Wordpress Engineer

About GiveDirectly

GiveDirectly (GD) aims to reshape international giving – and millions of lives – by providing cash grants directly to the world’s poorest. The Brookings Institution estimates that $70B of cash transfers would be required to eliminate the poverty gap; the aid sector currently spends $135B each year, much of it on evidence-free interventions. GiveDirectly wants to change that, establishing cash transfers as a benchmark for foreign aid – as the index fund is a benchmark for the financial industry – and in the process accelerating the end of extreme poverty.

GD has raised over $1B since launching in 2011, delivered cash to more than 1.5 million people in 15 different countries. We’ve also supported large-scale, experimental research that indicates strong recipient impact of our programs. As a result, GD has been celebrated as one of the most innovative non-profit companies by Fast Company, while the growing cash transfer movement (and GD’s leading role within it) have been featured in the New York Times Magazine, This American Life, Foreign Affairs, and The Economist.

Across our global offices, our culture is candid, analytical, non-hierarchical, and agile. We work alongside 750+ individuals who come from 21 different countries and speak 69 different languages. Team members at GiveDirectly attest that diversity, equity, and inclusion are not just buzzwords, but a fundamental part of our culture and values. We actively seek to recruit individuals from the communities we serve, and use DEI as a lens in our hiring practices, programs, and initiatives. Our goal is to maintain a workplace where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work, and feel valued and respected for who they are. We strive to be inclusive of all cultures and experiences while upholding our values globally. In the spirit of our "Know Yourself and Grow" value, we recognize there is always room to improve our team's working experience. But day to day, we aim to "Create Positive Energy" - we take care of one another, have fun, aim to maximize flexibility and accessibility in roles, and pursue professional development opportunities to stay challenged & engaged in our work. 

We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other status protected by law.

Role Overview

Title: Wordpress Developer

Are you ready to genuinely transform people’s lives with your work? We want you to work together with our designer, website manager and engineers to continuously improve www.givedirectly.org to help raise more money for those in extreme poverty.

Before now this role has been carried out by a kind volunteer in a few hours per month. But we are now ready to be more ambitious and really take our site to the next level and are ready to invest in you and an in-house designer to make that happen. 

This won’t be project work with artificial client driven deadlines. Nor will it be work that makes little difference to the world. You will be continuously improving the same site, working with great people you will get to know well, and every $1000 or so that we raise transforms a life. 

The end of the calendar year is busy for us: it is when we raise the most money. But we know that and part of the goal of having someone in-house is that we can be better prepared and make sure that nothing goes wrong at this critical time, which will make everybody's lives and stress levels much easier.

Reports to: Fundraising engineering manager

Location: 

An advantage of this role is that it is fully remote and has flexible hours that might suit you if you have caring or other commitments that mean you cannot do 9-5 in an office. 

We require you to overlap with an East Africa time zone by at least 4 hours each day so we can meet and talk with people in the USA (where we raise most of our money) and Africa (where we give out most of our money). 

We require you to travel for between one and three weeks a year to meet the rest of your wider team face-to-face. 

We are also open to the role being 80% part-time if that is more attractive to you (see below).

Responsibilities:

• Maintain our Wordpress infrastructure to ensure it is always secure and available
• Plan, review and schedule updates to the core site, plugins and other dependencies.
• Manage our hosting (we currently use wpengine, but are open to other solutions if you want and there is an in-house software engineering team if you need more support).
• Improve www.givedirectly.org to raise more $. This means working closely with our in-house designer, website manager and other staff to:
• Implement new wordpress components so other GD people can develop and update pages and blog posts independently.
• Implement style and theme changes across the site, including menus and footers etc.
• Completely implement and A/B test changes to our most important pages.
• Clean up www.givedirectly.org to make future changes cheaper
• Work with our website manager to identify pages that are no longer needed
• Work with the designer to try and clean up our legacy styles and themes
• Clean up or out old plugins and old code and old approaches.

Qualifications: 

• You care about our mission, to end extreme poverty.
• You agree with our values. 
• You have:
• emotional intelligence and can foster inclusivity - our team is drawn from many countries and cultures, lives in many countries and cultures, raises money from many countries and cultures and gives out money to many countries and cultures. We do not discriminate.
• a can-do, problem solving attitude. We are not a big established organisation with slick and smooth systems. We need you to be willing to work with what is there and do your best.
• the ability to plan and organise your own multi-month projects - you can estimate what will be possible by when.
• the ability to follow-through on plan - you don’t forget, even when the next step can’t be taken for months.
• an ability to reason about messy systems - our systems and approaches are not neat and tidy, a change at one point might have unexpected consequences elsewhere. We need you to have the sort of mind that is ok with and can manage the complexity..
• You know:
• How to manage a Wordpress site.
• How to create and update Wordpress themes.
• How to create and update Wordpress blocks.
• How to keep Wordpress secure.
• How to look under the hood at the Wordpress database when you need. 
• How to debug layout problems across browsers.
• How to hand-craft CSS, HTML basic javascript, where needed.
• How to work within and clean-up messy legacy wordpress sites.
• How to make changes to a wordpress without creating downtime.
• You have experience 
• working in a team with one or more designers and website managers.
• managing your own time and work without immediate supervision or deadlines.
• proactively keeping everyone who needs to know informed about what is happening, what will happen, and what needs to be done when and by whom.

This is not a good role for you if:

• You are a perfectionist. We want to raise more $ for recipients, not build the best.
• You crave the variety of different projects. You will be working on www.givedirectly.org.
• You crave a variety of people. You will be working with amazing people, but the same amazing people each week.
• You need an office environment. If there are other GD employees where you live, they may cluster in a co-working space some days. But mostly you will be on your own.
• You need the adrenaline of tight deadlines and close supervision to do your best work. 

Nice to haves:

• We welcome and strongly encourage applications from candidates who have personal or professional experience in the low-income and/or historically marginalized communities that we serve.
• If you have an eye for design, or copy-writing, or more substantial software engineering, then there will be opportunities to grow in that direction.
• If you have experience with user testing and designing based on user feedback, then that will help us raise more $ more reliably and rapidly.

Priority Application Deadline: TBD

Flexible work options: 

This role is available as either full-time or 80% part-time. 

For the 80% part-time, you can choose to work:

• Monday to Friday: 6.4 hours per day
• Monday to Thursday: 8 hours per day

If you opt for 80% part-time, you will be paid 80% of the salary. In both cases, a minimum of 4 hours of overlap with the NYC timezone is required each day.

Compensation:

At GiveDirectly, we strive to pay our employees generously and equitably. We use an accredited third party salary aggregator to ensure that staff’s total compensation package (base compensation + bonus)  falls within the 75th percentile of similar roles, at similar organizations. We also have a no negotiation policy to ensure we are paying staff equitably across roles. 

We will share an estimated salary benchmark for the specific country you are based in during the hiring process. 

About the hiring process

Format: The hiring process follows the same general outline for all open roles:

First interview (20 mins)
Take home skills assignment (~90 min)
Panel interview (1 hour)*
Final interview (30 min )
Reference checks (20 mins each)

 #LI-REMOTE

Read more about our ongoing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts here and about our decision to move our central support teams to remote first here.

GiveDirectly is an Equal Opportunity Employer that values the strength diversity brings to the workplace. All qualified applicants are considered for employment without regard to the person’s race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

US applicants only:  We invite you to "Know Your Rights" as an applicant.

 

Commitment to Safeguarding

As a global organization serving some of the world’s most vulnerable communities, GiveDirectly takes the safeguarding of its recipients, staff, and partners seriously. To that end, GiveDirectly is a member of the Misconduct Disclosure Scheme, and will systematically check with previous employers about any sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment issues relating to potential new hires. We may also employ other robust pre-hire screens, including in-depth reference checks, criminal background checks, and sanctions screens.

GD is committed to observing all local, national and international laws that protect children, vulnerable adults, and basic human rights of all. GD is committed to a policy of “zero tolerance for sexual exploitation, abuse, and harassment (SEAH)” and expects anyone who works for GD to uphold the protection and safeguarding of our recipients as a priority.

These efforts help us continue to build and maintain trust with the communities we serve, and prevent harm to our recipients.

 

Interview Venue and Accessibility

We conduct interviews over Google Meet with camera on (unless communicated otherwise).

Closed captioning is available during all Google Meet interviews, and interviewers will also post interview questions in the chat box throughout the call. If you need assistance accessing either of these features, please let your interviewer know at the start of your interview! 

We’re committed to running an inclusive and accessible application process for all of our open roles. If there are questions or concerns you have about the accessibility of our hiring process, we warmly invite you to reach out to careers@givedirectly.org. Please include the word "Accessibility" in the email title.

 

Want to put your best foot forward on your GiveDirectly application? Take a look at our Candidate Application Prep Guide!