Volunteer Software Developer Positions for Climate Action Web Platform
Are you a software development professional who also feels urgency about taking action on climate change? Here’s a way you can make a crucial difference by contributing your special knowledge and skills. MassEnergize.org’s flagship offering is a customizable web platform to support community engagement and track reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, we are working with 14 communities in Boston MetroWest and Western Massachusetts, with plans to expand to many more. We are seeking volunteers with software development experience who can help us respond to enhancement requests from participating communities. In addition to gaining personal satisfaction from taking action on climate change, you may benefit by learning new technologies and expanding your career potential.
Background on Our Web Platform:
Our web platform is designed to be mobile-friendly and highly customizable by community groups for them to tailor action and event content to their specific needs. The site is implemented as a Python back-end API using Django, and a React Javascript front-end for the community sites and a separate admin interface. The back-end includes a Postgres database, and a carbon calculator to estimate the impacts of different actions. The projects are maintained on GitHub as open-source, with the goal of easily making use of outside developers.
How You Can Contribute:
There are many ways you can contribute, including fixing bugs, adding features, improving automated testing to manual testing, and reviewing changes by other developers. It all depends on your experience and time commitment. We’d love to have you grow all the way from fixing bugs to comprehensive knowledge of our codebase.
Desirable Skills
- Python (Django framework) and Javascript (React.js) coding
- GitHub
- postgres database
- Familiar with web UI design and/or implementation
- Familiar with agile development methodology
- Familiar with web security considerations
How to Get Involved:
Please email info@massenergize.org expressing your interest and a summary of your software development experience. One of our core-team volunteers will get in touch to discuss more about our organization and this volunteer opportunity. Then we’ll connect you with our lead developer to learn more about the codebase, development environment, and development methodology. We hope you’ll choose to contribute!
About MassEnergize.org
MassEnergize is a volunteer-led non-profit that provides community leaders with tools and support to motivate their residents, businesses and local organizations to take individual and collective action to lower emissions, build community, and improve local resilience. The climate emergency is here and we must be visible and vocal in our actions to respond. While a growing percentage of Americans believe that climate change is real and demand a response, many feel that the actions they have the most control over, their household actions, don’t make a difference. This is a deep individual disempowerment and a missed opportunity for collective action. In most communities, residential actions account for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Household-level climate action, propelled at scale, is critical if we hope to meet our climate goals and address our systemic inequalities. Local leaders are in a position to deeply change and empower their communities, but they struggle through lack of effective and affordable engagement tools.
MassEnergize does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion (creed), gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations.