About Astropy:
The Astropy Project is a community effort to develop a common core package for Astronomy in Python and foster an ecosystem of interoperable astronomy packages. It is a widely used package in professional astronomy supporting missions like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and the Square Kilometer Array. Our community has over 1,200 members with nearly 200 active weekly. The majority of our members are based in the US but many are from around the world. For more about the project goals, please look at our roadmap.
About the Position:
The Astropy Project is seeking to hire a part-time community manager to help grow and foster our diverse community of users, contributors, and developers. This is a new role in the organization offering many opportunities to help build our community and the role itself. As such, a driven and resourceful individual would be best suited for the role. If you are passionate about engagement and equitable open source software communities read on and apply by May 31, 2023.
Key responsibilities of the role:
- Manage and support the existing Astropy Project Community, in consultation with that community.
- Work to grow the Astropy Project community, and identify opportunities for collaboration by establishing relationships with users, especially from underrepresented communities and institutions.
- Track and report engagement activities of the Astropy Project.
- Run surveys to better understand the needs of our community and how to improve participation in our communities for different stakeholders.
- Coordinate review and updates to the Astropy Code of Conduct, in consultation with the Astropy Coordination Committee.
The ideal candidate would have these skills:
- Collaborative attitude.
- Experience with a consensus-driven, geographically-dispersed software development team.
- Ability to develop communication strategies to meet specific goals and reaching different audiences.
- Knowledge of communities who use Github as their primary communication mechanism.
- Demonstrable skills in group facilitation and stakeholder relationships management.
- Knowledge of scientific community engagement techniques.
- Experience and enthusiasm for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
- Strong interpersonal skills.
- Excellent judgment and diplomacy.
- Excellent written and oral communication skills.
Desired Qualifications, but not necessary experiences include:
- Managing forums like Slack and email lists
- Managing social media accounts.
- Experience working with open source projects.
- Organizing in-person meetings of ~20 people.
- Using websites to communicate.
- Experience with building consensus around a code-of-conduct.
- Using surveys to shape strategy.
- Developing strategies to build a user-maintainer-contributor pipeline.
- Organizing in-person software workshops.
- Experience of working with a multicultural, international community.
- Experience moderating online discussion forums, blogging platforms, or similar.
- Event and project management experience.
- Awareness of current trends in academic culture and informal communication channels.
- Experience using Github to communicate, edit documents, or develop software.
Compensation and Term:
The Community Manager is funded by Astropy Project which is managed by NumFocus. The position is for a minimum duration of one year at US$48,000 with a possibility of further extension, depending on the available funding. We envision this role to be ongoing and future contracts to be for longer terms.
How to Apply:
In order to apply, please send a cover letter, one page resume, and a list of 2-3 names and contact information for people who have agreed to serve as a reference to Ana Gabela at angabela@gmail.com with the subject line Community Manager and your last name.
For questions about this position, please contact Ana Gabela at angabela@gmail.com.