THE ROLES
Design and change leads
Design intern
Communications and customer service lead – Patchwork
Developer (Ruby on Rails)
Developer (Front-end)
WHERE WE’RE AT
These are exciting times at FutureGov. We have some big projects on the go already with more to come very soon so we’re looking for people to join our mission and work with us to help shape the future of local government – big time.
With more than 10 years experience of local government, FutureGov is all about using design, technology and change management to transform local public services whether working from inside local councils or alongside exciting social innovators.
We are committed to problems that matter, working with the people most passionate about making change happen. From experience, we understand that the best way to support change is to invite people into the process, as participants, in such a way that goes beyond consultation, whether that be service users, partners or staff.
We are also passionate about the transformative power of the web and its ability to bring new opportunities to solve some of the most intractable problems. We build future-proof technology in a way that is low cost, focused on outcomes and most importantly open to people changing their minds as we go. It is smart, simple and easy for all to use.
And not only do we love great design and neat technology but we’re realistic about what it takes to make change happen, and make it stick. We spend time working with people inside and outside organisations communicating, listening, and sharing in fun and interesting ways.
BEING A FUTUREGOVER
We work flexibly, with the team working our base at the Hub Westminster, on site with clients, from home and from our fair share of coffee shops. We’ve also got a good mix of great people from a mix of backgrounds, some full time, some part time and some ad hoc so we’re open to flexible hours too. A few of the team are foodies so never a day goes by without a fairy cake, and team days have been known to involve marathon movie sessions. We know how to have fun as a team but we also know when to knuckle down and get the job done and we think we’ve got a pretty special bunch of FutureGovers.
HOW TO APPLY
Like the sound of that? Good, because we’re on the lookout for creative, radical and dedicated people to join us. Just like you…
Take a look at the roles we have on offer below and drop Dom a line [dom at wearefuturegov dot com] (or Joe Smith for internship opportunities) with:
- a quick introductory email telling us a bit about yourself (be as interesting as you like) and what you might fancy working on at FutureGov
- a CV of sorts (LinkedIn, about page – whatever works for you as long as it tells us what we need to know)
- some sort of portfolio, illustration of your work or link to your github account or similar (depending which role interests you)
We want people who are fired up about making tangible, real change. We would like to hear a bit about what you believe in, what makes you passionate, angry. What excites you. Successful applicants will be invited to come and meet some of us for an interview.
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DESIGN AND CHANGE
1. Design and Change leads
Offer
We have some big pieces of work that allow us to make real change happen, so we’re on the lookout for creative, radical, rigorous and dedicated people to join us. You might be a designer of whatever description, a project manager or a change manager. You might have a background in local government or something else entirely.
Attitude
Be able to think critically as well as creatively, and turn concepts and ideas into things that can be tested and tried.
Love the internet. You should have opinions and ideas about how the internet can be used to improve services. A theoretical understanding / some practical understanding would be very useful.
Be opinionated and interested. We want people who have strong opinions, and a good understanding as well as opinions about the current social context.
We are looking for people who can demonstrate they are already actively engaged in trying to make stuff better in some way.
Experience
Experience counts and a couple of years of doing this sort of thing already would really help, with experience in work that you feel gives you the skills, capabilities and belief that you can take on this role.
It would be hugely beneficial if you have participated in design or change projects or been part of teams creating new products, services, systems.
People who are able to work with the system, but not become part of it. We work with one foot in and one foot out of big political and social systems. Therefore we need people who can work with people to make change happen but also are able to hold their own and not become part of the system or services we want to change *too* much.
We would like to see evidence of where you have tried (succeeded or failed) to make tangible positive change. It might have been in an organisation you worked for or someone you worked with or starting your own thing.
Experience of engaging others in design work and facilitating participation of multiple people in design and development.
You won’t necessarily have to do hardcore project management (unless this is your bag) but you will have to be able to organise yourself, push projects forward and work with flexible team.
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2. Design intern
So you’re looking to work on some of the most exciting projects this summer? You want to get some experience and take an active role in some experiments? You want to exercise some creative freedom and some projects trying to create positive change? Then you should get in touch with us here at FutureGov!
FutureGov are a social innovation company that uses design and web technology to try and make positive changes to society. We work inside the public sector as well as outside trying to get our own products and services off the ground. Over the past 4 years, FutureGov has worked with over 50 clients in the digital innovation space, drawing on our design, technology and change skills to help identify challenges and work with users to define and deliver solutions. We have worked across the UK with Districts, Unitaries and Counties from Surrey to Staffordshire, Brighton to Camden.
We are looking for 1 or 2 people to join us over the Summer, from pretty much now until October. The roles are varied and we are particularly looking for people to help us pull together a really exciting event.
You will be working on projects from research and design work to the development phases, working alongside our team and some fantastic partners.
We are looking for someone who can:
- Demonstrate a clear research approach – both sitting at your desk and meeting people
- Deliver excellent communications, both written and visual – shiny things
- Demonstrate experience and interest in using 3D printing technology, laser cutters etc in developing prototypes – it’s the future…
- An interest and passion for design for all – you need to care
- Interested and knowledgeable around digital innovation and a passion for experimentation
- Good organisational and people skills – we are a nice bunch, and like nice people
- If you can use a camera, that would be a real bonus
If this sounds like you then get in touch with joe@wearefuturegov.com. we aim to interview over the next few weeks.
3. Communications and customer service lead (Patchwork)
Working closely with the Project Director as well as the design, change, product development leads, your role will be two-fold. As communications lead, you will play a key role in promoting Patchwork, its impact and the way in which clients are using Patchwork to change the way that they work. You will lead external communications and marketing including events and campaigns on and offline supported by designer colleagues. This part of your role will include:
- Working with the Project Director and Product Manager to develop marketing materials, blog posts and other communications content
- Supporting wider sales effort – and working with Staffordshire as a “reference site” for potential new clients to contact
- Identifying opportunities for gathering and promoting good news stories, case studies and successful interventions through Patchwork
- Looking for media and other promotional opportunities
You will also act as the lead community organiser for Patchwork, leading activities to encourage the use of the app within client organisations and connecting clients to make the most of Patchwork.This will mean:
- Leading regular communications with users of Patchwork
- Encouraging continued use and adoption of Patchwork within client organisations
- Connecting users of Patchwork to share learning and advice
This role will involve acting as the first point of contact for customer service queries from clients currently using Patchwork. This will include helping with first line support problems, filtering out those that don’t need an intervention from the technology team, and handing those that do onto Product Manager for resolution.
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TECHNOLOGY
4. Developer (Ruby on Rails)
We’re looking for an experienced Rails developer to join our team of developers, designers and product managers and help us both develop new apps and add features to existing apps.
Although most of the work will be Ruby coding, there will be some front-end development involved too, so you’ll need to have some html, css and javascript experience. Ideally, we need some with experience working within an agile team and practicing test-driven and/or behaviour-driven development, who has worked with multiple programming languages and has a solid understanding of OO design, and who has no fear of getting their hands dirty configuring and maintaining servers and working through technical support issues.
Ideally a full time position, we are willing to be flexible and open to people looking to work 3-5 days per week depending on your circumstances.
Must have
- Intermediate level Rails developer or better
- Some front-end experience (HTML, CSS & JavaScript)
- TDD/BDD experience (we use cucumber and rspec)
- An understanding of web application security issues
- Flexible and action oriented
- Capable of working independently
Good to have
- Extensive programming experience with both Ruby and other languages
- Advanced front end development (jQuery, Haml, Sass, CoffeeScript, backbone.js, Twitter Boostrap and so on)
- Experience working within an agile team (user stories, short iterations etc.)
- A solid understanding of OO design principles
- An in-depth understanding of relational databases
- Good understanding of user-interface design principles
- Experience of working on front-end code directly with designers
- Linux system administration
- Any devops experience (automated deployment, Chef, Puppet etc)
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5. Developer (front end)
We’re looking for a front end developer to work with our designers, developers and product managers to both create design mockups, wireframes and prototypes and turn them into beautifully semantic, production ready interfaces. We’ll also need you to apply designs to existing HTML with minimal changes. We think we make nice HTML and this shouldn’t be too hard, but we’ll listen to you if you tell us different.
As a core member of a multi-disciplinary team, you’ll need to be a natural collaborator and be able to consider the constraints others may have to work within. You’ll also need to be able to work within constraints due to browser compatibility and accessibility requirements. Initially, we want you to lead the front end development for Patchwork, but we will also need you to work on other projects later.
Ideally a full time position, we are willing to be flexible and open to people looking to work 3-5 days per week depending on your circumstances.
Must have
- Produce working HTML & CSS from design mockups
- Clean and minimal markup
- Semantic use of ids and elements
- Valid HTML and CSS
- Support for IE7 and up
- Basic JavaScript
- Some experience with jQuery
- Some graphic design experience
Nice to have
- Experience producing responsive interfaces
- Experience working at concept level as a graphic designer
- An understanding of user interface design principles
- Use of programmatic CSS system such as SASS or LESS
- Use of convention-based classes e.g. as described in SMACSS
- Any experience developing for mobile devices
- Experience working within a multi-disciplinary team
- Experience working with Rails or another web application framework
- Advanced use of JavaScript and jQuery