Job Description

Company Description

OUR NATIONAL CONVERSATION (ONC) seeks to reduce partisanship and promote effective solutions to America’s challenges. Powered by America’s youth, we host a media outlet, produce educational materials and facilitate dialogue intended to make America a better country.

Job Description

The Software Development Intern is responsible for building and maintaining our website, currently built using WordPress. See OurNationalConversation.org.

We are 95% done building our website, and need extra support to clean up a few page designs, fix some bugs, complete a few pages, and tighten up the main website. There are some issues that are eluding current members of our intern team, so the more experience you have, the better.

We need a take-charge type who can drive this project over the finish line. This is not a starting internship. We need someone who really knows WordPress.

We know the site needs improvements, and you will surely have ideas for how to make the site better. But let’s get the basics all working first.

Once our WordPress site is done — and improved — we have a lot of exciting projects in the works, but not having our WP site done is getting in the way of all that. Right now, we need to put on a blitz to complete the site. Once that’s done, we can talk about the future.

Please note: This is an UNPAID for now. We hope to raise money for our nonprofit soon. Once this happens, we want to do some hiring. But not having the WP site done is holding us back. 

This position is remote, with work primarily conducted over Zoom and Slack, so applicants must be comfortable coordinating in a remote environment and are expected to maintain a high level of communication. The Software Development Intern must commit to the summer and fall semesters (ending December 15, 2025). 

Benefits: Flexible schedule, college credit, professional networking, and resume-building experience.

Compensation: This is not a paid position.

Responsibilities (once our WP site is done and we’re ready to move on):

• Contribute to building and maintaining a website from scratch using frameworks.

• Connect and maintain a database to the website.

• Implement new features according to incoming design and functional requirements.

• Document the code base and general structure of the overall product.

• Ability to write clean, efficient, and maintainable code for backend functionality and to fix bugs.

• Write high quality applications that can achieve massive scale.

• Document user requirements, create design documents, develop self-documented code, conduct testing, and create user and system documents.

• Communicate effectively with the team leads, Director of Technology, and COO as needed.

Qualifications

Requirements: The Software Development Intern should have the following skills, education, and experience:

• Current student working towards a degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Technology, and/or related fields.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills (English) are required.

• Willing to learn general programming principles and skills as well as specific frameworks and methodologies on the job. 

• Experience working with WordPress, including theme customization, plugin management, and general WordPress development.

• Solid knowledge of PHP, particularly in the context of WordPress development.

• Able to work collaboratively in a team-setting.

• Responsive, consistent, and effective communicator, even during conflict.

• Ability to work remotely and on their own schedule in order to make deadlines.

• Attention to detail is required.

• Google Workspace experience preferred.

• Submit a portfolio of previous work to demonstrate your skills.

• Ability to attend Organization-wide meetings every other week.

• Ability to attend weekly Tech Department meetings

• Must be authorized to intern in the U.S.

Preferred Skills: 

• WordPress

• PHP

• Javascript 

• Python

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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