SumOfUs is seeking a Product Director. You’ll lead our Agile development process, managing our internal Scrum team, including developers, campaigners, and data scientists, to build technology to mobilise millions of SumOfUs members around the world.
You will be responsible for the lifecycle of our technical projects, working with the Executive and Campaigns Leadership teams to develop our product vision, and with our Scrum team to translate that vision into products that our campaigns will use every day to mobilise SumOfUs members. You will bring to the team creativity, technical know-how, hands-on experience with Agile methodologies and tools, and a commitment to using technology to fuel global social justice movements.
This is a full time role, open to anyone who can commit between 30 and 40 hours per week.
You can work remotely or from a co-working office in any timezone ranging between GMT -5 to GMT +1 to (i.e. from Chicago to Lagos, and anywhere in between).
What you’ll do as part of the SumOfUs team
- Facilitate product inception workshops, and guide our product conception and design processes across our internal teams;
- Lead and manage product lifecycle and facilitate scrum processes and sprints -- including sprint planning, backlog grooming, story point estimation, daily standups, sprint reviews/demos, sprint retrospectives;
- Manage and coach team members to work together in the most effective way possible, ensuring effective collaboration with developers, designers, data analysts and stakeholders;
- Create projects scopes, plans, timelines, risk management and rollout plans in line with our strategy, continually finding ways to improve the product development processes;
- Track, evaluate and report back on project/sprint progress and plans, and ensure clear communication with the team;
- Ensure that the team delivers clean, maintainable, extensible, and well tested software that meets the needs of our campaigners; and
- Other roles, as needed (we’re still a start up environment!)
Skills and experiences you’ll need to bring
All roles at SumOfUs require you to be:
- Dedicated to building a fairer and more sustainable global economy;
- Comfortable in fast-moving work environments;
- An excellent communicator in English;
- An enthusiastic technologist and experimenter;
- Committed to building a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace culture.
And, this role in particular will require you to have at least 4 years’ relevant professional experience, including:
- At least one year experience as a Project Manager, Scrum Master, or in a similar capacity in an Agile environment (PMP, Project Management Certification, or Scrum Master Certification or equivalent experience preferred);
- At least one year experience working in an in-house technical team who are delivering with a nimble, iterative product development cycle, and are responsible of all aspects of full-stack development, from front-end to API to database;
- At least one year experience supervising staff (preferably technical staff);
You should also bring:
- Familiarity with at least some of the technologies we use AWS, Ruby (Rails), Javascript (Webpack, React), and sufficient technical expertise to create and execute a QA strategy for the acceptance and review of product features and fixes (you can checkout our GitHub repo at https://github.com/SumOfUs); and
- Excellent collaboration and teamwork skills across both technical and non-technical teams; excels in motivating and facilitating collaboration across cross-functional teams to reach common goals and solutions.
Other skills that would be nice to have
Here’s a list of other skills that you might have. We know that no one can possibly have all these skills - you will likely be able to bring 2 or 3 of the following to our team:
- Experience leading inception workshops, rapid prototyping processes, or user experience testing and research;
- Familiarity with the MoveOn/Avaaz/Color of Change/SumOfUs model of digital campaigning;
- Experience with digital campaigning/marketing platforms and toolsets -- such as ActionKit, NationBuilder, BlueStateDigital, ActionNetwork, ControlShift, Attentive.ly, ShareProgress, etc;
- Experience using SQL and data and experimentation tools (e.g. Optimizely or MixPanel, Redshift or Mode Analytics), or experience in data modeling and data mining;
- Proficiency in major world languages other than English – especially French, German or Spanish;
- Experience with activism or social justice;
- From or experience working closely with communities affected by corporate power -- from indigenous communities to low-wage workers;
- Experience in working on a remote team, ideally across multiple countries and timezones; or
- Experience working with mobile technology and user interfaces.
Compensation is competitive and will be determined based on a combination of experience, seniority, and the city you live in.
For some context: this position in London will pay between GBP£57,000 and GBP£67,500, in Atlanta will pay between USD$74,000 and USD$88,000, in Buenos Aires between USD$86,000 and USD$102,000, and in Lagos between USD$69,000 and USD$81,000, plus 8% retirement fund contributions.
We offer significant benefits, including:
- 5 weeks paid vacation time per year, plus 13 public holidays;
- 6 months paid parental leave;
- the ability to work from home or a co-working space;
- flexibility to set your own hours;
- paid sick leave;
- health insurance;
- professional development budget, and
- 8% retirement fund contributions.
This position will report to the Chief of Staff.
Apply at https://sumofus.recruiterbox.com/jobs/fk0fj4p/
You'll be asked to upload your CV/resume and a PDF document with your answers to the following four questions:
- Why are you applying for this job? (suggested word limit: 125);
- Briefly describe the best experience you’ve ever had working in a Scrum environment. Outline the key principles or practices this team used to succeed (suggested word limit: 250);
- What’s one idea, big or small, that you have for how advocacy organizations can use technology better? (suggested word limit: 200); and
- Identify which of the “nice to have” skills listed above you have, with a few words of explanation if that’s useful.
Applications without responses to these five questions will not be considered.
Applications close on Sunday, October 22.
SumOfUs is an equal opportunity employer. It is the policy of SumOfUs to provide equal employment opportunity to all applicants for employment and employees and not to discriminate because of race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, personal appearance, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, family responsibilities, matriculation, genetic information, or political affiliation. Equal employment opportunities will be provided in employment, recruitment, selection, compensation, benefits, promotion, demotion, layoff, termination and all other terms and conditions of employment.
People from communities that traditionally experience discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity or immigration status; women; new parents; people with disabilities; and LGBTQIA+ people are especially encouraged to apply.