Tuesday, April 13, 2021

The PSF is hiring a Python Packaging Project Manager!

Thanks to a two-year grant commitment from Bloomberg, our second 2021 Visionary Sponsor and a long term committed supporter of the Python ecosystem, The Python Software Foundation (PSF) is hiring a full-time project and community manager for the Python Packaging ecosystem, with a specific focus on the Python Package Index (PyPI).

We are excited about the opportunities that partnerships like these can provide for our community and know that this one will serve as a model for what can be accomplished when organizations make investments in entire ecosystems rather than individual initiatives.

Bloomberg has been a Python Software Foundation sponsor since 2017. We greatly appreciate their support. You can read more about how Bloomberg is supporting the Python ecosystem, and why they’re interested in improving the Python Packaging ecosystem, on the Tech At Bloomberg blog.

About the role

Over time, the Python packaging ecosystem has grown to span numerous software projects, standards, and use cases within the Python community. This growth and specialization of projects has helped bring the Python community to where it is, but has posed challenges in coordinating important changes across the entire ecosystem. Major projects in the space include PyPI, pip, virtualenv, wheel, setuptools, twine, and packaging.python.org.

The project manager will oversee improvements and added functionality that will benefit all Python users while leading the development of PyPI into a sustainable service. Working with the PSF Director of Resource Development to fund work throughout the packaging ecosystem. This role will also serve as a community manager to solicit feedback and facilitate discussions amongst stakeholders in the Python packaging community to generate consensus and establish new specifications.

Over the past three years, the PSF has overseen work on multiple1 one-off grants in the Python packaging ecosystem, which were successfully fulfilled for improvements to PyPI as well as pip. While these projects have been successful, the PSF is committed to establishing a structure through this role to support such projects sustainably, and assessing the backlog of potentially funded work, as well as lingering demand in the community for further improvement.

Ultimately, this role will provide a basis for progressing initiatives across multiple packaging projects and taking on additional funding opportunities on a continuous basis and acting as a known point of contact for members of the community.

Interested in the position?

If you are interested, please see the job post on the Python Job Board for the job description and instructions to apply. The call for resumes will be open until May 18, 2021.


1: Past funded work includes: MOSS award to finish and launch ground-up rewrite of PyPI (2018); Open Technology Fund contract to add 2FA, API keys, translations, improved accessibility, and internationalization to PyPI (2019); Facebook grant to implement automated checks for package uploads and PEP 548 in PyPI (2020); and MOSS award and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative grant to overhaul user experience and dependency resolver in pip (2020).