate and collaborate with people across the whole organisation, and across our sister organisations in other countries around the world, to imagine, design, and build new features and new tools swiftly enough to take advantage of fast-moving political opportunities.

New projects are developed in a Typescript/Express/React stack, and our existing apps are written in Ruby (mostly Rails), use Postgres hosted on AWS RDS for most of our databases, and use Heroku to host most of our web applications. If your previous experience is with a different tech stack but you’d enjoy learning ours next, then we’re still interested in talking to you.

Responsibilities: include the following, (38 Degrees may add, change, or remove responsibilities based on changing priorities):

• The production of significant campaigner and supporter facing features, from initial discussions with stakeholders to final delivery with occasional oversight
• Keeping stakeholders aware of progress and timelines
• Reviewing and feeding back on others code and implementations
• Building and maintaining a ‘full stack’ understanding of our tech systems and their interactions
• Contributing to mission driven improvements to the tech teams ways of working
• Mentoring less experienced staff, with potential for future line management
• Contributing to the support & troubleshooting of the organisation’s day to day operational issues with our inhouse and external systems.
• Engaging with resource and future planning

Key skills/experience:

• Problem analysis and problem solving
• Idea generation
• Project management
• Able to work independently
• Quick to seek help when stuck or uncertain
• Can cope with context-switching to juggle multiple fast-changing projects and priorities
• Able to communicate effectively and work well with a diverse range of non-technical colleagues
• Mentoring or coaching experience of other technologists
• Open-minded and willing to learn new approaches to your role and our culture
• Good experience of commercial web development
• Strong experience with Typescript, ExpressJS & React, Ruby on Rails or another web framework

Desirable:

• Interested in politics/social justice, any experience of political campaigning/activism
• Experience of and willingness to support a culture of honest constructive feedback and challenge
• Exposure to Padrino, Postgres, React, AWS (RDS, Redshift, SES), Heroku

There are no formal education requirements for this role. As long as you can show us you have the skills we don’t mind where you got them from!

38 Degrees is striving to build a team that reflects the diversity of our community of supporters and our locations, and is truly inclusive. We welcome applications from under-represented groups, particularly people of colour, trans and non-binary people, and disabled people. For this role we would also like to strongly encourage applications from women, who are currently slightly underrepresented on our tech team (women are well represented in the rest of the organisation).

Your commitment – You will have a commitment to 38 Degrees’ mission and values and will work as part of our wider team to drive and support change initiatives to achieve a sustainable culture.

Our commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

38 Degrees wants to make democracy work for everyone. That means living up to that mission by having a team that represents our membership and our location, making 38 Degrees a genuinely inclusive space to work. We are currently under-represented by people of colour, trans and non-binary people, older people and disabled people. We welcome applicants from these groups.

38 Degrees is deeply committed to inclusive working practises, so during the application process we commit to:

• Paying for childcare whilst you’re at 38 Degrees interviews or tasks
• Paying for your travel costs to the office and back
• Paying you for any trial days
• Making any reasonable adjustments – for example ensuring we have BSL interpreters organised in advance if you’d like them
• If there anything else you’re concerned about or think we could provide, please let us know