Open Source Lead

CarbonPlan is a nonprofit research organization working on improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions with open data and tools. Our team analyzes the design and implementation of climate programs across the public and private sector. Our work focuses on three program areas: carbon offsets, carbon removal, and climate risks. In all three areas, we create public resources on climate solutions based on the best available science and data. You can read more about our work on our website.

Job announcement

The Open Source team at CarbonPlan uses software and data to advance climate action goals. The team lead's primary responsibility is to design and implement open source software engineering and data science solutions that support the organization’s program and policy work. The lead oversees our software development environment, plays a key role in setting our priorities for open source software, and establishes best practices for data management, data sharing, licensing, and reproducibility. This role also includes making contributions to climate-related open source ecosystems, through both existing grant-funded projects and, if interested, through pursuing new opportunities. The Open Source Lead reports to the Deputy Director and works closely with our Product team and researchers. If you are passionate about open source software, data engineering, and working on climate change, please apply!

You will:

• Provide technical leadership and hands-on collaboration to ensure all team members can execute on both simple and more ambitious projects involving data and software (browse our research work, data releases, and software documentation for examples).
• Design and manage best practices for a software stack built around scientific Python, cloud computing, cloud data storage (currently on Azure, AWS, and Google), and the Pangeo tool ecosystem (e.g., Jupyter, Zarr, Xarray, etc.); and for software that supports our web tools, including databases and REST APIs. 
• Manage and mentor a small team of software and data engineers. 
• Communicate, with support from our editorial team, our approaches to open source software through blog posts, podcasts, op-eds, etc., and act as a leader in the community advocating for open science practices.
• Identify opportunities for creating and contributing to the development of open source tools that are useful for our program work and also useful to the broader open source and climate research community (see, for example, our work on web-based mapping tools).
• Manage software development projects built in collaboration with external partners.
• As interest and time allows, identify and help pursue new grant-funded opportunities to contribute to open source and open science efforts relevant to climate research or the earth sciences (e.g., new libraries, formats, standards, etc.).

Requirements

You should have:

• Passion for our mission.
• 6+ years using scientific computing or related tools (in either a research or software setting).
• Experience using scientific Python, managing cloud computing infrastructure, building databases and REST APIs, and using and contributing to open source ecosystems.
• A portfolio of relevant open source software projects, publications, etc.
• Experience as a project and people manager.
• Experience as a leader in open source communities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Enthusiasm for hands-on coding and implementation work, as well as for leadership and management.
• Experience working in highly collaborative and cross-functional environments.

You'll be an especially good fit if you have:

• Scientific training and knowledge (especially if related to climate sciences, geospatial analysis, earth sciences, or a related domain).
• Experience in academic research environments or experience collaborating with researchers. 
• Experience and/or interest in applying for and securing grant funding for open source software development.
• Experience with technical writing.
• Experience with privacy, cybersecurity, and licensing policies. 

You should include in your application:

• A link to your portfolio (GitHub, website, technical blog, etc.),
• Your Resume / CV, and
• Please provide answers to each of the following questions:
• What excites you about working at CarbonPlan, and about this specific position?    
• Discuss relevant experience working with open source software, Python, database and REST API design, and cloud infrastructure.
• Discuss relevant experience with project and people management.
• At CarbonPlan, we value the diversity of experiences and perspectives in climate work. What life experiences and perspectives would you bring to this team in that regard?

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every qualification as listed. We understand that not all strong candidates will have every qualification, and we value a variety of experiences and skills. Research shows that people from marginalized or historically underrepresented groups may be more prone to doubting their candidacy. We urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to apply if you're interested in this role. Climate change affects everyone, but not equally. We believe that collaboration among diverse perspectives is essential to developing and implementing effective climate solutions. As an organization, we aspire to continue to broaden the range of perspectives on our team and foster an inclusive environment where all voices are heard. 

We are committed to providing an accessible work environment. If you need accommodations during the application process, please let us know.

Benefits

We are committed to providing competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits to our employees. We offer fixed salary levels based on experience and role to minimize biases in compensation and to ensure team members are paid the same for doing the same work. Employees are eligible for promotion every six months at the time of their performance review. 

This is a regular, full-time position, with an annual salary of $165,000. In addition to salary, we offer a comprehensive set of benefits to all full-time employees:

• Health insurance (99% of costs covered for employees, 75% for dependents)
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Flexible health spending accounts
• Dependent care spending accounts
• Life insurance
• 401(k) retirement fund with employer contribution
• Generous paid time off policy
• 16 weeks paid parental leave
• Remote work expense reimbursements

We are not currently able to sponsor a visa for this position, and therefore can only consider applications from people who are already authorized to work in the United States. We work remotely. The hiring manager for this role is in New York City. Remote work from any location in the US works for us.