Volunteer Open-Source Platform Engineer

Design, build, and maintain a secure, scalable open-source platform. Collaborate with teams to integrate tools, data systems, and community features, ensuring alignment with values and mission. A hands-on role using tech to support impactful social change. What difference will you make? Your contribution to our open-source platform will shape how our technology supports service users, stakeholders, funders, and the wider public. Through your work, we will ensure our systems, website, and digital tools effectively reflect our charity’s vision, values, and impact. What are we looking for? This role does not require formal qualifications, though they are considered beneficial. What matters most is practical experience gained through open-source contributions, personal projects, academic study, or volunteering. A willingness to learn, adapt, and complete any required induction or training is essential. The Volunteer Open-Source Platform Engineer will be responsible for developing, implementing, and maintaining the organisation’s open-source membership platform and related tools. The role focuses on building secure, scalable, and accessible systems that support user registration, content management, and interactive community engagement features. A key part of the role involves designing and maintaining robust content management systems (CMS) to enable efficient creation, organisation, publication, and retrieval of digital content for both community members and volunteers. The engineer will integrate third-party tools, APIs, and plugins to enhance platform functionality, ensuring all integrations align with organisational goals and technical requirements. Collaboration is central to the role, requiring close work with both technical and non-technical team members to understand community needs and translate them into practical, user-friendly digital solutions. In addition to development tasks, the role includes providing technical guidance and insights to support strategic decisions around system architecture, platform design, integrations, and development priorities. The engineer will also monitor platform performance, proactively troubleshoot issues, and resolve technical problems to maintain smooth and reliable operation. Documentation is a critical component of this position. The engineer will ensure that all systems and processes are well-documented to support compliance with data protection, accessibility standards, and organisational policies. Documentation will also be used as a tool for continuous improvement, helping to identify gaps, optimise workflows, and refine platform usability based on user and team feedback. Furthermore, the role involves documenting technical processes, system architecture, and user guides to preserve organisational knowledge, support future development, and assist with onboarding new team members. The engineer will contribute to the organisation’s broader digital strategy by suggesting improvements, introducing new features, and promoting best practices that support long-term sustainability and innovation. Finally, the role includes facilitating knowledge transfer by creating clear and accessible documentation that supports the onboarding of new volunteers, technical contributors, and staff, ensuring continuity and effective collaboration across the organisation. Remote What will you be doing? Develop, implement and maintain the open-source membership platform and associated tools to support community engagement and organisational objectives.Build scalable, secure and accessible systems that facilitate user registration, content management and interactive community features.Build robust content management systems (CMS) to enable efficient creation, organisation, publishing and retrieval of digital content for community members and volunteers.Integrate third-party tools, APIs and plug-ins to extend platform functionality in alignment with organisational goals and requirements.Collaborate with technical and non-technical team members to understand community and organisational needs, translating them into functional and user-friendly systems.Provide technical guidance and insights to inform strategic decisions around system architecture, integrations, platform design and development priorities.Monitor platform performance and troubleshoot issues, proactively identifying and resolving technical problems to ensure smooth operation.Ensure documentation supports compliance and best practices, including data protection, accessibility standards and organisational policies.Use documentation as a tool for continuous improvement, identifying gaps, optimising workflows and refining platform usability based on feedback.Document technical processes, system architecture and user guides to maintain organisational knowledge, support future development and assist team onboarding.Contribute to the ongoing strategy for digital systems development and platform innovation, suggesting improvements, new features and best practices for long-term sustainability.Facilitate knowledge transfer by providing documentation that supports onboarding of new volunteers, technical contributors and staff members.