Open Knowledge Foundation 
Why work for us?
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a multi-award winning community-based, not-for-profit organisation. The Foundation now has projects and partnerships throughout the world and is especially active in Europe. We build tools and communities to create, use and share open knowledge – content and data that everyone can use, share and build on. We believe that by creating an open knowledge commons and developing tools and communities around this we can make a significant contribution to improving governance, research and the economy.
We’re changing the world by promoting a global shift towards more open ways of working in government, arts, sciences and much more. We don’t just talk about ideas, we deliver extraordinary software, events and publications.
Our community stretches around the world. The Foundation’s operations are centered on London, Cambridge and Berlin. We have formally established chapters in Germany and Austria and affiliated local groups in many more countries. We have a board of directors, an advisory board and a great team. Everything and more is explained in our FAQ.
As part of the OKFN you’ll meet incredible people, work on cutting edge projects and learn new things every day. Read on for open positions.
Current Opportunities
The following roles are open – we also accept speculative applications but cannot guarantee that we’ll respond to speculative applications or have any appropriate role available for you.
Front end web developer – role description
We’re looking to hire a front end web developer to join the team at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re a small group working on a fantastic set of open-source products and services that help people create, use and share open information and data.
You’ll be able to play a leading role in creating and shaping the functionality and user experience of several of our major projects including:
The Data Hub and the associated opensource CKAN software (Github Repo) – tools that make it easy to publish, share and use data. CKAN powers, Data.Gov.UK, the IATI Registry and several other government and community data sites around the world.
OpenSpending – aiming to track every government and corporate financial transaction across the world and present it in useful and engaging forms for everyone from a school-child to a data geek. Spending Stories, which is part of the OpenSpending project was one of the winners of the 2011 Knight News Challenge.
The Annotator (Github Repo) – an open-source JavaScript library and tool that make the web annotatable. Add it to any web page in seconds or boot a bookmarklet to annotate anytime, anywhere. Annotations can have comments, tags, users and more and the Annotator is designed for easy extensibility so its a cinch to add a new feature or behaviour.
As a front end developer you’ll be excited to work in open data on a range of open source projects, including some which are already being widely used around the world.
You’re keen for the chance to create the overall user experience of a whole product, implementing everything from navigation and information architecture to the UI on individual features and look of the site.
Responsibilities
- Defining, architecting and building usable and beautiful front end code in our open source projects
- Helping to architect the user interface of new and existing features
Experience
- Required: Excellent JavaScript (plus jQuery), CSS, HTML skills
- Required: Experience creating front end systems for rich internet applications
- Required: Able to finish code – and take pleasure in seeing it deployed and used
- Desirable: Experience with frameworks eg. Backbone
- Desirable: Interest in open data and open knowledge
- Nice to have: Some familiarity with coffeescript, node.js
- Nice to have: UX experience in all its infinite variety
Other Info
We are flexible on employee versus contractor but we normally offer contract.
For more information, contact: jobs [@] okfn.org
To apply: send us an email (please mention Front End Web Developer in the subject line) to jobs [@] okfn.org. Things we would like to see: examples of recent work plus code on github or similar and a current CV. You can also, optionally, include in your email a “cover letter” giving insight on what you like doing, what you are good at, and why you want to work with us.
Data Visualization Developer
What we do
OpenSpending is about mapping the money. We want to make government finances accessible to advocates, journalists and citizens. Our goal is to collect budgeting information from across the world and to present it in a form that promotes understanding, analysis and participation. Some of the questions we ask are:
- How much is government spending on health? Is expenditure growing or shrinking? How does this translate into results?
- What are the proportions of different government programmes? What is spending on prisons compared to schools? How much is Ghana spending on education compared to Nigeria?
- How much tax do I pay into which area of government?
Our day-to-day work has many facets: working on the core platform, journalistic projects as part of our Knight News Challenge 2011 winning entry “Spending Stories”, and working with organizations and civic activists world-wide to set up local budget transparency projects.
What we need you for
You’ll help us to create new visualizations to answer spending questions through meaningful, visual narration.
Skills we’re looking for:
- Strong visual design skills
- HTML5 / Javascript visualisation experience
- Familiarity with several visualization toolkits (e.g. D3, Raphael)
- Experience with cross-browser compatibility
- Plus (but optional): Knowledge of Python
Basically: send us some demos of good stuff you’ve done.
How we work
The OpenSpending team works as a distributed group, based in Cambridge (GB) and Berlin (DE). If you happen to be in one of these places, that’s great, and we’d hope to meet you regularly during work hours. Location isn’t critical though and you can work remotely from wherever you choose – we coordinate through Skype, IRC and our mailing list.
More information & how to apply
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a multi-award winning, community-based, not-for-profit organisation. The Foundation now has projects and partnerships throughout the world and is especially active in Europe. We build tools and communities to create, use and share open knowledge – content and data that everyone can use, share and build on. We believe that by creating an open knowledge commons, and developing tools and communities around this, we can make a significant contribution to improving governance, research and the economy.
We’re changing the world by promoting a global shift towards more open ways of working in government, arts, sciences and much more. We don’t just talk about ideas, we deliver extraordinary software, events and publications.
We are flexible on employee versus contractor but we normally offer contract.
For more information, contact: jobs [@] okfn.org
Or to apply: send some demos to jobs [@] okfn.org
Data Wrangler
At the Open Knowledge Foundation, we seek to make data – whether cultural, political or economic – accessible and comprehensible to a wider public. Our projects include:
- The School of Data – a joint intiative with the Peer 2 Peer University, to teach data ‘wrangling’ skills (the ability to find, retrieve, clean, manipulate, analyse, and represent different types of data) to both a technical and non-technical audience.
- Coming soon a new Data Blog – a blog associated with the DataHub, to explore the issues and practicalities of open data.
- Open Spending – a project to collect, analyze and visualize government financial information from around the world.
- Open Economics – a working group developing new economic indexes, based on openly available sets of indicators.
We also provide consultancy to advocacy groups and journalists who work with data to tell more compelling stories with evidence.
What we need you for
We’re looking for a data wrangler who is excited to tell stories through data, independently of whether they come from a coding, visualization, journalistic or statistical background. You will work on various datasets to understand them and to tell their story to a broader audience. You will also be involved in training efforts, creating and teaching courses in data analysis to technical and non-technical audiences.
You’ll be involved with developing content for the School of Data courses, carrying out independent research for the new data blog, and together with our other projects, such as the Working Group on Open Economics (open-economics.net) and the OpenSpending (openspending.org) project.
Skills we’re looking for:
- Experience in data analysis and statistical methods
- Experience with data cleansing, ETL patterns
- Good written communication skills
- Experience with R/Stata/SPSS
- Coding skill in a modern script language, e.g. Python, Javascript.
- Basic skills in information/data visualization
- Energy, enthusiasm, and a willingness to be creative and flexible
How we work
The OKFN team works as a distributed group, with bases in Cambridge (GB), London (GB) and Berlin (DE). If you happen to be in one of these places, that’s great, and we’d hope to meet you regularly during work hours. Location isn’t critical though and you can work remotely from where ever you choose – we coordinate through Skype, IRC and our mailing list.
More information & how to apply
The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) is a award-winning community-based, not-for-profit organisation. The Foundation now has projects and partnerships throughout the world and is especially active in Europe. We build tools and communities to create, use and share open knowledge – content and data that everyone can use, share and build on. We believe that by helping to create an open knowledge commons we can make a significant contribution to improving governance, research and the economy.
We’re changing the world by promoting a global shift towards more open ways of working in government, arts, sciences and much more. We don’t just talk about ideas, we deliver extraordinary software, events and publications. We are flexible on employee versus contractor but we normally contract.
For more information, contact: jobs [@] okfn.org. To apply: please send a CV and covering letter/email to jobs [@] okfn.org, highlighting your skills and relevant experience.
Speculative Applications
Vacancies are continually arising and we will happily accept speculative applications on a rolling basis. Examples of the type of roles we often hire for and how to apply can be found below. Please note that we may not always acknowledge speculative applications.
| Role | Job Description | How to apply |
|---|---|---|
| Community Coordinator | Community Coordinator Job Description | Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs [at] okfn.org. Bonus points if you send us a link to a 30 second video about an aspect of Open Knowledge that you believe to be important. |
| Python Web Developer | Python Web Developer Job Description | Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs [at] okfn.org & put david.raznick [at] okfn.org in Cc. |
| Designer / Developer with UX Skills | Designer Job Description | Please send a CV and cover letter with recent examples of your work to jobs [at] okfn.org. If you are looking to work on a specific project, sending some notes on how you improve the user experience on that project would be a bonus. |
| Project Manager | Various projects | Please send a CV and cover letter to jobs [at] okfn.org |
About our projects
Vacancies regularly appear for our two largest projects
| Project | Website | About |
|---|---|---|
| CKAN / theDataHub | Blog: | CKAN is a registry or catalogue system for datasets or other “knowledge” resources. CKAN aims to make it easy to find, share and reuse open content and data, especially in ways that are machine automatable. CKAN is currently being used to power the UK Government’s open data portal: data.gov.uk, publicdata.eu as well as numerous other data portals around the world. CKAN is a web-application written in python using a relational DB. It utilizes components such as Pylons webapp framework, SQLAlchemy ORM, Postgresql database, Solr index, and Rabbitmq messaging system. |
| OpenSpending | OpenSpending is mapping the money. Our aim is to track every government and corporate financial transaction across the world and present it in useful and engaging forms for everyone from a school-child to a data geek. We’re an open community that anyone is invited to join! |
Generic Role Profiles
Project Manager Job Description
The project manager will:
- Represent the project at meetings with partners and clients
- Manage the project team, keeping in touch with developers and the wider community
- Plan iterations with developers of project work and handle reporting (and track issues)
- Ensure project documents are complete, current, and stored appropriately
- Communicate project progress to partners and clients as well as the OKF community and wider public
- Manage project budgets
- Track team hours and expenses
Person Specification
The OKFN is a rapidly-expanding, radically-thinking group of people passionate about open data and collaborative working. You are:
- A leader who is both motivated and motivational
- Excellent at methodical multi-tasking
- Quick to identify consequences and cost appropriately
- Aware of the potential of inter-project dependencies
- Particular about communicating with clients and colleagues
- Keen to engage interested parties
- In pursuit of better ways of working
- Some technical knowledge/experience required for current roles.
Experience with coding (especially with web-applications and relational databases) would be a plus but not required.
Community Coordinator Job Description
Someone highly articulate, enthusiastic and energetic who is willing to travel. While familiarity with email, blogs and Twitter is desirable, no specific technical knowledge is required. Being able to learn quickly, converse intelligently and evangelise convincingly are much more important than any detailed background knowledge about open knowledge and open data policies.
Duties are negotiable, but projected to include things like:
- Representing the Open Knowledge Foundation and its various projects and activities at events around the world
- Expanding and strengthening the open knowledge community around the world – including public officials, civic society organisations, developers, data journalists and others
- Organising and facilitating events, workshops and meetings about open knowledge – bringing together key stakeholders from different areas
- Following key developments on mailing lists, blogs and Twitter – and inviting people and organisations to participate in relevant projects, activities and events
- Blogging about open knowledge around the world – and soliciting for guest blog posts from key stakeholders
- Connecting people, groups and projects with common interests – and encouraging them to collaborate
- Promoting key principles and values in the open knowledge community. Such as legal/technical standards for open data (e.g. ), and the importance of open source tools and infrastructure.
- Building the OKF around the world – including helping to set up and encourage others to set up local groups and chapters as well as media relations.
- Doing unexpected stuff spontaneously – like helping to organise something you’ve never done before, to connect people that you’ve never met before, or to pitch something you’ve never thought of before
Person specification
Self-driven, organised and a good communicator.
Comfortable running a number of projects at the same time, speaking at events and travelling – sometimes at short notice.
Python Web Developer Job Description
The OKF is looking for Python web developers interested in open data to work on CKAN.
CKAN is a web-based product built in Python using SQLAlchemy, Pylons and other libraries. It allows users to submit, search for and find open datasets. As well as powering The Data Hub, CKAN is the catalogue behind the UK Government’s high profile data.gov.uk website and the European Union’s Public Data site. It also powers over 20 other catalogues around the world including those in Norway, Holland and Finland, with more on the way.
If you are a really good web developer with a keen interest in open data, and enjoy working in Python on open source products, we’d love to hear from you. As well as CKAN and depending on your skills you might also like to work on:
- The WebStore – our SQLite based solution for allowing people to process data online and plot the results
- The DataHub – our public catalogue which will include more social features
- Geospatial features – such as plotting data on maps, and harvesting geospatial data from other sources
- Drupal integration
Requirements
Essential:
- Web app development experience in python (experience with SQLAlchemy, Pylons, Flask highly desirable)
- PostgreSQL
- Linux (preferably Ubuntu)
- Enthusiasm about open data and open knowledge
Bonus points for any of these (not essential though):
- Drupal
- Geo-spatial work (OpenLayers, OGC standards, CSW servers, WMS servers etc)
- Experience with agile methods
- Sysadmin or Devops skills
- Debian packaging skills
- Redis, Solr, RabbitMQ
- Semantic web/RDF
- Expert JavaScript, jQuery and CSS
We are looking to hire solid developers, particularly those who take pleasure in finishing code and seeing it deployed.
Other Info
We are flexible on employee versus contractor but we normally contract.
Telecommuting London preferred but telecommuting OK (we have teams in Edinburgh, Berlin and elsewhere) but you must be available to participate in CKAN core meetings 10:30am UK time every Monday.
Designer / Developer with UX Skills Job Description
We’re looking to hire a Designer / Developer with UX skills to join the CKAN team at the Open Knowledge Foundation. We’re a small group working on a fantastic product that enables communities and open governments to share and manage data.
CKAN is the leading open source data hub software that powers several govenrment sites including the UK government’s open data portaland community hubs such as the. With lots of powerful functionality for cataloging and managing data our next focus is on creating a better user experience for the CKAN functionality.
About the role
You’ll be our first dedicated front end designer / developer. Ideally, you’ll be excited to work in open data on an open source project which is being widely used.
You’re keen for the chance to direct the overall user experience of a whole product, overseeing everything from navigation and information architecture to the UI on individual features and look of the site.
You’ll help us to collect, understand and implement user feedback to help data wranglers and publishers become more productive using CKAN.
Responsibilities
- Own the look and feel of CKAN product and the instance
- Create the user interface of new features as well as upgrading old ones (producing mockups and designs then implementing using HTML/CSS)
- Improve the information architecture and user flows through the site
- Assist in theming of new CKAN instances
- Consult on creating personalised themes for clients
Experience
- Required: Great JavaScript, CSS, HTML, JQuery skills
- Required: Development of information architecture and user experience (UX) for webapps
Desirable: Graphic design skills (e.g. Photoshop etc)
