Write.as has reached a good spot where we’d now like to start hiring developers to help drive WriteFreely (and its ecosystem) forward. This would be remote, contract-based work for now, with a chance to go full-time later in the year (assuming all continues going well).
This is a great chance to work on a rapidly-growing open source project that helps advance digital privacy, the fediverse, and the open web. As an early collaborator, you’ll see and play a crucial part in how we grow, not just as an open source project but as an economically sustainable one. Your work will be used by tens of thousands of people around the world, on both Write.as and the 100+ other WriteFreely instances running on the web today.
What you’ll do
In this position, you’ll work closely with me, other developers, and the wider community to develop our open source projects – from the WriteFreely web application (front- and back-end) to client libraries and command-line utilities. All of your work will be open source; much of it will be written in Go (golang).
Besides taking ownership of and developing features on our roadmap, you’ll collaborate with other developers and users on our Phabricator instance and this forum. You’ll respond to bug reports on GitHub related to tasks you’ve worked on, and lend your knowledge to help build this robust, federated publishing platform.
Beyond that, you’ll have a chance to learn about the product, business, and marketing side of things, and to help influence it all – if that interests you. In the long-term, we’ll be looking for individuals interested in these aspects as much as the technical ones.
Requirements
We’re looking for engineers with:
- Experience developing and deploying web applications
- Proficiency with CSS and semantic HTML
- Experience with relational databases (particularly MySQL, SQLite)
- Good self-motivation; comfortable setting and meeting deadlines
- A strong command of English; comfortable communicating clearly and professionally in public (digital) spaces
Though not required, we’d particularly like to hire someone with:
- Expertise in Go (golang) and plain, modern Javascript
- Knowledge of UI, UX, and accessibility best practices
- Good git habits (granular commits, descriptive commit messages)
- Experience with ActivityPub / the fediverse
- Experience contributing to open source projects
How to apply
To apply, head to our application and fill out the form. You can include your resume either as an attached file or a URL (if you have a website). We’d especially love to see your past work, whether as finished products or code.
Once we receive your application, if you seem to be a good fit for the role, we’ll set up a time to chat. This will be a chance for us to ask questions and get to know each other a little better. From our side, we’ll want to know which problems you’re interested in working on, your availability, and how you’d like to be paid – i.e. per-task or hourly, and what those rates would be.
If everything goes well, we’ll get you set up with our project tools and give you everything you need to get started!
Feel free to post any questions, if you have them!