Amnesty International International Secretariat (AIIS) is looking for a website engineer to support the management and maintenance of the codebase for our primary product, the Humanity WordPress Theme. The postholder will work alongside the Lead Website Engineer, Technical Product Owner and other members of the Website Operations team.

Ideal candidates will bring robust technical delivery skills that can be harnessed to solve complex challenges to ensure that the organisations’ websites are secure, accessible and optimised for performance at scale.

The postholder will contribute code to the project based on priorities listed in the team’s development roadmap. All code must meet the team’s coding standards, as overseen by the Lead Engineer. Work will be delegated and deadlines established based on readiness, organisational need and the postholder’s skillset. The role will also serve as contingency support, providing critical incident response when our lead engineer is unavailable.

This consultancy is  for 52 days over a 6-month period (2 days per week or equivalent), with the possibility of extension.

Objectives and deliverables

• Be on call to respond to critical incidents on our websites, including deploying releases when necessary. On call arrangements will be agreed within the team.
• Work alongside the Website Operations team in delivering new releases as defined by the development roadmap. This roadmap includes:
  • Improving accessibility, security, performance, and other work that enable Amnesty International to optimise its ability to reach new audiences.
  • Enhanced publishing and workflow capabilities in the CMS that will drive an organisation-wide initiative to improve the accessibility of Amnesty International reports, at scale.
  • Major improvements to the multilingual aspects of the websites.

Timeframe

52 days over a 6-month period (2 days per week or equivalent), with the possibility of extension. There is flexibility in the working schedule over this period, which can be determined through the postholder’s availability and in consideration of scheduled work and when Amnesty International require cover arrangements. Working patterns and schedules will be agreed with Technical Product Manager.

Role Requirements

Working arrangements

• English proficiency to a professional level
• Ability to work within standard working hours (GMT/BST). The Website Operations team is primarily remote. Working from the office in London is open to consultants, but optional. The team’s workday start/end times vary, but overall, the team works between 9am and 6pm BST/GMT. Candidates should ideally be able to work with at least 6 hours overlap with the team.
• As a part of our business continuity plan, this role might require occasional out of hours work to respond to critical incidents.

Skills and experience

• Highly experienced full stack developer with both front end and back-end code. Experienced building UI for interactive blocks as well as comfortable working with data, CLI and servers.
• Experience working on or leading large-scale enterprise projects that are scalable and optimised for high traffic websites that perform well underload.
• Able to proactively address technical issues as they arise, and is experienced debugging complex issues such as performance, caching, authentication, translations, queues etc.
• Enthusiasm for Amnesty International’s commitment to human rights, inclusivity and social change.
• Working knowledge of web-server software like Apache and NGINX.
• You should feel comfortable at a Unix command line, even if you aren’t an expert.
• Skills in WordPress engineering with object-oriented PHP and JavaScript (specifically React), HTML, and CSS with experience building Gutenberg blocks.
• Adhering to WordPress coding standards & best practices.
• Experience working in cross-specialised, agile teams to deliver effective and reliable websites.
• Experience maintaining and deploying new features to live websites using a controlled CI/CD workflow.
• Experience in versioning technologies such as Git.
• Ability to debug your own code as well as code from other contributors.
• Ability to architect complex subsystems.
• Commitment to detail-oriented documentation, particularly in the context of large, opensourced projects.
• Working knowledge of automated testing and linting with tools.
• Evidence of a clear approach to maintaining accessibility standards and ensuring that websites meet the WCAG AA standard.

Desirable experience

• Previous experience working with NGOs.
• Experience working in or with ISO2700 / SOC2 certified organisations.
• Experience working with Microsoft SharePoint APIs. Experience with WooCommerce.
• Experience working on custom integrations between WordPress and other systems using APIs.
• Experience working with WordPress multisite installations.
• Experience working with complex information security requirements, such as modified headers and content security policies as well as experience responding to infosec scans and audits.
• Experience with multilingual websites, including languages that use non-Roman scripts (for example, Arabic and Chinese).

Bidding instructions

To bid for this work, please submit the following:

• A short bio, outlining your recent experience (no more than 1 page)
• Relevant case studies
• A detailed breakdown of the fees you would charge for this work

Prices must be given in GBP (Great British Pounds). As standard, payments are made by Amnesty International 30 days after receipt of a valid invoice for the agreed work milestone completed.