Join the Team

Have you enjoyed reading Snipette? Written some pieces for us perhaps? Are you ready to dive deeper into our magazine, join us backstage, and help us with our work? You're in luck!

We're hiring—well, kinda.

As we're just starting out on our monetisation drive, we don't get paid, and you won't be either (although this could change in future). You will, however, get to work with the Team, steer the magazine on its course, gain some great experience, and have fun conversations too!

All positions are remote. You can join in from anywhere, at any time, provided you attend our weekly meetings (or, at a pinch, make it a point to catch up later).

Outreach and Scheduling Associate

You should have an eye for what makes a good piece of writing, and an understanding of our editorial voice—we will of course, help you develop this further. You'll spend a lot of your time going through Medium and reaching out to potential authors through private note. Responsibilities include:

Take on primary responsibility for our new author outreach system, including research, communication, and tracking
Handle the Snipette magazine inbox, including giving reply reminders, doing regular clean-ups, and responding to low-importance emails
Attend weekly agenda meetings with the rest of the staff

About 4–6 hours of work per week can be expected. We'll take it easy for a little while so you have a chance to learn the ropes and all our various systems. The position is currently unpaid; this may change in the future, depending upon the success of our Membership plan. We will, however, be happy to provide you with references or recommendation letters.

What it's like to work

Most of our authors are found on Medium, so that's where you'll be scrolling through to look for potentials. Perhaps you'll choose a particular piece to republish, or ask them to write similar pieces along those lines. Once you find someone, you'll reach out to them through a private note or any social media channels you may find.

We use Airtable to keep track of these authors and make sure to regularly follow up. Authors often say they're interested but then forget to get back, so you'll have to note that down and "nudge" them. On the other hand, if they really aren't interested you shouldn't be bugging them: it's a fine balance that you'll eventually get used to!

Those authors who get back may ask questions about how much work they're expected to put in or whether they'll be regularly compensated. Once they're in, you'll hand over to one of the editors to do the actual editing.

In the inbox you will be monitoring the various emails that come in and make sure they're responded on time: either by responding yourself, or, more often, making sure the editor in charge gets back.

Our weekly meetings are semi-formal stock-taking sessions to review what's happened this week and what's happening in the next (as well as sometimes debating our favourite novel!)

Assistant Editor

You should have a strong grasp of English grammar and syntax, and an understanding of article structure. In addition, you should be comfortable writing short inserts and passages on their own. A familiarity of Snipette and its work would be preferred. You will work with us to:

edit and schedule articles through Medium, Ghost and Google Docs
follow up and keep in touch with authors over email
make occasional updates to the website pages
other small administrative tasks
attend weekly agenda meetings with the rest of the staff

What it's like to work

You will normally be put in charge of one or two authors at a time. Your job will be to polish the article and get it to fit our style, usually within a timeframe of 1-3 weeks. You will be in touch with the author to suggest edits, but also ready to dive in and type out passages yourself. If you need editing tips, you're welcome to ask for feedback, tips or notes from one of the other editors. Sometimes, you may need to 'nudge' an author who takes time or forgets to respond.

Editing takes place either on Medium's editor or on Google Docs. Once the editing is done, you'll guide the author through submitting the piece on Medium. Then will come a final formatting round, after which you copy the piece over to Ghost, schedule it in both places, and set up some related social media shoutout posts to go out around the same time. We try to keep pieces loaded and ready two weeks before they're actually published.

At Snipette, editing goes beyond the "grammar and style check" of normal editors. It often involves actually researching a topic and putting your own energy into it. This is sometimes tedious, but often very fulfilling and sometimes a lot of fun. Some authors adapt to the Snipette Style on their own, but others need varying degrees of hand-holding. Over time, you'll probably end up acting as a mentor to some of the less experienced authors and making them better writers! If you're up to it, you could even help out in our Writers' Programme, made specifically for guiding and training aspiring writers.

Our weekly meetings are semi-formal stock-taking sessions to review what's happened this week and what's happening in the next (as well as sometimes debating our favourite novel!)

Marketing Strategist

You should have a strong grasp of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. A familiarity of Snipette and its work would be preferred. You will work with us to:

plan, create, and upload social media posts about our website and content
follow up on comments and other activity
design campaigns to publicise a certain page or product
organise gifts for members
handle publicity for our webinar and other events
send reminder and followup email to webinar attendees
Attend weekly agenda meetings with the rest of the staff

What it's like to work

We are active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the Fediverse. In general we try to put out at least one or two posts a week in addition to the weekly article share.

You will usually design Instagram stories on Canva, before downloading and posting to Instagram. Other posts can be scheduled and shared via Buffer, but you will also spend a few minutes a day scrolling through social media and interacting directly. When comments and responses come in, you will either respond to them or alert on of the senior editors.

We sometimes run more organised media campaigns centred around certain topics. This is usually the same as ordinary social posts, but with more planning and more Canva.

Our occasional webinars require publicity, and they also involve sending out multiple cookie-cutter emails to all the attendees reminding them of the date and time. We use email and our in-house tool Chip Choc to send out reminders. After the event, you will also have to help draft the followup email to send to the attendees to keep them engaged.

Our weekly meetings are semi-formal stock-taking sessions to review what's happened this week and what's happening in the next (as well as sometimes debating our favourite novel!)

Director of Robots

You should have a reasonable understanding of Python and NodeJS, a firm grasp on how to use Git, and the ability to pick up new languages on the job. You should also be comfortable writing your own scripts from scratch and tweaking existing scripts to suit your needs. A familiarity with Debian (or other flavours of Linux) is preferred. An interest in writing and publishing would be great, because you'll get a better sense of how we operate! You will work with us to:

Monitor and maintain our current automation systems for managing articles and authors
Develop new in-house tools to make our editorial process simpler
Manage integrations with our existing services such as Ghost, MailChimp, Airtable and Notion
Tweak our website styling and add new features
Occasionally upgrade and troubleshoot the services we run on our VPS
Attend weekly agenda meetings with the rest of the staff

A minimum of 1 hour of work a week can be expected. You will also be given development projects, the hours for which can be negotiated on a per-project basis. The position is currently unpaid; this may change in the future, depending upon the success of our Membership plan. We will, however, be happy to provide you with references or recommendation letters.

What it's like to work

We use several tools such as Ghost, MailChimp, Airtable and Notion to manage our articles, authors, and scheduling. We also use an in-house tool called Seance to automate cross-posting between Medium and Ghost. Sometimes, the APIs for these tools change, or we need a new kind of automation to make things better. Your job will be to adjust these scripts and tools and make sure they're running smoothly.

We have a VPS running YunoHost, which occasionally goes down or needs some troubleshooting. (Her name's Kunti, by the way). You will help to diagnose such issues and get things back up if they go down. You will also occasionally run system updates, ideally at a low-traffic period when a few hours of downtime doesn't matter.

Sometimes, we may want to automate more of our workflow or simplify an existing workflow. That's where you'd step in to actually write the scripts needed to get that going. Most of these scripts are eventually made open source, so other people can make use of the tools you write too!

Our weekly meetings are semi-formal stock-taking sessions to review what's happened this week and what's happening in the next (as well as sometimes debating our favourite novel!). During our meetings, you could keep an eye out for what can be automated and step in to make that happen.

Assistant Illustrator

You should be comfortable hand-drawing full-colour illustrations, and be willing to loosely follow our illustration guidelines. A familiarity with Snipette and its work is preferred. You will work with us to:

Brainstorm and illustrate some of the cover images for our weekly articles
Adjust your illustrations according to feedback from the author and editors
Occasionally draw additional images for use inline within an article
Draw our mascot puppies in different positions for social media and other promotions
Create extra placeholder pictures for our print version

About 2-3 hours a week can be expected (or as long as it takes for you to come up with a couple of illustrations!). The position is currently unpaid; this may change in the future, depending upon the success of our Membership plan. We will, however, be happy to provide you with references or recommendation letters.

What it's like to work

We usually bring out one article every week; sometimes more than one article comes out for special events and occasions. When an author submits and article and the editor in charge begins work, you will read through the article as well to get a sense of what's needed and brainstorm some rough ideas. These will be sent to the author for approval.

Most authors are happy to let you draw whatever you come up with, but some of them are very specific about the images they want. You will have to balance these with the Snipette aesthetic as well as your own abilities. The images often end up being something that neither you nor the author expected.

Drawings are usually planned with pencil and then outlined with a black pen of some kind and filled in. However, you're free to use whatever medium you want: the main constraint is that it should be full-colour with a black outline, and not obviously created using digital tools such as "stamp" and "bucket fill". The images should also have some stylistic similarities to previous Snipette images; you'll be working this out with Badri, the original Snipette illustrator, on a case-by-case basis.

Because of the nature of Snipette articles, you can have a lot of fun with the images! Cartoonish events and outlandish scenes are not uncommon in what we draw. if you're in the mood, you could include hidden messages or signs for people to find, such as the Sci-Hub crow in this illustration.

Analog Typesetter

You should have an artistic eye and the ability to expand the existing layout to fit new needs. A familiarity with Snipette and its content is preferred. You will work with us to:

Typeset the articles for our print edition, following the existing layout and design guidelines
Work with our design consultant to update or extend the design if the need arises
Coordinate with editors for collecting author details and bios for the print version
Adjust the content and occasionally create factboxes and other filler content
Send out PDF versions of the print edition when it's released

About 1-2 hours of work per week can be expected, increasing to 2-3 hours in the last week before each (quarterly) print issue goes to press. The position is currently unpaid; this may change in the future, depending upon the success of our Membership plan. We will, however, be happy to provide you with references or recommendation letters.

What it's like to work

Our print edition, Snipette Analog, comes out once every three months and includes about 12 articles previously published online. Your job will be to take these online articles and insert them into the Analog layout using the Scribus typesetting software. If the article doesn't fit the page well, you'll work with editors and illustrators to add extra images or write factboxes to fill up the extra space.

As you add articles, you will also note down any missing author bios, profile pictures, and location lines, and remind the editors in charge of those authors to collect the missing information.

Towards the end of the quarter is when things get a bit more rushed. You'll have to make sure all the next few weeks' articles are ready and inserted in advance, and start filling the Table of Contents and that issue's author details. Senior editors will vote on which illustration to use for the cover; you will have to crop and adjust it to make it work.

Two weeks before the quarter ends, you should have the print-ready version complete. The order will be placed and shipped; meanwhile you'll have to schedule-send a PDF, by email, to all the authors of that issue—either by yourself or in coordination with our outreach associate.

Our weekly meetings are semi-formal stock-taking sessions to review what's happened this week and what's happening in the next (as well as sometimes debating our favourite novel!)

To apply to join us, send an email to editors@snipettemag.com. Include a short pitch in 100-200 words and links to any related work you've done (if you're applying for assistant editor, a writing sample is required). And, of course, don't forget to mention which position you're applying for. You'll hear from us within 10 days and probably sooner. (If you don't, remember to check your promotion and spam boxes).