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Director of Engineering

Center for Open Science

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United States

Posted on Wednesday, April 19, 2023

At the Center for Open Science (COS), we build the tools to make it possible and easy for the research community to make scientific investigations' data, results, and outcomes open, transparent, and reproducible. Our team is dedicated to improving the alignment between scientific values and scientific practices to improve the accumulation and application of knowledge. Operating with a technology start-up mindset, the COS team moves quickly, identifies problems and creates solutions, encourages risk-taking, blends science and technology, and is collaborative, high energy, and dedicated to openness.

We are looking for a hands-on leader that can effectively manage a talented team of software, development, and quality assurance engineers. The role requires a candidate who is familiar with all aspects of application development and has strong experience of implementing software and architecture best practices, streamlining test-driven development, and who demonstrates efficient communication and execution processes. The ideal candidate will have full-stack engineering experience in developing software applications, have worked with developer communities on open-source projects, and can help navigate the tensions of being a non-profit with sustainability goals.

Objectives:

Execution of the product vision and strategy in support of the organization's mission, goals, and strategic objectives for providing open source open science infrastructure.
Responsible for understanding both the needs of the organization’s business strategy and the needs of the engineering resources, finding the balance to minimize cost and maximize results.

Responsibilities:

Provides technical leadership to the engineering team to enable high performance, efficient processes, and effective delivery of software projects to meet organizational goals.
Technical staff management through effective coaching, mentoring, onboarding, performance management, and delivery processes to build capacity in management, planning, and execution of the product vision and strategy and provide opportunities for growth.
Foster accountability among team members for estimating, delivering on time, meeting deadlines, communicating issues, and acknowledging accomplishments. Encourage ownership over areas of code, a process, a product, a project, to help accumulate accountability among team members.
Ensure efficient and effective product development processes across the infrastructure team to enable teams for continual success in the execution of projects, priorities, and strategic objectives with effective communication, and establish regular evaluation of the processes at work in the product development projects to understand what is working well and what is not. Work alongside teams to propose refinements and improvements to continuously improve efficiency of projects moving through the process.
Facilitates the establishment and execution of a lucid and intentional technical vision and architecture aligned with the product vision and strategy, ensuring stakeholder alignment and shared knowledge across the infrastructure team members.
Leads collaboration with members across the infrastructure team to determine what is the current amount of technical debt, what are the highest priorities, and the biggest areas of risk for the infrastructure as it relates to the product and technical vision and scaling, and brings shared understanding and visibility to deferred maintenance and impacts, establishes priority and roadmap for continued effort to reduce accumulation of debt, and communicate our progress.
Facilitate discussions of the senior engineering members and the senior product members to align the product vision and roadmap with the technical architecture and maintenance approach.
Institute, model, and ensure continued strong bidirectional communication within and across teams to remove silos and increase open, transparent information flow.
Support increased financial insights and planning to drive a cost-efficient budget strategy to achieve infrastructure sustainability goals.

Required Skills/Abilities:

Experience at effectively leading full stack engineering teams
Deep expertise in project management, associated tools (e.g., JIRA), and agile development practices
Efficient technical troubleshooting
Strong technical insight to support resourcing, prediction, and management of software engineering team
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Deep experience leading, mentoring, and managing teams (hiring, managing, performance reviews)
Organizational skills and ability to work on multiple projects and/or assignments simultaneously
Understand the deployment lifecycle from design, build, test, deploy, and evaluation of success
Experience with API-powered web applications

Required Leadership Competencies

Translates Strategy to Operational Goals: Translates department strategy into SMART project goals for teams and individuals. Ensures highest and best use of allocated resources. Empowers team members to execute projects. Defines clear project deliverables and monitors and reports against progress.
Leverages Functional Expertise: Leverages deep knowledge of industry and function to shape operational decisions and project plans. Uses prior technical experience to improve processes and procedures within the organization. Tracks latest practices and innovations and ways these could improve processes within the organization.
Drives Change: Leverages data-based observation, interpretation and intervention to engage stakeholders in shaping and implementing solutions. Identifies challenges and systemic barriers to change at the department/team level and engages in dialogue and productive conflict to move change forward.
Collaborates Internally & Externally: Actively supports collaboration within and between departments and with key stakeholders. Collaborates and models positive engagement resolving issues with a focus on mission and what’s best for the people we serve.
Communicates Effectively: Effectively communicates project and operating priorities to key stakeholder audiences that may include staff, donors and other audiences. Adjusts message and content based on feedback provided. Communicates clearly and effectively through verbal and written communication across individual, small group and large audience settings.

Required Education and Experience

10+ Years of experience in a software development, and with leading multiple full stack engineering teams
BS or BA in Computer Science, or equivalent
Experience with personnel management

Other Information:

This position supervises the Engineering and QA teams and is likely to have several direct reports, who in turn manage others.
This is largely a sedentary role. Prolonged periods of sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
COS supports flexibility in work scheduling. Individuals who would like to work outside a 9am - 5pm Eastern Time (ET) schedule must work with their managers to establish core hours of availability. Modifications for different time zones will be considered for team collaboration.
Occasional travel is possible for this position.

Please apply by submitting a resume. Questions about the position and COS are welcome and can be directed to jobs@cos.io.

Please note, in order to be considered for this position you must be authorized to work in the United States and have a U.S. address and bank account. Remote workers must be located within the U.S.

COS is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy, age, national origin, disability status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We also strongly encourage applications from members of groups underrepresented in science and technology industries.