Summer 2021 Fellow: Patricia Wei, ‘23 (Undeclared)
*This opportunity is cohosted with CS+Social Good, and the application can be found here.
Office Description
The San José Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation (MOTI) leverages technology to improve our residents’ livelihoods, opportunities, and city experience with an emphasis on inclusion, equity, and antifragility. With Mayor Sam Liccardo’s vision for San José, MOTI has been a leader in bringing inclusion to technology since 2016. MOTI has pioneered innovative public-private partnership models to bridge the digital divide, to deploy 5G small cell networks equitably across the city, and to pilot emerging technologies, such as autonomous vehicles.
Example Projects
The Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation leverages technology to address pressing issues facing our city to improve our residents’ livelihoods, opportunities, and city experience with an emphasis on inclusion, equity, and antifragility. As part of this mission, the CS+Social Good/SIG Fellow will work directly on digital products which are becoming essential service-delivery and communication channels for our more than one million residents. This could include San José 311, a stealth-mode police misconduct transparency portal, or a new resident-facing project altogether (depending on City needs in June 2022 and the Fellow’s own interests). The Fellow will be expected to serve as a technical product manager, driving product strategy and development, working with IT specialists and software engineers, and regularly “up-managing” and presenting to executive stakeholders (Mayor, Chief Information Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, etc.). The opportunity is wide open — our past CS+Social Good/SIG Fellow became a City leader on designing for accessibility!
Desired Skills and Qualifications
We operate in a very resource-constrained and high visibility environment — and the Fellow should be comfortable with big, amorphous challenges (with ample support from their team). As technical product manager, the Fellow may demonstrate the following skills:
- Programming skills in essential languages like Java, Python, and C++;
- Ability to learn new programming languages and methodologies as necessary;
- Understanding of software implementation process;
- At least 2 years of Computer Science coursework or practical experience;
- Previous experience working on a digital product (website, consumer app, etc.);
- Ability to work in high-pressure situations and present to the public;
- Excellent attention to detail and written/verbal communication skills;
- Past multidisciplinary team work (i.e. hackathons and innovation sprints)
