Call for applicants: Django Fellowship

Posted by Russell Keith-Magee on Feb. 6, 2015

As we reported last week, the fundraising campaign for the Django Fellowship has been incredibly successful. We blew past our initial target in a little over 6 days, and we're well on the way to hit our stretch goal. Given this success, it's time to put that money to good use, and hire some Fellows.

It would be easy to just give the job to Tim and Berker, the pilot Fellows - they did a fantastic job during the pilot project. However, in fairness to the entire community, we're going to advertise the position again. When we advertised for the pilot, it was for a limited 3 month contract. This time, we intend the position to be ongoing - the successful applicant (or applicants) will have the position of Fellow until they choose to step down. We want to make sure that candidates who weren't attracted to the 3 month contract of the pilot have the opportunity to apply for the ongoing contract.

The position of Fellow is the same as it was during the pilot. It's primarily focused on housekeeping and community support - you'll be expected to do the work that would benefit from constant, guaranteed attention rather than volunteer-only efforts. In particular, your duties will include:

Being a core committer is not a prerequisite for this position; we'll consider applications from anyone with a proven history of working with either the Django community or another similar open-source community.

Your geographical location is not important either - we have several methods of remote communication and coordination that we can use depending on the timezone difference to the supervising members of Django.

You'll be expected to report weekly to a few members of the Django core team detailing the work you've done that week and any feedback on how Django and the DSF could help you, as well as publicly posting about your activities to help communicate your role to the Django community at large.

If you don't perform the duties to a satisfactory level, we may end your contract. We may also terminate the contract if we're unable to raise sufficient funds to support the Fellowship on an ongoing basis.

The DSF has raised over $40,000 USD so far. Based on the pilot, we're estimating that this will last 3-4 months. We're aware this isn't competitive with full-time salaries in big cities like San Francisco or London. Fellows will be selected to make best use of our available funds.

If you are interested in applying for the position, please email us with details of your experience with Django and open-source contribution and community support in general, the amount of time each week you are able to dedicate to the position (a minimum of 20 hours a week), and the hourly rate you're able to dedicate to the Fellowship.

Applications will be open until 1200 UTC, February 13, 2015, with the expectation that the successful candidates will be announced around February 20.

Successful applicants will not be an employee of the Django Project or the Django Software Foundation. Fellows will be contractors and expected to ensure that they meet all of their resident country's criteria for self-employment or having a shell consulting company, invoicing the DSF on a monthly basis and ensuring they pay all relevant taxes.

If you or your company is interested in helping fund this program and future DSF activities, please get in touch to learn about corporate membership, or you can make a donation directly to the Fellowship fundraising campaign.

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