Open Positions

Foreword

The mission of the FreeCAD project association (FPA) is to gather donations and spend that money on behalf of the FreeCAD project and the community. The FPA is not directly responsible for developing FreeCAD. That is the job of the community of developers who are working on FreeCAD. At the FPA, our responsibility is to help developers develop. Therefore, it is important to understand the primary goal of the money gathered by the FPA is to help FreeCAD developers. Funding priority will always be given to existing and active FreeCAD community members.

One of the funding programs developed by the FPA is the Grants program. The grants program allows any FreeCAD developer who feels money could help them to do a better job with FreeCAD to request an amount of money to perform a certain task.

Alongside the Grants program, the FPA also sponsors specific positions and tasks designed to help the overall FreeCAD development process. Below are the current open positions. If you are interested in one of these programs, send us an email at fpa@freecad.org. Make sure you read all the requirements below!

Current open positions

Job offer: FPA accountant (Posted 10 July 2025)

Preamble

The FreeCAD Project Association (FPA) , an Internal Non-Profit Association (AISBL) seated in Brussels, Belgium, is seeking an accountant to help all year long with all the accounting tasks needed by the association. The FPA receives at the moment roughly 150 000 EUR/year in donations, most of them micro-donations from individuals of less than 10 EUR, made through internet platforms like PayPal or OpenCollective. The FPA spends that money through different programs, such as financing events where FreeCAD developers meet, sponsoring developers through grants (donations), and contracting services from developers and other people as to perform different activities that support the project. The FPA is subject to VAT in Belgium, and, as a support body to an open-source project, consider of uttermost importance to be extremely and totally transparent.

The accountant we seek should be fluent in English, as this is our common language around the project, and ideally know some French or Dutch to be able to help with Belgian documents (optional, see below). The accountant should also be ready to work with internet platforms, and able to handle and unify different CSV sources from these platforms. They should also be willing to work with Markdown, produce reports in open formats like HTML or Markdown, and use open-source accounting software. We are currently using gnuCash.

The FPA seeks mainly an accountant who is comfortable with open-source software, crowdfunding platforms and micro-donations, and is able to adapt to the FPA’s full transparency practices. Ideally, the accountant would also be a registered accountant in Belgium and able to perform the additional Belgium-related tasks described below. However, we understand such a profile might be hard to find, and we will give the priority to the first part. In that case, FPA admins will carry out the Belgian parts.

The FPA is not necessarily seeking for an experienced accountant, but rather a flexible person ready to work or learn to work “the open-source way”.

Estimated time commitment

The following estimation is based on our own experience, It might not correspond to the time you really spend on this, and you should not use it as a hard input to build your proposal.

• 12 hours per month for monthly reports
• 6 additional hours per quarter for VAT reports
• 24 additional hours per year for yearly reports

Job particularities

• Inside the FPA, everything happens in English. Belgium-specific parts (see below) need to be made in French or Dutch (models provided)
• You must be familiar with, or ready to learn, double-entry accounting. Although it is not required for an AISBL of our size, it is what we do at the FPA
• The FPA works with both EUR and USD. Main accounts are in EUR, but a lot of conversion is needed
• The software we currently use is gnuCash. The use of open-source software is important for the FPA as a policy as well as for keeping control over the data
• The FPA keeps monthly backups of everything, that should always be openable by FPA administrators
• Everything must always be documented so other people can carry on the tasks if needed
• Current bookkeeping process involves a certain amount of scripting to unify the different input sources. It is documented at https://fpa.freecad.org/handbook/process/bookkeeping/overview.html

Main tasks

• Monthly gather, verify, relate and organize and publish payments received and done on several platforms, currently:
  • BNP-Fortis bank account (CSV available monthly)
  • PayPal account (CSV available monthly)
  • OpenCollective account
  • Stripe
  • GitHub
• Use and update FPA issues
• Publish a monthly report on the FPA GitHub account
• Regularly gather with FPA admins via video conference for syncing and checking
• Quarterly produce a report of all VAT operations, following model provided by the FPA
• Yearly produce an assets report, following Belgian model provided by the FPA
• Yearly produce a balance report, following Belgian model provided by the FPA
• Yearly help produce a financial report and graphics for the FPA yearly report
• Yearly help produce a budget for the next year
• Ensure all legal deadlines are met
• Help updating the FPA handbook with accounting-related topics
• Provide general help, counselling and assistance to the FPA administrators in all accounting-related tasks like contracts, payments and record keeping.

Additional tasks, in case of a Belgium-registered accountant

• Quarterly fill the VAT returns form (needs Belgian ID + be a registered accountant)
• Yearly fill the tax returns (needs Belgian ID + be a registered accountant)
• Yearly fill the clients list (needs Belgian ID + be a registered accountant)
• Yearly deliver the balance report to the Brussels Greffe (needs Belgian ID + be a registered accountant)
• Yearly fill the ASBL tax declaration (needs Belgian ID + be a registered accountant)

Interested? This is what we would like to know from you

• In which part of the world you live
• If you are okay with all the tasks above, and which present more difficulties to you
• If you are willing and able to carry the Belgium-specific tasks or not
• What software you wish to use
• If you are okay to participate to the FPA video meetings from time to time
• How much you would ask to perform the job. You are free to format this as you see fit, but we would like to be able to figure out a yearly budget to allocate to this

Position open until filled. Send resume and cover letter to fpa@freecad.org to apply.

Eligibility

• Any contributor, FreeCAD community member, or anyone else who wishes to be considered for one of the programs above should submit a proposal in writing to the FPA. The proposal should minimally contain:

  1. Your understanding and acceptance of all the conditions stated on this page, including the “General conditions” below
  2. Demonstration that you have the required skills, motivation, or any other reason why you are the right person to do the job
  3. A plan of what you intend to do (it might differ from our proposal above)

• All candidates will be considered by the FPA general body and approved by vote

• Candidates need to be registered as independent workers in their country, and be able to submit invoices

• Priority will be given to people who already active members of the FreeCAD community (on any platform)

General conditions

The conditions below apply to all job offers:

• The tasks described in the job description above and the conditions below will be be gathered into a contract, to be signed by the candidate.

• The tasks needed to perform the given job are meant to be organised and performed by the candidate in the manner, schedule and time frame that the candidate sees appropriate, from their own location, using their own equipment, and establishing their own schedule and timetable. The FPA will help, but the responsability is of the candidate.

• The candidate is solely responsible for the quality of their work. There is no subordination relationship between the FPA and the candidate.

• This agreement is a strict non-employment agreement. The candidate agrees to the conditions of this agreement as an independent worker. There is no employment relationship between the FPA and the candidate. The candidate is solely responsible for paying all taxes such as revenue taxes incurring from the revenues obtained from this agreement, and for paying all social security contributions needed in the candidate’s country, and any other expense needed to perform their work as an independent worker.

• The candidate will be ready at all times to prove their independent worker status by showing documents like proof of payment of revenue taxes or conformity of their situation against social security, if requested by the FPA.

• The candidate will not hold the FPA responsible for any injury or material loss occurring during the execution of the tasks described in this agreement.

• Both the FPA and the candidate can unilaterally terminate this job at any time, for any reason, by simple notification to the other party. The FPA will pay a pro-rated final installment of the payment schedule if work has been done by the candidate after the last payment.

• The source code and technical designs of this job (as well as any documentation and supporting materials officially produced within this job) are to be made openly available to the general public under the LGPL 2.1+ for the code, or Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 for documentation material, as stated on the FreeCAD licenses page.

• The candidate commits to keep the FreeCAD community up-to-date with progress made within the project at least every month and will maintain a public log.

• All contracts made with the FPA have a termination date, and will need to be renewed if both the candidate and the FPA agree to pursue it for a longer period.

• All taks preformed will always include the documentation of processes and tools used, so that new contractors can take over. The FPA might block the last payment if the work has been unsufficiently documented, until the problem is resolved.

Payment

• Upon approving a candidate, the FPA and the candidate will agree on a payment schedule. Payments will be done by the FPA according to that schedule, by IBAN bank transfer or PayPal.

• Contractors must issue invoices for work done, and no payment is issued without an individual invoice for the time period being billed for.