Position Overview

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. You not only understand the importance of creating great engineering systems and output, but also of creating great teams. The right candidate is an outstanding engineer who is comfortable and willing to review and contribute code themselves, while knowing their role is to set the team’s direction and delivery.

As an open source project, ROOST’s “team” isn’t just the staff, but the wider ecosystem of users, contributors, and vendors who make up our community. A successful Director of Engineering will see community members as critical stakeholders and understand how to engage them in defining project roadmaps and priorities, and elevate external contributors to core virtual team members.

What We’re Building

ROOST is creating foundational infrastructure for a trust and safety workflow. This is the infrastructure that enables an organization to detect policy-violating content or behavior, then route, review, enforce, and log that content and or behavior. This is a system that’s heavy on data ingestion and processing, enforcing user-defined rules, and must be performant at scale.

We also know AI is creating new challenges and opportunities for online safety; we’re building tools that are resilient and relevant to these changes. ROOST’s currently available projects are Coop and Osprey and the near-term roadmap is publicly available.

Key Responsibilities

Define and establish an engineering culture that creates high quality, effective, and user-driven open source projects.

Team Development

• Develop both the short term and long term engineering team shape and requirements to successfully deliver ROOST’s roadmap. Hire and onboard team members.
• Manage and develop the ROOST engineering team, including creating a positive and welcoming dynamic between on-staff contributors and external contributors.
• Mentor and provide guidance to ROOST engineers, community developers, community members, and the 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. Identify areas of improvement and own implementation.

Software Development and Release

• Drive ROOST’s software development lifecycle practices, and own implementing practices across ROOST projects, including but not limited to: performance and reliability, code quality and rigor, testing and monitoring, tooling and vendor integrations, CI/CD practices, and security practices.
• Drive engineering decisions including system design, performance, maintainability and extensibility. Make implementation trade-offs while building well architected platforms.
• Contribute directly to project development by working on feature development, resolving bugs, and getting hands-on with SDLC management
• Partner with the Director of Product to establish and maintain predictable, timely development of software releases and bug fixes. Own milestone planning for engineering work and proactively communicate and address changes.

Strategic Project Evolution

• Ensure ROOST’s development priorities continuously reflect the needs of users, working with the ROOST team and Technical Design Committee to incorporate feedback into project roadmaps, planning cycles, and future “big bets.”
• Stay abreast of changes and advancements in engineering, such as AI capabilities, trust and safety challenges and open source domains. Proactively spot opportunities and potential problems, long term opportunities and share strategic proposals with your fellow ROOST leaders.

Steward Effective Collaboration

• Bring technical leadership and experience and be responsible for getting user and community buy-in to engineering decisions.
• Collaborate with diverse stakeholders - trust and safety teams, open source community, and academic researchers.

Who You’ll Work With

This role is part of ROOST’s leadership team, working closely with the Director of Product. ROOST projects are developed in the open, and community contributors and users are key stakeholders to the Director’s work. The Director of Engineering is a member of ROOST’s Technical Design Committee (TDC), a community body of experts that shepherds the technical direction of ROOST’s tools. A successful Director will develop close working relationships with TDC members and prominent community contributors and project users.

As a member of the leadership team, the Director of Engineering will have opportunities to interface with ROOST’s Board of Directors, a distinguished group governing the organization.

Qualifications

Must-have

• 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 and communicating them transparently
• A language polyglot – comfortable learning and working in new languages – and 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

About ROOST

ROOST is a community effort to build scalable and resilient safety infrastructure for the AI era. Many organizations – big and small – still lack access to basic safety resources, hindering innovation and putting users at risk.

ROOST develops, maintains, and distributes open source building blocks to safeguard global users and communities. Backed by dedicated technical teams and leading experts, ROOST meets organizations where they are and provides hands-on support at every stage of their safety journey. You can learn more about the ROOST launch and our partners’ support at roost.tools.

Compensation and Structure

• ROOST is a remote organization with global hiring flexibility; this role will be expected to work a majority of hours overlapping with North American time zones.
• ROOST aims to offer competitive compensation based on candidates’ experience and their regional market. In the US, the compensation range is $250,000 - 345,000 USD. This role is eligible for a performance-based bonus.
• Comprehensive Benefits Package:
  • Premium health, dental, and vision coverage for employee and dependents
  • 401(k) with matching
  • PTO
  • Remote-first work environment with flexible hours
• ROOST is a non-profit fiscally sponsored by Global Impact. Individuals based in the US will be employed by Global Impact on behalf of ROOST.
  

What You'll Experience at ROOST

• As part of our early-stage team of 6 people and close to 30 community partners, you’ll have a pivotal role shaping how ROOST evolves during its initial growth phase.
• A community that genuinely values different perspectives and approaches
• The chance to work across organizational boundaries with partners who share our mission
• The opportunity to build technology that makes a meaningful difference in online safety and helps protect vulnerable communities online
• The chance to define best practices in an emerging field and contribute to safer digital spaces globally
• Regular opportunities to engage with industry and civic leaders and working on Trust & Safety challenges
• Flexible work arrangements that prioritize results and impact over traditional office structures

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.