Role Description

Term | Permanent Full-Time or Part-Time

Rate | $60,000 - $72,000 + benefits

Start Date | Flexible

This internship is funded by the Government of Canada and work terms are under the Digital Skills for Youth (DS4Y) Program. DS4Y, an initiative from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED), provides an opportunity for youth to gain valuable training and work experience needed for today’s digital economy.

Salal Foundation’s mission is to research, test, and scale innovative strategies that nurture transparency, citizen engagement, democracy, and communities living within natural limits. We maximize our effectiveness by supporting organizations and leaders to advance innovative strategic solutions in our priority areas.

You will join a fast growing program that designs, implements, and supports digital engagement systems to mostly new / small mission-aligned organizations across Canada. Building and effectively wielding people power is a key aspect and these systems provide a wide range of engagement features. Our support extends beyond the digital system with, and is customized to each system, with strategy and tactics support, with ongoing system enhancements to grow with the organization.

Please indicate if you do or do not qualify for the DS4Y program.

Youth Eligibility Criteria

To participate in the Digital Skills for Youth Program, a candidate must:

• Be between the ages of 15 and 30, inclusive, at the start of the internship;
• Be a Post-Secondary Graduate (i.e., has completed a diploma or degree following secondary education, not necessarily a Canadian Institute);
• Canadian Citizen, Permanent Resident or person who has been granted Refugee Status;
• Self-assess as Underemployed, meaning you are employed below your level of education and / or hold part-time employment, or are unemployed;
• Not have been a DS4Y participant since the inception of the program.

About the Role

Working closest with the Technical Director, as part of our growing engagement systems program you will support our cloud infrastructure including maintenance and enhancements, program WordPress plugins and CiviCRM extensions, and troubleshoot system issues. 

We work mostly with WordPress and CiviCRM, and regularly use other engagement apps, often connecting to WordPress + CiviCRM. It is not required that you have experience with CiviCRM.

There may be additional activities beyond engagement systems, based on your fit and interest, e.g. wider digital security activities, data management, data science, analytics, technical analysis, etc.

Role Benefits

• Work from anywhere at just about any time - some availability weekdays Eastern Time is needed for team syncs;
• Health benefits after 3 months;
• 4 weeks annual vacation after 3 months;
• Support for telecommunications expenses and essential home office hardware.

Key Responsibilities

• Discuss technical options and best solutions with other cross-functional team members;
• Estimate effort and risk for development tasks;
• Develop new features in WordPress plugins and CiviCRM extensions;
• Create unit tests and undertake code reviews and run time testing for project quality assurance;
• Manage WordPress-optimized systems, e.g. Litespeed on AWS;
• Manage WordPress environments, e.g. errors monitoring / diagnosis, migrations, staging sites, updates, CDN, firewalls;
• Manage transactional email services, e.g. AWS Simple Email Service;
• Enhance DevOps system with git, Terraform and Ansible;
• Monitor systems for errors / bugs and when possible proactively address;
• Identify opportunities for efficiencies / enhancements in systems / team;
• Manage app integrations with non-code and API / code solutions;
• Support data security solutions;
• Use project management system to communicate work to client and other team members;
• Co-create your role development plan.

Qualifications

Beyond your skills we are also interested in mission alignment, and that you are curious and always learning. As a growing team, there will increasingly be room for specialization as well as growing into new roles.

Essential qualities

• A desire to help effect change for our collective future on this planet; Aligned with Salal Foundation’s mission;
• Able to work collaboratively with a small virtual team and independently with a combo of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration streams e.g. Zoom / Google Meet, phone, messaging, email, project management app;
• Your own work space, computer, and internet connection;
• Curious and observant, seek to understand, always learning;
• Be motivated and able to work independently on a variety of projects;
• Able to think and act in a strategic manner;
• Good written and verbal communication skills;
• Able to work on multiple projects, often with different skills and timelines requirements, and effectively prioritize activities;
• Comfortable taking risks, working in an innovative environment where trying new things is encouraged;
• Accuracy, attention to detail, and with an eye to mitigating risk - particularly in releasing new code / features;
• Excellent problem-solving and organizational skills;
• Some time availabilities during Eastern Time weekdays, i.e. Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm.

Technical

• Excellent PHP skills;
• Front-end skills including JavaScript frameworks, AJAX, CSS and HTML 5;
• SQL (MySQL / MariaDB) skills, including performance optimisation and normalisation;
• Git experience and knowledge of team workflows based on merge requests;
• Solid understanding of software architecture concepts, algorithms, design patterns, data modelling and API development, and how to apply them in a CMS environment;
• WordPress plugin development, and a demonstrated willingness and ability to learn;
• Develop and use REST interfaces;

Administrative

• Provide status updates and / or issue resolution information, such as Asana task comments, team chat message, or call to explain resolution, or prepare a further plan for system fixes;
• Track tasks time by project using an app.

Bonus

Awesome if you have experience in any of these:

• DevOps experience with AWS, Terraform, Ansible, Icinga2;
• Containers experience, e.g. Docker, Kubernetes;
• Experience developing in CiviCRM;
• Experience developing themes for WordPress, secure code, PHP unit tests, and integrated tests;
• Strong understanding of continuous integration and test automation in multiple environments and multiple project streams.

Equal employment opportunity

At Salal, we recognize the importance of our staff reflecting the communities our work aims to benefit. We are committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants and teammates without regard to race, color, religion, sex, pregnancy (including childbirth, lactation and related medical conditions), national origin, age, physical and mental disability, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, military and veteran status, and any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We strongly encourage candidates who are Black, Indigenous, people of colour, women, LGBTQ2I, immigrants, people with disabilities, and people from low-income and working class backgrounds and / or with lived experiences of poverty to apply. We recognize that this is neither exhaustive nor representative of the intersectionality present within each individual. Salal believes that diversity and inclusion among our teammates is critical to our success and we seek to recruit, develop and retain the most talented people from a diverse candidate pool. Our goal is to be a diverse workforce that is representative, at all job levels, of those we serve.