Chief Technical Officer

Online Progressive Engagement Network (OPEN)

Full Time | Remote

Any location but must be able to work in overlapping Europe & Africa working hours.

Package : € 80k - 110k for qualified applicants in high-cost-of-living areas. If you'd like to know the adjusted range for your location, we'll be glad to calculate it for you.

OPEN is an equal opportunity employer committed to an equitable workplace that confronts and combats racism, patriarchy, cissexism, ableism, casteism, religious bigotry and discrimination against any marginalised groups. People from backgrounds under-represented in tech or the global progressive movement are strongly encouraged to apply.

OPEN is a small core team working to facilitate collaboration across a loose network of organisations found across 19 different countries, whose approximately 300 combined staff collaborate online and at events to share tips, campaign strategies, and technology.

Our website at https://the-open.net, provides more information on the member organisations that make up the network. It also gives some context to our shared strategic DNA that helps the network's organisations thrive, and which, despite their differences, outlines a shared set of strategic imperatives defined around technology and organising needs.

The main outline of the role is to be:

- The driver of the strategy for OPEN's technology program, software products, and how the tech department provides value for the network - The chief advisor on technical matters across the organisation and when speaking on behalf of or making recommendations to the OPEN network - The leader of the technology program, its team and its resources, responsible for planning and excellence in execution across that team's work - A collaborator to the Network Team in designing and delivering Tech events, such as our Tech Summit, where technologists and campaigners from the OPEN network come together to share best practice and innovations

We are looking for an accomplished technical leader to manage the current team which includes a few in-house tech team members and a few external contractors. It also involves managing software collaborations which each have their own set of users and stakeholders, varying levels of community investment, product ownership, roadmap, backlog, and dev teams. The largest of the projects has about 4 staffers (equivalent) assigned to it.

It can get complex but it is also really, really good work. Whatever your team builds will have a dozen or two of the most amazing activist organisations on the planet using it to do good things. And once you're settled in, you'll have a chance to chart the course for this incredible community for years to come. This will include helping them achieve a kind of collective self-determination, to own the means of producing activism. From how we call government officials, to how we fundraise, to how we handle marketing automation, how groups integrate their online ads with their email data, or how they optimise WhatsApp shares on phones with limited internet.

OPEN’s technology program is at a key moment; we have built up some significant tech collaboration structures that are proving effective and scalable, and we are beginning to spread these successful practices to our other projects. There is loads of great work happening right now, and we have existing current funding to expand our team. We need someone to manage growth wisely and lead the team enthusiastically, to reinforce these new structures and smooth out the rough edges.

We're not expecting any applicant to look exactly like the ideal candidate but this should give you an idea of what we are looking for:

• Is comfortable managing a team of technologists, such as product owners, developers, user-experience researchers, security specialists, etc.
• Is interested in leading a team's inclusive culture and maintaining its ongoing health.
• Has experience managing budgets and staff decisions for a department.
• Is capable of estimating large pieces of work then helping to map out the implementation strategy with teams.
• Is excited to maintain good relationships with the broader professional network, supporting an active community to build great software together.

We are conducting a global search for this position (with the caveat that applicants must be able to cover time zones aligned with Europe & Africa where most organisations currently running our software are based). We will provide several months of supported onboarding to get upto speed for this role. During the onboarding time you’ll be involved in ongoing strategic planning discussions, conduct project reviews, and be introduced to the extended team of users, campaigners, and developer contributors.

If you feel like you have some of the skills but not all, that's fine – please get in touch; we want to grow with you, and you may offer different but equally valuable other skills not listed here anyhow!

Instead of a cover letter, we ask you to tell us about your experience in the following categories of work (we recognize that very few people will have such a broad range of experience, so even if you just meet some of these requirements, and you're up for a challenge, please consider applying anyway):

• Team manager: Experience managing a software team, responsible for a healthy and equitable team culture, line management and professional development, budgets and plans.
• Project analyst: Experience as a high-level project specialist like product manager, agile team facilitator, release coordinator, support specialist.
• Technical role: Experience in some kind of technical role like a software developer, automation tester, user-experience researcher, database maintainer, data-science researcher, developer-operations maintainer, or site reliability engineer.
• Community source: Experience as a community manager or maintainer, non-technical experience like as a coordinator is a big plus here.
• Business development: Experience in fundraising, as a founder, or in business development.

For each one of the above write about what relevant experience you have in that area and keep it to around 100 words or so for each. If you don’t have experience in the specified category, give us a sense of how you would compensate for that. How do you learn? How do you lean on your team to help you out? Is there another similar skill you have that you think could be transferable?

If you feel you'd be a good fit for this role or would like to talk more about the position, please email [email protected] and if you are applying include a copy of your resume and your answers to the above by 12th August 2020, 12pm UTC.