Collaborative Desk Coordinator (part-time, 0.5 FTE)
Empower journalists to work safely and efficiently across borders!
At Arena for Journalism in Europe, we are looking for someone to coordinate the Collaborative Desk and lead security awareness trainings to support collaborative, cross-border journalism. The role combines expertise in IT and secure tech environments, as well as project coordination and user support.
The Collaborative Desk provides the technical infrastructure needed for journalistic cross-border collaborations, translating the needs of the journalists into a technical setup, hosted on its own open-source environment.
Cross-border teams have unique challenges: team members work in different countries, from well-established newsrooms to working on a freelance basis. The aim of Arena’s Collaborative Desk is to facilitate a crucial aspect of this collaboration: A digital workspace that is secure and easily accessible, as well as guidance in using it.
We are looking for someone who:
- Has experience with providing IT assistance to users.
- Has experience with providing security awareness trainings.
- Has a good understanding of digital security strategies, concepts and tools, and is familiar with risk management, threat analysis, and operational security.
- Is experienced with the following or similar tools tools: Nextcloud, Keycloak and secure chat messengers such as Matrix and Signal.
- Is committed to working in an open-source environment and familiar with concepts of independent infrastructure.
- Has privacy awareness and understanding of data protection concepts.
- Is organised and adept at keeping an overview, meeting deadlines, and prioritising.
- Has a strong collaborative mind-set and experience working closely with others, while also able to handle tasks independently and reliably.
- Is based in a European country.
- It is a considerable advantage if you have:
- A good understanding of the effects of technology on the information ecosystem and current tech policy trends.
- Experience working with journalists and media.
- Knowledge of the European media environment.
Your responsibilities will be:
- To support the development of the Collaborative Desk.
- To organise the lifecycle of the Collaborative Desk users, including the intake, onboarding and offboarding processes, documentation and implementation and administrative tasks.
- To manage the (daily) queries and/or requests from users and teams and to provide technical support.
- To organise and conduct training and mentoring to users and cross-border teams on the use of the Collaborative Desk environment in collaboration with Arena Academy colleagues.
- To provide training on security awareness and broader topics, like surveillance and AI security, for the users of the Collaborative Desk and to conduct risk assessments with them.
- To design and keep up-to-date training material and tutorials/how-to’s in a non-technical language.
- To organize work packages for the Collaborative Desk and to contribute to the strategy and planning of the project.
- To present and promote the project at conferences and online sessions.
Who are we?
Arena for Journalism in Europe supports cross-border and collaborative journalism. We believe that collaborative journalism is crucial to knowledge-sharing, critical thinking and political life in European societies. We build European networks, create cross-border meeting spaces, and spread the tools and experiences of collaborative projects.
Arena is based in the Netherlands, but team members work remotely from across Europe. We meet several times a year, collaborate and look out for each other within the team. Our working language is English.
Conditions
The role is a 50% part-time position with flexible and remote working conditions on a freelance-basis. We expect approximately 20 travel days per year. The remuneration level is €58-64k annually FTE, depending on experience.
Arena for Journalism in Europe is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications that can make the organisation a better reflection of society.
Please submit your application and CV to jobs@journalismarena.eu before midnight on Sunday 30th of November 2025.
Please include short answers to the following questions (max. 150 words):
- In your experience, what are some of the main challenges to providing IT user support, and how do you mitigate and handle them?
- What do you consider is the main opportunity in terms of either technology development OR tech policy trend for journalists currently? Why?
We encourage you to apply early as we will be interviewing on a rolling basis.