We’re looking for someone good with words!

We at Geeks for Social Change are looking for a writer or content designer to join our team. We’re a small predominantly trans, disabled, and neurodiverse studio trying to make a fairer society using activism, technology, and research. We are an atypical tech studio. Our work is based on anarcho-feminist principles, aims to be antifascist and antiracist, decolonise the tech sector, fight state violence, and work towards liberation of trans and disabled people among other things. Our big thing is about Community Technology Partnerships, working directly with communities to co-create solutions to the challenges they’re facing. Have a look at our website to understand more about who we are and what we do.

The role

We’re looking for someone to help us communicate more effectively about what we do and why. There are two angles this could take, but we wouldn’t need you to be able to do both.

One option would be publishing focused. Your work might include helping write bids for funding, posting on social media, writing articles or blog posts, creating zine content, or any number of other word-centred activities. You wouldn’t need to have done all of those things before, but you’d be interested in doing some combination of them most days.

Alternatively, the work might lean more towards more content design for web services. You’d have experience designing accessible content that’s easy to understand, clear, and consistent and working with developers and other designers to deliver it. You’d have worked directly on static site content using Markdown before and know a little about using version control software like Git (no need to be an expert, though).

These are two options for what this role might look like, but we’d also be open to other interpretations, so don’t feel constrained to them if you can see another way you could work with us.

The offer

As a studio, our full-time week is 6 hours per day, 4 days per week (so 24 hours per week), and many of us work part-time or alongside other jobs. We all work from home and are based in the UK. For this role, we’re ideally looking for someone working remotely in for around 12 to 18 hours per week, but can be flexible for the right person. We’re happy to work around other commitments you might have or make adjustments you might need.

The annual salary for someone working full-time (24 hours per week) in this role would be £28,000 with 24 days of holiday per year plus UK bank holidays, prorated for part-time working if applicable. We have a company pension scheme with up to 5% matching contribution from Geeks for Social Change. We plan to review and improve our benefits in the new year.

As a small studio funded by charity clients and philanthropic funding, we’re not interested in the usual capitalist growth at all costs model seen in the tech industry. We set our salaries according to the rates we charge (and vice versa) and we’re transparent about what everyone earns internally. We are continually working to dismantle and work without hierarchies and we’re in the process of working out if and how to become a worker-owned cooperative. So you’d join a team working towards more horizontal management with a high degree of autonomy and the responsibility that comes with that.

How to apply

If this sounds like an interesting opportunity for you, please send an application to [email protected] with the subject line “Writer / content designer application”. Please include a couple of paragraphs about what interests you about working at Geeks for Social Change and why you think you’d be a good fit. Don’t worry about making it perfect - we’re more interested in getting a flavour of you as a person. If you’re able to also include some links to your writing in the wild, that would be great, but it’s ok if you don’t have anything to share. We know that CVs encourage bias and don’t generally tell us very much about you or your skills, but if you feel like it would help you show us who you are, then we’re happy to receive one.

Please also let us know in your email if you have any access needs and we’ll do what we can to accommodate them.

Given the nature of our work we especially welcome applications from trans and non binary people, people of colour, disabled people, and other marginalised groups, especially those historically excluded from technology.

The deadline for applications is 11:00 on 16 January 2023.

If you have any questions about the role or who we are, or if you’re not sure if you’re the right fit and want to talk it through, please reach out to Kim ([email protected]) or Emma ([email protected]) and we’d love to chat.

please note gfsc are on winter break now until January. We will respond to any messages then, thankyou for your interest!