Arena Careers

During the 2024 election cycle, Switchboard worked with over 2,700 campaigns and organizations from school board to federal races, strengthening Democratic digital fundraising and organizing programs up and down the ballot. In addition to the automated messaging platform that we launched in 2021, through which organizations have sent billions of messages, we’ve continued to build out an integrated suite of tools, including an emailer, forms builder, and fundraising analytics dashboards, with the goal of bringing together coordination across outreach channels, powerful analytics, and an easy-to-use platform. Your work could include prototyping new products to add to this suite of tools, new feature development on texting and email as user needs evolve, increasing our data offering to help customers integrate Switchboard data with other platforms, and more.

As an Engineering Manager, you’ll play an important role in leading a team of engineers as we head into the next political cycle. While you’ll have the opportunity to jump into the code yourself and help in the execution of projects, the majority of your time will be spent as a people manager managing engineers directly – helping them increase their impact by creating an environment where they can thrive, providing mentorship and guidance, developing their skillsets, fostering a culture of feedback, setting the right expectations and then holding them accountable if needed. You’ll work cross-functionally with product, design, data, and operations to help prioritize projects and make sure we have the right resources behind them, providing a technical voice as we plan and execute on projects.

Responsibilities Include:

• Managing engineers to help them increase their impact over time. This includes providing mentorship and guidance, developing their skillsets, fostering a culture of feedback, setting the right expectations and then holding them accountable if needed.
• Collaborate with team members to drive engineering initiatives that have an impact at an organizational level.
• Collaborate with people across the company (in product, design, data, and operations) to help prioritize projects and make sure we have the right engineering resources staffed to them.
• Design and build backend infrastructure to support evolving data models and integrations with third-party products.
• Develop web applications to support the needs of campaign staffers, sometimes deploying existing open source projects and other times developing new tools from scratch.
• Help establish and contribute to a positive engineering culture, with best practices around testing, code quality, security, and automation to help reduce errors and maintenance costs.

Ideal Candidates:

• 2+ years experience as an engineering manager, with a track record of growing engineers and building strong teams.
• Represent our company values well of serving the long-term Democratic movement, taking ownership, staying humble, operating with autonomy, and remembering that we’re a tech company at heart.
• Communicate effectively with engineers and other people across the company and with outside partners.
• Have expertise in at least one specific domain such as fullstack web development or data infrastructure.
• Experience building and deploying large-scale web applications, with an eye towards adaptability, scalability, and reliability.
• Knowledge of Python, JavaScript, or the ability to learn them quickly. (e.g. we use Django Rest Framework on the backend, and NextJS on the frontend).
• Comfortable taking on projects in new areas for them, learning quickly to develop the expertise and execute on those projects.

Compensation

• $190k-$225k annual salary and an equity grant depending on experience
• Switchboard covers 100% of health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and 75% for dependents
• Employer-provided long-term disability and life insurance
• 21 days of paid time off plus federal holidays
• Unlimited sick leave
• 12 weeks paid parental leave for parents of any gender, including adoptive parents
• 401(K) match with immediate vesting

Diversity

We believe the best products and companies are built by diverse teams where everyone’s perspectives are heard and respected. We strongly encourage people of color, LGBTQ+, women, and members of other underrepresented groups to apply. Even if you’re not sure if the role is a good fit, please apply! We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities in the hiring process and on the job.

Candidates must be authorized to work in the US. Unfortunately we're unable to sponsor work visas at this time.