Director of Engineering, Platform

WHO WE ARE:

ActBlue is a nonprofit that builds tech and infrastructure for Democratic campaigns, progressive-aligned causes, and people trying to make an impact to fuel long-term, people-powered change. If you’ve ever given online to a Democrat or progressive organization, chances are you’ve used our powerful online fundraising platform.

We put power in the hands of small-dollar donors and help thousands of groups — from presidential candidates to environmental organizations — build grassroots movements. We envision a democracy where everyone looking to make progressive people-powered change can easily and effectively deploy their resources, energy, and creativity to shape our country and future. Every one of us, from the political activists to the tech innovators to the customer service pros, is fully committed to our mission.

THE OPPORTUNITY: 

ActBlue is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead our Platform Engineering department and further our ability to deliver products quickly while ensuring the stability and security of our platform.

Our infrastructure department consists of four teams: Cloud Platform, Core Platform, Front-End Platform, and Developer Platform. Together these teams are on a mission to ensure reliability, security, performance, and developer friendliness of our infrastructure—able to adjust to meet an ever-increasing scale of traffic and data and while enabling product developers to confidently and frictionlessly ship changes in their areas of expertise and ownership.

 WHAT YOU WILL DO:

• Own the Platform Engineering vision and technical strategy with a focus on delivering increased developer productivity and simplifying and modernizing our architecture, while minimizing operating costs and risk.
  
  
• Lead sustained platform transformation by consistently implementing small, iterative improvements that drive long-term innovation and growth. 
  
  
• Regularly update executive leadership and key stakeholders on the progress and outcomes of platform initiatives, ensuring alignment with overarching business goals.
  
  
• Guide the Platform Engineering teams’ development of technical roadmaps and support their execution of high-impact projects.
  
  
• Partner with product engineering teams to understand their needs and deliver tools and infrastructure that enable shipping faster, more maintainable, and higher quality features.
  
  
• Be a culture carrier for continuous learning, iterative improvement, and post-incident review.
  
  
• Invest in the growth of your direct and indirect reports by coaching them through new challenges and empowering them to own their solutions.
  
  
• Contribute to recruiting and management practices that enable us to hire and retain diverse talent and ensure all employees feel a strong sense of belonging.
  
  

WHAT YOU BRING:

• 8+ years or equivalent in leading and managing cloud platforms, developer experience, and SRE teams.
  
  
• 5+ years of experience operating in and enabling CI/CD environments.
• An empathetic and facilitative leadership style with a demonstrated ability to empower teams to do their best work.
  
  
• Proven track record of successfully building and maintaining cloud-native infrastructure, preferably in AWS.
  
  
• Experience in guiding large-scale code and architecture migrations.
  
  
• An embrace of architectural principles that values pragmatism over ideology.
  
  
• A belief that complex, scalable systems should be built with a small number of well-known tools and that root causes do not exist.
  
  
• Outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills, oriented towards engendering trust, being of service, and building shared power.
  
  
• Demonstrated commitment to fostering diversity and a strong sense of belonging.
  
  
• Extensive experience in promoting and nurturing continuous learning practices.
  
  
  

BONUS POINTS IF…

• Strong background in electoral politics and/or the political technology space
  
  
• Strong background in payments, b2b, and/or two-sided marketplaces
  
  

OUR ENGINEERING VALUES:

• We believe that ideas are more important than technologies.
  
  
• We understand that the tools we build have real-world consequences for millions of people and take that responsibility seriously.
  
  
• We know that code isn’t just a set of instructions for machines, but communication with other humans; style, elegance, and respect are important.
  
  
• We believe that an ability to balance paying off technical debt and rapidly completing a project contributes to the health of the codebase, engineering team, and organization.
  
  
• We believe that being correct isn’t enough; respect for your colleagues and users is fundamental.
  
  

LOCATION AND COMPENSATION: 

This posting is for a full-time, remote, salaried position. ATS is currently authorized to support remote work employees in California, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C. and Wisconsin.

Salary Range: $213,918 - $242,511 - $271,104

BENEFITS:

• Flexible work schedules and an unlimited time-off policy
  
  
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families; plus fully-paid health reimbursement arrangement to use for out-of-pocket expenses and fully-paid short- and long-term disability
  
  
• Fully paid basic and AD&D life insurance and a voluntary supplemental life insurance option
  
  
• Dependent and health care flexible spending account options
  
  
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits for employees
  
  
• Automatic 2% Employer-paid 401K contribution, plus up to an additional 6% match on employee contributions
  
  
• A minimum of three months paid medical, family and parental leave (for all new parents, adoptions included)
  
  
• Commuter or home-office benefits, including a $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees
  
  
• Additional perks including quarterly snack deliveries and digital subscriptions to the Boston Globe & New York Times
  
  

ActBlue is unable to sponsor work visas at this time.

Supervisory role not part of the Bargaining Unit position: Certain employees who report to this position may be covered by a collective bargaining agreement.

INCLUSION STATEMENT:

ActBlue is deeply committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity. We commit to retaining, developing, recruiting, and hiring a diverse staff community. We honor the dignity of all and celebrate each person’s unique qualities. We recognize the wide range of human differences, backgrounds, and intersectional identities that enrich the workspace and help us better meet our mission. If you feel a connection to our mission and see your interests reflected in this job description, we encourage you to apply – even if you don’t meet every requirement. 

ActBlue is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities throughout the interview and employment process, including for our online job application system. If you would like to request an accommodation when applying, please contact us at recruitment@actblue.com.