Front-end and Data Visualization Engineer

About us:

Global Fishing Watch (GFW) is an international, nonprofit organization advancing transparency of human activity at sea to improve the management of our ocean. We do research, develop technology, and publicly share data about human activities and associated impact to enable a fair and sustainable use of our ocean. Founded in 2015 through a collaboration between Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google, GFW became an independent organization in June 2017. Using machine learning, cloud computing, and satellite data, we have produced the first global mapping of industrial fishing and energy development across the ocean. By 2030, we aim to map the activity of most ocean-going vessels and offshore infrastructure, all the way from small-scale and industrial fishing to transport and energy activities. We believe human activity at sea should be public knowledge in order to safeguard the global ocean commons for the benefit of all. 

The Position

The engineering team at GFW is in charge of processing the raw data and making it publicly and freely available through various products to different audiences. These products include data hosted in public Google BigQuery datasets, public APIs, and interactive web-based front-end tools. The front-end products seek to make complex geo-temporal data accessible to users with no data science or data engineering backgrounds while making sure that people with mid-level computers and slow internet connections can access them. 

Global Fishing Watch is looking to add a front-end developer to its front-end team to be able to boost the production, improvement and maintenance of its front-end products. In the past few years we have expanded the user base significantly and the digital product team continuously research their needs which brings new requirements and issues that are found while using our front-end products. While implementing this requirements and fixing issues we look to reduce technical-debt and keep the core infrastructure up do date with latest technologies, making our products be  more stable, robust and easy to maintain, as an example of this we migrated our map from using Mapbox stack to use Deck-GL what is enabling us to do several new kinds of visualizations and reducing the load on users CPUs. Also, GFW research team is always creating new knowledge, with this comes the challenges of visualizing data that has never showed before and making it readable and useful. 

The role includes working closely with the GFW research and tech team; product-managers, data-scientist, QA, researchers, and other stakeholders.

We are looking for a talented programmer who is committed, enthusiastic, creative, and proactive. This person will work closely with others in the front-end team but will also need to work autonomously. We are looking for someone who cares not only about delivering good code but also about how good our products are for our users.

What you will be working on:

• Interactive maps showing vessel tracks, fishing activity heatmaps, encounters in high seas, etc., through time; Our main map is the entry point to our data, allowing users to do deep analysis without the need of coding or accessing/downloading the data.
• Interactive Graphs and Reports used to analyze vessel activity and identify illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and related activities;
• Tools for users to display and analyze their own datasets alongside GFW’s datasets;
• Interactive articles (i.e. “scrollytelling”) and other pieces to highlight our research team’s work (papers);
• Internal tools to help collect and classify satellite data; 
• A wide variety of proof of concepts, experimental mapping work, etc.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain front-end products to visualize GFW datasets using the latest standards and best practices; 
• Build products with a focus on performance, responsiveness and cross-browser testing, as our users are diverse and operate on a diverse set of equipment and connectivity;
• Review wireframes and visual designs created by our UX designer, and requirements by the functional analyst; ask any necessary clarifying questions before starting on work.
• Write code to implement components that will be used with various web applications;
• Create prototypes, mockups, and staging sites for review and feedback;
• Understand distinct user needs, and strive to deliver high quality web applications for each user group;
• Diagnose and solve complex problems, whether conceptual problems, bugs or performance issues;
• Work jointly with the QA area; write unit and end-to-end tests; help the team level-up their testing skills;
• Write clear code and documentation allowing the easy interpretation of other members of the team;
• Publish internally developed tools as open-source projects;
• Review the technical design and perform code review of other developers’ work. Help improve the developer experience;
• Help choose the right technology stack for the next-generation data platform. Be curious, never settle.

Candidate description

Required technical skills

• Substantial experience with React (or similar UI framework), and Redux (or similar app state management libraries);
• Solid grasp of the modern web platform and how browsers work, experience with cross-device and cross-browser development (desktop and mobile);
• Ability to interpret, challenge, and faithfully implement designs;
• Implementing meaningful End-to-end and unit testing (any test frameworks);
• Comfortable with Git and knowledge of different branching strategies for development;
• Experience with DeckGL; 
• Experience consuming APIs securely;

Preferred technical skills

• Experience with complex app state management and interconnectivity to react to UI changes. 
• Experience with GPU programming, WebGL, shaders;
• Experience with data visualization specific challenges and libraries (D3); grasp of basic statistics concepts;
• Experience with maps, QGIS or similar, any web mapping stack (Leaflet, Mapbox GL) as well as more theoretical aspects of web maps: projections, file formats, tiles, vector tiles, etc.
• CI/CD environments;
• Open-source collaboration experience.

Required Communication skills

• Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate with designers, developers, and other relevant staff members or clients;
• Team player, willing to work with, teach and learn from the GFW team;
• Proactive mindset – enjoys and exhibits a high degree of ownership of tasks and projects;
• Comfortable working in a small but fast-growing team;
• High proficiency in English;
• Excellent communication skills – in person, phone, and, most important, written;
• Comfortable communicating with a wide range of individuals, including peers, juniors and senior-level people;
• Intellectually curious, forward-thinking, willing to suggest/try new technologies and creative approaches to problems;
• Flexibility to adapt to changing instructions and requirements;
• Ability to manage multiple projects and meet deadlines;
• Experience working remotely.

The successful candidate will meet most, but not necessarily all, of the criteria above. If you don’t think you check all the boxes, but believe you have unique skills that make you a great fit for the role, we want to hear from you!

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Additional Information

Note: The application period for this role closes on September 20, 2024

Reporting to: Director, Technology and Engineering

Manages: n/a

Please note: Visa sponsorship is not supported at this time.

Location: Remote position. The post holder must reside in a time zone that overlaps significantly with both Madrid, Spain and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Permanent/Fixed Term/Contractor: Permanent

Full Time hours: Yes 

Recruiting process: Recruiting Process: A cover letter along with a CV will be requested to see how your experience and interest connect to the position. We expect the cover letter to allow applicants an opportunity to explain details on how their skill set aligns with the role and provide a better understanding of their suitability for the position. If selected for consideration, the hiring process for this position will include an initial call with our Talent Acquisition team, followed by a formal 60 minute interview with 1-3 team members. Candidates advancing beyond this round will be asked to take a technical assessment and/or submit a representative code sample. Lastly, a final interview with 2-4 teams members to review your assessment and assess functional skills.

Working Hours: Global Fishing Watch supports flexible working, so the pattern of hours may vary according to operational and personal needs. The position will be part of a global team spanning many different time zones and so the candidate must be able to accommodate regular early/late meetings to be able to work effectively. Weekend work may be required on occasion. The post holder may be required to undertake regional and international travel. No overtime is payable.

Compensation: A compensation range for this position is US$ 55 -60 for Argentina-based employees. Compensation is commensurate with experience and will vary depending on the hired candidate’s country of residence, in accordance with local laws and regulations. GFW offers pension/retirement, health and other benefits commensurate with similar level GFW employees in the country of employment. The position may be a GFW employee or consultant, depending on the country of residence.

Equal opportunities: Global Fishing Watch is an equal opportunities employer. Global Fishing Watch is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion within our organization and in the greater ocean management and conservation community. We believe that diverse backgrounds, skills, knowledge and viewpoints make us a stronger organization. Bringing together professionals who possess broad experiences and a spectrum of perspectives will enable us to reach our goal of improved ocean governance faster. We hire and promote qualified professionals without regard to actual or perceived race, color, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital or parental status, national origin, age, physical or mental disability or medical condition, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. Our organizational goals match the urgent challenges facing our global ocean, and our mission is designed to help secure a healthy ocean for all. We are committed to building a workforce that is representative of humanity’s diversity, by providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all employees of Global Fishing Watch and for our partners, vendors, suppliers and contractors.