Chief Technology Officer at MoveOn.org (Virtual office)
Matt Blizek
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
FULL TIME • STARTS ASAP • COMPETITIVE PAY • EXCELLENT BENEFITS • WORK FROM ANYWHERE IN THE US • APPLY ASAP • ROLLING INTERVIEWS
MoveOn.org–the preeminent people-powered progressive campaigning organization that has, time and again, deployed original technology in the service of making social change–is hiring a new CTO. Is this you?
Since our founding in 1998, MoveOn.org has been at the leading edge of figuring out how to leverage technology and scale to organize and empower millions of everyday Americans to make a difference in the big fights of our time — combating economic inequality, opposing unjust wars, pushing for action on the climate crisis, and more.
MoveOn pioneered some of the first online tactics for progressive collective action — from online petitions to distributed event organizing tools to election calling technology to one of the earliest video-sharing tools. In recent years, MoveOn incubated Upworthy.com (formerly MoveOn Media) to spread powerful and compelling progressive content, and developed MoveOn Petitions (formerly SignOn.org) to empower tens of thousands of members to run their own MoveOn-style distributed campaigns.
In the coming years, our members will wage campaigns to push back against the radical right and the corrupting influence of big money in our democracy. We’ll build independent progressive political power through the 2016 elections. And we’ll pioneer the next generation of people-powered organizing. NBD.
Working together with our EDs and leadership across the organization, MoveOn’s Chief Technology Officer will vision and drive technology to serve MoveOn’s 8 million members. You’ll work closely with MoveOn.org Civic Action and MoveOn.org Political Action’s terrific, small (25-30 people), and tight-knit staff. For more on how the MoveOn team works, take a look at this historic MoveOn Way Document.
Responsibilities:
Our CTO must be an experienced technical leader with strategic vision, as well as the ability to get their hands dirty and code when required.
Visioning the relationship between MoveOn and technology and “how we tech” together with senior leaders in the organization.
Building and managing a team of 2-4 developers (the exact size and constellation of in-house staff vs. consultants will be on you to determine) to execute MoveOn’s mission.
Tech project management, prioritization, and execution across the organization.
Developing systems for tech training and tech support for the broader MoveOn staff.
Managing core tech infrastructure, contracts, and consultant relationships.
Developing systems for one-off tech development.
Visioning and executing further-afield, big tech development to help us re-conceive what “online campaigning” and “digital organizing” mean — helping build new tools and innovate new approaches to mobilizing, connecting, and engaging millions of regular citizens.
The ideal candidate will have deep experience working at the intersection of technology and social change, and working with diverse constituencies, and will be committed to serve the diversity of MoveOn’s base of members.
Required experience and skills:
Our next CTO should be a gifted technical manager with strong experience and a well-tuned intuition for building and maintaining tech capacity over time, managing risk on critical tools, and designing robust technical and human systems. Requires the following:
Experience dealing with internal and external stakeholders and support needs; prioritizing and sequencing projects. Bring your own favorite methodology (Agile/Scrum/Kanban/etc.) as long as it gets the job done!
Keen eye for managing long-term support and maintenance burdens to serve advocacy tools to our 8-million-member base and stay flexible over the long term.
Ability to set and stick to budgets and priorities; understanding when to say ‘no’ to a request and when to change course to meet an urgent need; and experience recruiting, hiring, and managing staff
Strong instincts for and interest in the new technologies being developed today and how they affect us in the world of quick, scalable Web systems development; the ability to research and make intelligent decisions about emerging tools in the areas of devops, cloud deployments, deferred processing, performance tuning, and non-relational databases.
To properly manage our technology resources and make smart decisions about contracts and staffing for all our tech needs, our CTO should be a well-rounded general-purpose programmer with in-depth knowledge of the entire web applications stack, requiring direct, hands-on experience with most or all of the following:
Several years of experience with one or more server-side Web applications frameworks in the general family of Django, Python, and Ruby on Rails, and the ability to learns bits or big chunks of others as needed.
Rock-solid understanding of the infrastructure behind a scaled deployment, and experience with multiple solutions for: Linux servers, database setup and configuration, permissions, load balancing, CDNs, and security.
Excellence with Git, SVN, or related code-versioning systems.
JavaScript/jQuery: able to write object-oriented functions, recognize and use common patterns for functions, callbacks, and JavaScript templates.
HTML/CSS: keeping up on the trends, but with an eye for the most robust, browser-compatible solutions for our basic layout and content. It helps to know Bootstrap or Foundation.
Familiarity with UI/user experience processes or protocols.
Experience in our domain-specific activism and online engagement tools is strongly preferred but not required:
Email CRMs like ActionKit, Blue State Digital, DemocracyInAction, Convio, NationBuilder, etc.
Email delivery assessment and related tools like SendGrid, Mandrill, Amazon SES, Mailjet.
Working understanding of big data tools and analytics kits like R, Stata, Pandas, SPSS.
Social media integration, Google Analytics, A/B optimizations.
Communication and collaboration:
Strong written and oral communication skills, and the ability to convey complex ideas through briefly and simply (our primary means of communication within the team is email or IM).
Effectiveness at working collaboratively with others to reach common goals and objectives.
Proven leadership ability, self-starting initiative, and a relentless focus on output and delivering results.
Ability to be effective in an organization whose staff works remotely.
Strong integrity, humility, and discretion.
A sense of humor.
Deadline: Interviews will be conducted on a rolling basis.
Location: Position can be based anywhere in the continental U.S.. May require some travel–there are one to two all-staff retreats each year in various cities, and three to four smaller staff meetings a year.
Salary and benefits: Competitive salary including benefits such as 100% employer-paid health and dental insurance for employees and their children, 4 weeks paid vacation time per year, 10 days paid sick time per year, 401k, and reimbursement of personal office expenses.
Reports to: Executive Director of MoveOn.org Political Action
To apply: Click here to submit your application, your resume, and a cover letter. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.
MoveOn.org Civic Action and MoveOn.org Political Action provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.