Title: Digital Safety Technologist – South Central Asia
Reporting to: Helpdesk Manager
Location: London, United Kingdom /Paris, France
Type of contract: Fixed term, 12 Months
Department: Global Technology Hub
Level of Effort: Full-time
Staff type: Consultant
About Internews:
Internews works to ensure access to trusted, quality news and information that empowers people to have a voice in their future and to live healthy, secure, and rewarding lives. We envision a world where everyone can communicate freely with anyone, anywhere, and exchange the news and information they need to shape their communities and the world.
For 35 years and in more than 100 countries, we have worked with our local partners to build hundreds of sustainable organizations, strengthened the capacity of thousands of media professionals, human rights activists, and information entrepreneurs, and reached millions of people with quality, local information, improving lives and building lasting change. On issues ranging from health and the environment to conflict and governance, Internews has developed approaches that harness the power of media and information to create positive change.
Internews is a charity operating internationally, with administrative centres in California, Washington DC, London, and Paris as well as regional hubs in Bangkok and Nairobi. Formed in 1982, Internews currently has offices in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America.
Our commitment to a culture of belonging:
Internews is passionate about our core values and about supporting positive change in the world. We pride ourselves on our commitment to innovation and flexibility. We believe that diverse teams are strong teams, and work to support an ethic of belonging, dignity, and justice for all people. Our current team includes a mix of genders, parents and non-parents, the self-taught, and people of multiple races, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourage candidates of all races, genders, ages, abilities, orientations, ethnicities, and national origins to apply, and actively welcome those with alternative backgrounds and experiences.
About the role:
Internews seeks an experienced technologist with a background in direct support to join Internews’ Global Technology team to provide mentoring, training and ongoing support for our media partners working with
Media and information providers in South Central Asia. You’ll join a growing international team providing a line of direct support between Internews and its partners and beneficiaries by offering vital assistance in how to use digital tools more safely, securely, and effectively. for internet access, publishing, social engagement, day-to-day work and communications.
Key Responsibilities:
- Being a first point of contact for urgent or emergency support — either to be handled directly or to refer on to others in the Global Technology Hub, or in our wider digital support community.
- Conducting needs assessments covering different digital capacities with Internews media partners to develop support and training plans.
- Helping in selection, procurement and adoption of digital tools, and support their adoption by partners.
- Carrying out one-to-one or group training, either remotely or in person.
- Developing or translating tutorials, guides, and other shareable resources.
- Helping review translated English language materials and adapt them as needed for the local context.
- Linking partners with Internews’ Global Technology Hub team, when needed, for support on issues related to website security, hosting and other forms of digital publishing or collaboration.
- Helping with the documentation of processes for training or extended use in other areas.
- Working with the program teams to ensure that the implementation of projects is impactful and practical on the ground.
- Working with an international team to maintain good communications, timelines, and reasonable expectations on service delivery.
- In all duties, demonstrating an understanding of and commitment to upholding Internews’ Core Values.
Qualification:
We’re seeking candidates with a background in supporting the technological needs of both organizations and individuals in a helpdesk or other similar model, and who can work on sometimes complex or urgent issues calmly and confidently and bring both a patience to the role and a keen interest in making technology understandable and accessible.
Essential skills and experience:
- Native or fluent in Pashto and Dari.
- Knowledge of other local languages and dialects.
- Fluent in English.
- A str ong understanding of the internet’s building blocks: DNS, SSL, IP, etc.
- Knowledge of digital network tools and the diverse ways of accessing the internet in different conditions, and in how to use other offline digital communications and file sharing tools.
- Either a lived experience or deep understanding of working online amid various challenges emerging from electricity and bandwidth limitations, censorship, surveillance, and other hurdles.
- A solid understanding and familiarity with using information security and digital safety tools and best practices.
- An ability to explain technical concepts in plain language for individuals and groups with different levels of digital experience and understanding.
- Documentation ability and writing for hand-over, and clear writing.
- Teaching or training experience and an understanding of instructional practices most effective with adult learners.
- Able to provide support remotely, working with those who may have technical difficulties.
- Patience, and excellent communication, interpersonal, and problem-solving skills.
- Direct or equivalent experience in working with charities, NGOs, non-profits, media, human rights, and/or civil society groups.
Essential skills and experience:
Note: These are not essential skills or experience, but are advantageous:
- Some web development and/or DevOps experience.
- Experience managing hosting environments for WordPress and other PHP website installations and migrations.
- Familiarity working with git.
- Prior experience managing domain records.
- Prior experience using anti-DDOS services and other attack-mitigation technologies (Cloudflare, Deflect, etc.).
- Experience in using or contributing to a standardised training methodology for adult learners in technology skills.
- Experience in organizational security assessments (SAFETAG or other frameworks) an advantage.
- Work or experience in the censorship circumvention tech community.
Candidates must submit a succinct covering letter of no more than 2-pages explaining how they satisfy the
requirements of the person speciation in addition to a CV highlighting relevant experience**, and geographic**
location. The successful candidate will also be asked to provide three professional referees, one of who
must be from their most recent employer.