Associate Director of Platform Engineering

ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION INC•San Francisco, CA

3d•$145,000 - $153,900•Hybrid

About The Position

The Associate Director of Platform Engineering leads EFF’s Platform Engineering team, which is responsible for the organization’s web and cloud infrastructure and the systems that deliver EFF’s public-facing services. The role owns the reliability, security, and scalability of EFF’s websites, applications, and cloud deployments, and manages the web developers and cloud and operations engineers who build and operate them. The position combines people management with technical leadership. It oversees team performance, workload, collaboration, priorities, and resource coordination, while leading platform operations, application development, security, incident response, and improvements to EFF’s web and cloud systems. The role reports to the Director of Technical Services and supervises web developers and engineers on the Technology & Design team. This is a full-time position based at EFF’s San Francisco offices, with a hybrid work schedule possible. Work is typically Monday through Friday, around 40 hours per week. Occasional after-hours work may be needed for high-priority outages, service disruptions, or work requiring downtime for critical systems. Staff are expected to attend up to two annual all-staff retreats in the Bay Area; frequent travel is otherwise not required. Compensation is $145,000 to $153,900, depending on experience.

Requirements

At least 5 years of information technology experience, with increasing levels of responsibility and management.
Relevant experience with web infrastructure and cloud platforms such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, and with platform or site-reliability engineering.
Relevant experience leading a technical or engineering team; application developer experience on the team is preferred.
Excellent communication and facilitation skills.
Experience with infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and modern observability tooling.
Familiarity with non-profit operations and working in a unionized environment.
Strong analytical and interpersonal skills.
Ability to manage and prioritize work in a complex environment with multiple simultaneous projects.
Ability to communicate and engage with EFF staff about the organization’s work and advocacy.
Ability to work with a diverse group of internal and external stakeholders.
Empathy and ability to understand and incorporate other team members’ points of view.
Ability to give and receive feedback professionally and with care.
Ability to navigate turbulence steadily and with focus, particularly during outages and security incidents.
Demonstrated care and respect toward coworkers, outside partners, members of the public, donors, and others, and ability to resolve conflicts and overcome challenges collaboratively.
Availability and responsiveness to colleagues and others over email, phone, and online chat, including reliable responses to time-sensitive requests during agreed-upon working hours.
Commitment to contributing to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive work culture.
Ability to perform mostly sedentary work and spend long periods at a computer.
Ability to attend up to two annual all-staff retreats in the Bay Area.

Responsibilities

Supervise direct reports, establish sustainable workloads and clear goals, and support effective collaboration with other teams and colleagues.
Provide regular feedback and coaching through weekly one-on-ones and annual reviews, and document and address performance issues, escalating to the Director of Technical Services and HR when appropriate.
Collaborate with the Director of Technical Services to maintain high performance standards.
Coordinate resources and priorities with the Associate Director of IT and Infrastructure, including a shared roadmap, on-call rotation, and project staffing.
Coordinate priorities, timelines, and resources with other EFF teams and help resolve potential conflicts.
Keep EFF staff informed about the team’s activities, direct them to appropriate staff or teams, and facilitate communication and problem-solving.
Identify and address challenges that could impede the team’s goals, fostering proactive problem-solving and smooth workflows.
Lead the work on EFF’s web and cloud platforms, maintaining service availability and sound deployment, monitoring, incident-response, and security systems across cloud environments.
Lead application development for EFF’s web platform, including the EFF.org migration and Donate app, in collaboration with Design.
Propose and oversee project budgets and timelines, approve expenses within budgetary authority, and request quotes.
Set platform standards and practices with the technology team, including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, observability, and secure development.
Participate in the shared on-call rotation, lead responses to web and cloud incidents, and conduct post-incident reviews.
Regularly review EFF’s web and cloud systems, identify problems, develop strategies, and propose solutions.
Recommend and oversee changes and upgrades to improve team and system efficiency and the level of service provided to staff and the public.
Attend up to two all-staff retreats in the Bay Area annually.