Arena Careers

Senior Director of Product
Start date: January 2026
Salary: $145,000

The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA) is the leading national voice for dignity, respect, and recognition for domestic workers in the United States. NDWA was founded in 2007 by organizers and worker leaders in six cities representing nannies, house cleaners, and care workers, and now represents an alliance of more than 76 organizations across 22 states and 395,000 domestic workers nationally.

We envision a society where domestic work is valued as essential to our collective well-being, domestic workers are leaders in shaping the care sector, and domestic work jobs are good, economically secure jobs.

For nearly 20 years, we’ve worked to advance our mission by making domestic work visible. We’ve worked to pass policies that enable rights and higher wages for domestic workers across the country, changed public awareness and opinion about the dignity and value of care work, and built the capacity and leadership of domestic workers to organize and advocate for their rights.

We see the next era of our organization as an opportunity to move domestic work from newfound visibility towards transformation, and we’re ready to elevate care workers to the essential workers of the 21st-century economy.

We’re a multi-racial, multi-lingual organization building a powerful movement rooted in the human rights, dignity, and equality of domestic workers, care workers, immigrant women, and women of color.

Summary of the position

The Senior Director of Product will lead the vision, strategy, and execution of NDWA’s technology products. Reporting to the Chief Strategy and Impact Officer, the Senior Director will serve as the organization’s senior-most product leader, responsible for building impactful, easy-to-use, and scalable digital experiences rooted in the needs and leadership of domestic workers.

We’re preparing to publicly launch two groundbreaking digital tools early next year: the Membership Center, a digital home where workers can access resources and community, and Ask Aya, an AI-powered coach that helps workers learn about their rights and navigate the workplace. These tools and others support workers, organizers, and partners across the domestic worker movement.

This role combines strategic leadership, technical fluency, strong user-centered design instincts, and the ability to partner seamlessly across organizing, product, engineering, data, and communications. The Senior Director will guide products from concept through launch and ongoing iteration, build the internal product function, and help NDWA understand and respond to emerging technology trends — including AI — shaping the care economy.

We’re looking for someone who brings:

• A strong track record of managing and launching complex products, with hands on engineering contributions ideally in mission-driven or movement environments.

• Deep technical fluency and the ability to write production code, review pull/merge requests, contribute to technical architecture decisions, and who has demonstrated experience using AI coding assistants.

• Comfort leading cross-functional teams and translating between technical and non-technical collaborators.

• A deep commitment to NDWA’s mission and to developing technology with, for, and by domestic workers.

• Strategic clarity and decisive operational execution — someone who can “land the plane,” move quickly, and make thoughtful tradeoffs.

• Experience building teams, processes, and product practices inside growing organizations.

Opportunities for Impact

Build a Movement-Centered Product Culture

• Champion a user-centered, experimental, and worker-driven product approach across NDWA.

• Shape the long-term product vision for NDWA’s digital initiatives, worker tools, and supporter-facing products.

• Develop intermediate and long-term plans for experimentation, learning, iteration, and continuous improvement.

• Apply an intersectional IDEAS lens to product decisions, ensuring that domestic workers — especially immigrant women and women of color — are centered in product research, testing, and experience design.

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Own the technical vision and architecture strategy for NDWA’s digital products

• Conduct regular code reviews and provide technical mentorship to engineering contractors (and eventually team)

• Write code regularly to maintain technical credibility and contribute to critical features and add capacity to the team.

• Lead technical due diligence when evaluating vendors, contractors, and technical partners including technical interviews and code quality assessments.

Lead Product Strategy, Systems & Protocols

• Own product lifecycle strategy — from discovery and hypothesis setting to development, testing, launch, and iteration.

• Define and manage the product roadmap, prioritizing the highest-impact opportunities.

• Create and maintain systems for product planning, agile workflows, documentation, QA, and cross-team communication.

• Establish NDWA’s standards for experimentation, success metrics, usability, technical quality, and organizational alignment.

• Ensure seamless coordination across staff, contractors, and development partners.

Product Quality, Governance & Best Practices

• Ensure NDWA’s products are stable, secure, accessible, and well-structured for scalability.

• Develop governance practices for product decision-making, risk mitigation, and data/privacy compliance in collaboration with Data and Legal.

• Oversee reporting, dashboards, and systems that track product performance and user outcomes.

• Document key systems, processes, and architectural decisions to support institutional knowledge and the long-term sustainability of the product function.

• Make informed decisions about technical debt, prioritization, and system scalability based on hands-on technical assessment.

Strengthen NDWA’s Product & Technology Stack

• Oversee design and development of the Membership Center and Ask Aya through final build, testing, launch, and iteration phases.

• Partner closely with engineering, AI specialists, and external vendors to ensure efficient and high-quality execution.

• Evaluate and refine NDWA’s product and technology infrastructure, including architecture, integrations, and tech stack choices.

• Identify areas for innovation — particularly AI — that advance worker power, protections, or access to information.

Team Leadership

• Manage and develop a growing number of direct reports on the product team as well as the broader cross-functional team that touches the Membership Center and Ask Aya products, with responsibility for coaching, performance, recruitment, and talent development.

• Establish clear systems for coordination, communication, workflows, and accountability.

• Collaborate across teams to build shared understanding of product strategy and translate organizational needs into actionable product plans.

• Lead the handoff and transition planning with current leadership to ensure continuity of knowledge and systems.

• Mentor engineers of product thinking and while building the technical fluency of the product teams.

Personal and Professional Attributes

• 8+ years of product and engineering experience, including at least 3-5 years in hands-on engineering roles and 3+ years leading product strategy. Must demonstrate progression from engineering to product leadership while maintaining technical fluency.

• Experience managing cross-functional teams and collaborating with engineering, design, content, organizing, and/or data teams.

• Strong strategic thinking combined with tactical execution — someone who balances long-term vision with day-to-day decision-making.

• Excellence in synthesizing insights, prioritizing ruthlessly, and designing experiments rooted in learning goals.

• Highly organized and operationally rigorous, with systems to prevent things from slipping through the cracks.

• A “head, heart, hands” leader: data-informed and analytical; empathetic, inclusive, and self-aware; courageous and action-oriented.

• Skilled relationship builder who practices "power with," uses FAIR process, and contributes to a leadership culture centered on equity.

• Ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences.

• Continuous learner with curiosity about emerging technologies (including AI) and their impact on workers.

• Proven track record of leveraging AI coding assistants and automation tools to increase personal productivity and team velocity over the past 2+ years.

• Commitment to economic, racial, and gender justice and experience working with diverse staff and worker communities.

Technical & Functional Experience

Required Technical Skills:

• Proficiency in modern web development (JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Node.js, or similar)

• Experience with APIs, database design, and system architecture

• Demonstrated use of AI coding assistants (Copilor, Cursor, Claude etc)

• Ability to write technical documentation, review code and debug issues independently

• Understanding of cloud infrastructure (AWS), DevOps, and scalability considerations.

Required Product skills:

• Product management tools and workflows (agile, roadmapping, experimentation frameworks).

• Experience working with or managing engineering teams or contractors (preference for an engineering background, but not essential for the right candidate).

• UX/UI design familiarity — enough to guide design and assess usability.

• Understanding of data-informed product development and experiment design.

• Experience with AI tools, ethical considerations, or applied AI product development is a strong plus.

• Ability to quickly learn technical systems, evaluate architecture choices, and troubleshoot issues in partnership with developers.

How to Apply: Please apply directly to the job posting and send your resume, cover letter, and website (optional). Applications will only be accepted electronically, and solicitations to individual staff are unlikely to be responded to.

NDWA provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

NDWA is a union employer; this position is a senior management position.

NDWA participates in the E-Verify program and is an Equal Opportunity Employer.