Deadline to apply: Sunday 16th October (end of day, all time zones)
Description: At Our World In Data, we are deeply committed to helping the world solve its biggest problems, problems like poverty, hunger, disease and climate change. We believe that data and research are key to making progress on these problems, and are passionate about making this data understandable for decision makers and for the general public, many of whom now rely heavily on our work. To make this data accessible, explorable and sharable, we have developed an in-house toolkit called Grapher which powers both our charts and data explorers.
We are now looking for a Senior Data Visualization Engineer to take on ownership of the Grapher codebase and help bring our data to life on crucial global issues.
Contract type: Contractor (full-time, flexible hours)
Location: Remote (flexible location, core hours are 1-4pm UK time)
How to apply: see instructions below
Interview process: We will thoroughly consider all applicants after the deadline. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to complete an at-home visualization exercise. Advancing candidates will then meet the team for two interviews, one focused on engineering and one focused on data visualization. The successful candidate will receive one final interview with senior leadership, followed by an offer. We aim to conclude all interviews and make an offer about 6-7 weeks after the application deadline.
Compensation: £390–470 per day
- Write code that enhances our data visualization capabilities in Grapher charts and data explorers
- Partner with product & design to set our future direction for data visualization
- Identify and rapidly solve issues relating to data visualization
- Modernise the Grapher codebase into modular components, to improve our developer experience and make more of Grapher reusable
- Make Grapher readily consumable by third-parties, and encourage a community of open source contributors
- Contribute to general excellence in engineering by regularly reflecting on how we can improve, and then taking concrete action
- Data visualization skills and experience (ideally across a range of libraries)
- Frontend engineering skills and experience (Typescript/JavaScript)
- Familiarity with core visualization concepts such as grammar of graphics and perceptual effectiveness
- General data wrangling skills
- Excellent spoken and written communication in English
- Comfortable working remotely and asynchronously with an interdisciplinary team of engineers, designers, data scientists, researchers, and operations managers
- ⚖️ Economic: prioritises the work which will have the biggest payoff for the time and effort involved
- 💡 Resourceful: proactively reaches out to others, notices problems and proposes solutions, rather than waiting for others to notice or solve them
- 🌎 Mission driven: motivated by our mission to unlock the world’s data and help the world tackle its big problems
- 🤝 Team player: collaborates effectively with a diverse, remote team; motivated to help the team as a whole succeed
- You will work in our Engineering Team (~6 people), report to our Head of Engineering, and collaborate regularly with colleagues in our Product & Design and Research teams
- The role is fully remote, meaning you will need a good home workspace or local co-working space
- We have a space in Oxford, UK amongst other philanthropic organisations that it’s possible to regularly visit or hot desk at
- The Engineering Team meets twice weekly, and then informally throughout the week as needed
- You will have the focus time to do your best work
- You will have substantial flexibility around your hours, within a full-time loading
- You will also be part of an additional cross-functional working group that meets weekly
- We have multiple social initiatives in place to foster a sense of community across our remote team — from meeting for virtual “tea” to discussing big ideas to playing games together
- We currently work in three-week planned cycles with one week cooldown (25%) for self-directed work and maintenance
- We aim to meet in person twice a year in offsites, once as an engineering team, and once as a whole organisation
- The overall team at Our World In Data is welcoming, supportive and high trust. We’re bound together by our common mission, and the enjoyment we get from doing excellent work with talented colleagues
- Remote work has allowed Our World in Data to build a team of fascinating individuals from a wide range of countries and backgrounds, a diversity we’d like to nurture and encourage
- We especially welcome applications from candidates whose backgrounds are traditionally underrepresented in engineering
- We believe that non-traditional pathways into engineering work can often be an asset
- Our flexible hours make balancing care and other responsibilities easier to manage than many traditional roles
- If you are excited about this role but are unsure about whether you’re the right fit, we encourage you to apply. We’re also happy to answer any questions by email at jobs@ourworldindata.org
To apply, please put together:
- A CV summarising your skills and experience
- A cover letter (maximum one page) that details the following:
- Why you want to work with us
- Why you think you are the right candidate for the job
- What you think is the most important thing that we should do to improve how we visualize data at Our World In Data
- A short portfolio of past data visualization work
Email them with subject “Senior Data Visualization Engineer” to jobs@ourworldindata.org by the deadline (end of Sun 16th October). In your email please let us know how you heard about the role.
If you intend to apply but likely won’t do so until near the deadline, please send us a very brief email in advance just stating that you intend to apply. This helps us to gauge the number of applications we are likely to receive and to plan accordingly.