IT/Web Development - Research Development, Geneva

Closing date: Sunday, 1 March 2015

Vacancy Announcement - Individual Contractor - IT / Web Development

Unit/Department: UNOSAT / Research Department

Type of contract: Individual Contractor (IC)

Deadline for applications: 1 March 2015

Duration: 3 months (possibility of extension)

Remuneration: $5000 USD / month

Background

Citizen Cyberlab (CC) is a three year project funded by the European Commission 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development ICT Call 8 (FP7-ICT-2011-8). CC will research and evaluate on-line collaborative environments and software tools that stimulate creative learning in the context of Citizen Cyberscience. CC is a collaborative project involving multiple institutions with UNOSAT's component designed to assist the disaster preparedness, disaster response, and humanitarian communities in converting social media content into useful data products.

General Objectives of the Contract

To achieve this goal UNOSAT is seeking an individual contractor programmer to support the development of projects on the Geotag-X platform (geotagx.org) by developing and maintaining the website, building and updating modules, and incorporate new functionality to the platform and modules as requested. The developer will also work with project partners to ensure monitoring and analytics tools are successfully integrated into the system

Responsibilities/Description of Professional Services

The individual contractor will:

• Support development of projects by fixing and implementing functionality in the task presenter as required
• Enable project template/s
• Incorporate monitoring and evaluation tools as requested including:
  • Monitoring code written by project partners.
  • Embed Limesurvey system provided by partners.
  • Contribute to writing monitoring and analytics code as required.
• Support the development of new projects by creating new applications on the platform according to provided specifications, and participating in meetings with volunteer experts.
• Development of new functionality for Geotag-X pybossa, such as new means of ingesting photos into the system;
• Maintain the website
• Manage the server.
• Ensure code is documented and on Github
• Participating in Citizen Cyberlab developer meetings as required, including attending and reporting on regular developer hangouts.
• Provide help and guidance to UNOSAT intern as requested.

Measurable outputs/Deliverables/Schedule of Deliverables

• Successful implementation of new modules on the platform;
• Successful development of new functionality for Geotag-X (if requested);
• Improvements to the JavaScript functionality in the task presenters;
• Incorporation of monitoring tools
• Code on Github and documented

Performance Indicators for Evaluation of Results

• Material made available on time and with required quality
• All work documented in a clear and concise manner
• All code shared via Github

Required skills

The individual contractor will have strong programming and web development skills, particularly in Javascript and Python. The contractor should also have experience working with SQL Alchemy, PostgreSQL, Redis, CSS, and HTML5. Knowledge in design or user experience can be an advantage. Experience and/or interest in Citizen Science and Crowdsourcing and a strong interest in disaster response, humanitarian operations, development issues, and related international affairs is required. Fluency in English is required and additional language skills are beneficial as well.

Reporting structure

The individual contractor reports to the manager of UNOSAT and is under the technical supervision of the Citizen Cyberlab project lead. They will work and liaise with other relevant UNOSAT staff as required.

Remarks

General conditions of contracts for the service of individual contractors apply.

How to apply

All applicants are strongly encouraged to apply as soon as possible after the vacancy has been posted and well before the deadline stated in the vacancy announcement.

A letter of motivation including links to examples of relevant work, as well as the P11 form/ Curriculum Vitae are to be sent at: unosat@unitar.org with CC eleanor.rusack@unitar.org and the following subject line: 'UNOSAT: Individual Contractor - IT opportunity'.