[Hiring] Director of Engineering @Robust Open Online Safety Tools

Role Description

As ROOST’s Director of Engineering, you’ll be responsible for leading the team of on-staff engineers who contribute to and maintain ROOST’s open source projects as an engineering manager and individual technical leader. We’re looking for a trusted engineering leader who will build on the mission of ROOST.

• Understand the importance of creating great engineering systems and output, as well as great teams.
• Comfortable and willing to review and contribute code while setting the team’s direction and delivery.
• Engage community members as critical stakeholders in defining project roadmaps and priorities.
• Elevate external contributors to core virtual team members.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and establish an engineering culture that creates high quality, effective, and user-driven open source projects.
• Develop both the short term and long term engineering team shape and requirements to successfully deliver ROOST’s roadmap.
• Manage and develop the ROOST engineering team, creating a positive dynamic between on-staff contributors and external contributors.
• Mentor and provide guidance to ROOST engineers, community developers, and users of ROOST’s tools.
• Create and model an engineering culture of high quality execution and teamwork through the full project lifecycle.
• Define and manage how to measure ROOST’s engineering effectiveness and identify areas of improvement.
• Drive ROOST’s software development lifecycle practices and implement practices across ROOST projects.
• Drive engineering decisions including system design, performance, maintainability, and extensibility.
• Contribute directly to project development by working on feature development and resolving bugs.
• Partner with the Director of Product to maintain predictable, timely development of software releases and bug fixes.
• Ensure ROOST’s development priorities reflect the needs of users and incorporate feedback into project roadmaps.
• Stay abreast of changes in engineering, such as AI capabilities and trust and safety challenges.
• Bring technical leadership and experience to get user and community buy-in to engineering decisions.
• Collaborate with diverse stakeholders including trust and safety teams, open source community, and academic researchers.

Qualifications

• 8 years of experience in software design and development.
• 2 years of experience in an engineering leadership role and in people management.
• Exhibits attention to detail in focusing on reliability, scalability, security, and continuous improvement.
• Proven record of working with disparate teams and individuals, understanding issues, and making decisions transparently.
• A language polyglot – comfortable learning and working in new languages, familiar with common infrastructure and high performance systems languages like Python, Go, or Rust.

Nice-to-have

• Understanding of the open source ecosystem and prior contributions to OSS.
• Understanding of the trust and safety field and prior professional experience.
• Experience designing, analyzing, and improving efficiency, scalability, and stability of various system resources.
• Prior experience in startups, nonprofits, and/or small team environments.

Benefits

• Premium health, dental, and vision coverage for employee and dependents.
• 401(k) with matching.
• PTO.
• Remote-first work environment with flexible hours.

How to Join Us

Please upload your resume along with a cover letter sharing why ROOST's mission resonates with you and how your experience could help us advance it.

Due to the volume of spam applications, we strongly recommend applicants include their LinkedIn, GitHub, or other referenceable profile in their cover letter or resume.

ROOST is committed to building a team that reflects the diversity of communities we aim to serve. We especially encourage applications from people whose perspectives are traditionally underrepresented in technology.