The staff are the backbone of UKSEDS. They organise events, create new resources, work with other members of the space community, and make the vision of UKSEDS a reality.

As a member of staff you’ll have a specific responsibility and regular tasks requiring a time commitment of a few hours a week. You’ll report to the Executive Committee and to other volunteers.

You’ll be expected to:

  • Take responsibility for your part of the organisation
  • Be proactive and hardworking
  • Generally be a nice person

If you want to get involved in more than one team, then we’d be happy to have you in both, but remember we’ll need twice as much of your time.

If at any point, for any reason, you can’t do those things, that’s fine. We are students too, and we appreciate that exams, deadlines, and life often get in the way of volunteer roles like these. We will work with you to deal with these issues.

We’re divided into teams of about five, each focusing on a different area. The structure of each team is flexible and there will be plenty of opportunities to take ownership of projects.

Membership Team

We would be nothing without our members. Societies at dozens of universities across the country are affiliated with us, and we do our best to provide them with money, resources, and events. We need people to:

  • Work with our university branches to support their projects and events, and make them even more awesome
  • Tell new students all about who we are and what we do
  • Track down our alumni working in the space sector
  • Create content for our Wiki to provide guidance and ideas for projects

Events & Competitions Team

We run an ever increasing number of events and competitions every year, and we need people to:

Careers Team

SpaceCareers.uk is our careers website. We want it to become the number one destination for students looking to enter the space sector, and we need people to:

  • Write articles about jobs, career paths, courses etc.
  • Interview people currently working in the sector
  • Put together email newsletters about new jobs and articles
  • Work with recruiters to get jobs on to the site

Outreach Team

Supported by generous funding from the UK Space Agency we attend schools, science fairs, air shows, and museums doing outreach to inspire and educate kids and the public about space. We want to do more, so we need people to:

  • Go to events to man stalls, run activities, and give talks
  • Design activities and resources for fun, cost-effective outreach
  • Work with external event organisers to arrange our stands and talks

Diversity Team

We want to make the space sector as diverse and inclusive as possible. We do this by hosting events with the aim of increasing awareness of diversity and inclusion and supporting our members to do the same. We need people to:

  • Organise Diversity in Space Careers (DISC) events around the UK
  • Help us be as inclusive as possible in our activities and the way we work
  • Share knowledge and enthusiasm to make the space sector a better place for everyone

Marketing Team

Emails and social media posts are our main way of staying in touch with our members and letting people know what we do. We need people to:

  • Write Tweets, Facebook statuses, and web posts
  • Make pretty logos and tell people off for using the wrong font on things
  • Put together email newsletters about exciting space news and events
  • Remain calm when having Twitter conversations with space celebrities

Systems Administration Team

We have a number of different websites, both public and internal, and use various systems that sometimes don’t play nicely with each other. We need people to:

  • ‘Improve’ and then desperately try to fix various parts of our websites (WordPress, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript)
  • Develop our internal systems and rewrite awful code
  • Play with Slack’s API
  • Provide technical support to the other teams

FAQs

What’s it like volunteering with UKSEDS?

UKSEDS isn’t like most other organisations. We’re a charity run by students and recent graduates, all volunteering our time to work remotely. We all understand that life events and studies often take priority and we support each other in achieving our shared goals and maintaining our well-being.

Our team is built on trust, kindness, and teamwork, with an emphasis on helping others and learning new skills. Most importantly though, volunteering with UKSEDS is fun and rewarding! Although we strive to provide quality advice, resources, and events to the space community and wider public, we make sure to keep a lighthearted tone throughout our work. During your time as a volunteer, colleagues will also become great friends!

Who can join the team? 

Any UKSEDS member over the age of 18 can apply to join our team of volunteers, including current students and young professionals who have graduated in the last three years in the UK.

Do I need any specific skills?

All UKSEDS volunteers are students and young professionals. None of us are experts, and we value the process of trying things out and learning from our mistakes, as well as learning from each other. Many of us joined the team without the specific skills we have developed throughout our time working here. So, don’t be put off if you don’t have any previous experience! We aim to upskill new volunteers.

The ideal applicant shares our values, wants to contribute to the space community, and wants to gain useful skills.

How do I apply?

We advertise any open positions on SpaceCareers.uk. These are updated regularly, so please keep checking back if you are interested in joining the team. You can see the currently open jobs on our job board below. You can also follow us on social media, where we will announce when new positions are released.

Alternatively, we can email you whenever any openings in our team appear by signing up here.

UKSEDS Job Board

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