The Astropy Project is looking to hire a software operational support specialist. The overarching goal of this position is to improve the first time contributor experience, reduce the technical barriers to contributions, reduce the number of open issues, and increase the number of merged pull requests. This is not intended to cover all issues and PRs opened in astropy, but rather to support and lighten the load on the rest of the volunteer community. An ideal candidate would be familiar with the Astropy project ecosystem and capabilities, comfortable with its Github Development workflow, and has experience providing supportive feedback and technical advice in online environments.

This role includes monitoring the astropy issue tracker, adding labels to new issues, providing a friendly welcome message on issues and pull requests, and giving starting pointers for how to resolve the issue or move the pull request forward. This role also includes helping to close out issues and PRs, helping with rebasing, and troubleshooting failing tests. To be effective, we expect regular attendance of Astropy development telecons.

We expect a commitment of up to 10 hours per week with a total cost compensation rate (which includes overhead and fringe) up to 150 $ per hour. Compensation could be provided as a consulting fee or as a subaward. The Astropy Project can pay inside or outside of the US. This is a remote-only position.

Please send a short (one paragraph) email to finance@astropy.org with a description of your interest in the role, your qualifications, any relevant experience, and attach a CV. If possible, please provide links to a few examples of issues/PRs where you have been involved in a way similar to this role.

The Astropy project is committed to fostering an inclusive community. The community of participants in open source Astronomy projects is made up of members from around the globe with a diverse set of skills, personalities, and experiences. It is through these differences that our community experiences success and continued growth. See https://www.astropy.org/code_of_conduct.html for details.

The Astropy Project specifically encourages underrepresented parts of the community to apply.

All applications received before the end of April 2020 will receive full considerations, but you can apply until the position is filled.

This is the first part time job ad / call for work proposals funded from a grant from the Moore foundation to the Astropy project (and administered by NumFOCUS). One purpose of this grant is to make life easier for all the volunteers who do the hard work of developing the Astropy Project by providing salary for some work that is very important for the project as a whole, but requires time commitments that are unreasonable to expect from volunteer contributors. This job is not intended to replace current volunteer efforts, but to help out with it and ensure that someone will do the work described below even if volunteers are not available. If you have suggestions on the process of job ads and spending grant money in general, please contact the interim finance committee at finance@astropy.org or use the issue tracker of https://github.com/astropy/astropy-project .