CAT Tech organizer description

There is no application / nomination deadline for this role

We believe in building a diverse & inclusive team. If you don’t feel like you fulfill all requirements but you’re interested regardless, we’d love to hear from you.


What we’re looking for

We’re looking for a tech organizer to help us coordinate and maintain our tech infrastructure starting in July 2026 until July 2027. The time commitment will be at least 4hrs per week.


Why this role is important to our community

  • Our community is built on the tech tools we choose - we use various tools for enabling connection, developing a shared understanding, and creating a sense of identity - without our tech infrastructure CAT wouldn’t exist

  • Our tech maintenance ensures privacy and security for our members

  • With our tech choices, we can lead by example - showing what digital sustainability looks like in practice


What you would be doing

In this role you’ll set a strategy and direction for our tech infrastructure and you will be responsible for execution/implementation and maintenance with volunteers and other organizers. You will also work with the rest of the organizers to define the roadmap, strategy & infrastructure of CAT.


After onboarding, you will:

  • Assume overall tech / backend maintenance for the smooth operation of

    • our Slack workspace

    • automated processes (like adding members to Slack and our newsletter - we currently use windmill for this automation)

    • the CAT website and WordPress backend (with volunteers)

    • our internal knowledge base (with volunteers)

    • our member directory (with volunteers)

    • our Google workspace set-up for email addresses and our Google Drive

    • our newsletter setup with Buttondown

  • Attend organizing meetings to coordinate with other organizers

  • Begin strategizing and considering ideas for projects or improvements for the tech we use


Requirements

Must have

  • Culture

    • Be aligned & understand CAT's mission & agree with our values

    • Considers yourself part of the tech industry, and a tech workers*

    • Be familiar with some of our tools

    • Enjoy remote teamwork (comfortable with tools like Gsuite, Zoom, etc, willing to try new options and tools)

  • Availability

    • Be able to check Slack at least every 1-2 days.

    • Be able to join our weekly organizer calls (we are currently meeting on Mondays in the morning for America timezones and afternoon for Europe & Africa timezones but we’re flexible to change this)

    • Commit 1-4hrs per week outside of meetings as appropriate to progress projects and support others

    • 3 month trial, with an expected 12 month commitment

  • Skills & Experience

    • Be comfortable coding (e.g. Markdown, HTML, CSS for our website) & learning new tech tools (including open source tools)

    • Excellent written English. Able to effectively and economically communicate with words.

    • Happy working with others - including developers in the volunteering team but also content and community volunteers who use our tools


Nice to have

  • You volunteered at CAT in the past

  • Enjoy speaking to media / public about CAT, or interested in developing this skill

  • Membership in a corporate green team

  • Experience in board/management position in a non-profit or similar structure

  • You have maintained tech tooling before

  • You have recognised the need for automation or different tools before

  • You have automated processes before


What we have to offer

  • The chance to make an impact and help tech workers create sustainable software. We have a community of over 10,000 people in Slack and 10,000+ newsletter subscribers.

  • A nice team of folks to work with. We’re very collaborative and help each other out. If you want to see who’s currently in our organizing team, check out How we organize.

  • Volunteering experience for a climate-focussed community

  • Flexible approach to working (you can work async at a time that suits you or in co-working meetings)

  • A look behind the scenes of how a community is run (spoiler alert: it’s not as organized as it looks!)


What the joining process looks like

We've outlined the dates we'd like to work with - but if you are not available for these dates, please let us know, and we'll do our best to accommodate you, while being fair to candidates who have expressed an interest.

  1. You make your submission. Please fill out this form.

  2. We screen applications & nominations each week. You will hear back from us whether we choose to proceed or not, but depending on how many applicants we receive, we can't promise detailed feedback about your specific application at this point.

  3. Initial call. We arrange a video call, to get to know each other. You would be speaking with one of the current organizers. This provides as chance to discuss working together, talk about your previous work and experience. This would likely happen in June / July, and it's best to set aside an 45 minutes for the call.

  4. Final call with the full organizing team and agree start date (at the latest on July 27th).

  5. Join the organizing team. We invite you to the corresponding meetings, project management and collaboration systems, line up any public updates for LinkedIn etc, and we start working together! There will be onboarding and 3-month trial period.

  6. Handover and support: There will be a handover period where you are supported along the way, as you take on the new responsibilities as our new go to tech organizer.




*We’re borrowing the definition of a tech worker from Ethan Marcottes’s book, You Deserve a Tech Union:

Now, your job could involve engineering, design, content, research, customer support, moderation-or some combination of the above. (Or something else entirely!) But regardless of the kind of work you do, this two-tier power dynamic still applies. If your labor contributes to a digital product or service, and you are compensated for that labor, then you perform tech work. You are a tech worker.

You may not work in the technology industry proper, mind. I mean, sure: maybe you do work for a massive tech company, for an early-stage startup, or somewhere in between. But every sector of every industry has some form of tech work—it's just as likely that you do tech work in healthcare, finance, education, or in some other field altogether. In other words, tech workers exist in every industry. If your job is technical in nature, and has ever been defined-or redefined, or eliminated —by the decisions made by your company's management or leadership, then you are a tech worker.

Why does this matter? Well, now that we've roughed out a working definition of power, and looked at examples of how that power can manifest itself in our jobs, we're ready to take a look at how that power impacts us-the people whose work built this industry.