MoveOn Chief Technology Officer
MoveOn Overview:
MoveOn is the largest independent progressive advocacy group in the United States. MoveOn is where millions mobilize for a better society—one in which everyone can thrive. Whether it's supporting a candidate, passing legislation, or changing our national culture, MoveOn members are committed to an inclusive and progressive future. We envision a world marked by equality, sustainability, and justice. And we mobilize together to achieve it.
Role Overview:
After nearly 6 years, our first CTO is leaving, having built our tech team. The team is in a strong place and we are looking to bring on a CTO to take the helm and lead us in the next phase of innovation in the progressive tech space.
The CTO reports to the Executive Director and sits on the Senior Management team. The CTO at MoveOn is responsible for driving tech, infrastructure, and data strategy at MoveOn, and manages budgets that together total in the small digit millions. Several technical teams report up to the CTO, and the CTO works closely with other team leads to develop, lead, and scale programs that power MoveOn’s political and advocacy work.
Tech has been a part of MoveOn’s DNA since our founding in 1998. MoveOn pioneered some of the first online tactics for progressive collective action — from online petitions to distributed event organizing tools to one of the earliest video-sharing tools. Over the last 6 years, technology, data, infrastructure, and analytics have powered MoveOn’s election program tactics, rapid response mobilization tactics, and played an outsized role in MoveOn’s recent growth. MoveOn has invested deeply in data warehousing and infrastructure, in analytics-driven modeling and targeting, and integrating the political tech ecosystem. MoveOn is an advisor to many political tech think tanks and companies, and an advocate of political tech collective bargaining. MoveOn has also pioneered open source software development, with its flagship peer-to-peer text banking system Spoke.
Responsibilities:
- Manage, develop and support the tech and analytics teams
- Advise the senior management team and executive director on tech related issues
- Work closely with product and design on tool development, member experience, and optimization work
- Work closely with the COO on operations and data-driven finance projects
- Own cyber security policy, processes, and incident response for the organization
- Develop and drive strategic vision for tech, tools, data, and infrastructure
- Develop and drive strategy for how tech intersects campaigns, organizing, and other front-line programs
- Manage, prioritize, and execute Tech projects across the organization
- Own cyber security policies, processes, tools, incident response
- Manage core tech infrastructure, contracts, vendor, and consultant relationships.
- Manage a portfolio of technical budget items and contracts
- Engage in technical thought leadership in political tech, at MoveOn, with allies, and in the broader progressive organizing ecosystem.
Required experience and skills:
- Competent manager of technical teams; able to manage both individuals and managers.
- Experience dealing with internal and external stakeholders. Able to explain technical tradeoffs, timelines, decisions, implications to senior management team and other team members. Ability to convey complex ideas briefly and simply.
- Comfortable making major system architecture decisions
- Ability to define and drive technical processes and policies
- 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
- Experience recruiting and hiring technical staff
- Ability to center equity in decision making, process development, and collaboration style
- Vision for future: strong interest in the new technologies being developed today and how they affect the progressive nonprofit ecosystem
- Ability to research and make intelligent decisions about emerging tools
- Deep understanding of web architecture and system architectures
- Experience defining and managing software processes, including technical project management, testing and deployment systems
- Ability to quickly get up to speed on the political tech ecosystem, including political CRMs like ActionKit, organizing tools, and key datasets.
- Ability to quickly get up to speed on organizational risk areas that intersect with tech, like email deliverability, cybersecurity
- Strong written and oral communication skills
- Ability to be effective in an organization whose staff works remotely.
- Ability to build strong relationships with colleagues outside of the tech team and bridge tech and program