Director of Delivery Operations

Code for America

13h•$121,869 - $149,188•Remote

About The Position

Code for America is seeking a Director of Delivery Operations to establish and embed delivery practices, standards, and governance mechanisms. This role will ensure consistency and confidence in project execution across a growing portfolio of government-facing projects. The Director will build and steward systems, standards, and practices for excellent and repeatable project delivery. This is an internal-facing, enabling role that shapes how Safety Net advisory projects run from partnership handoff to project close. The individual will collaborate with Program Directors, Project Sponsors, and discipline leaders to embed practical delivery practices and partner with senior program leadership to ensure the operating model remains grounded in practical application. This new role offers strategic ownership in setting priorities for delivery infrastructure investment, making tradeoffs between standardization and project-specific judgment, and integrating AI-enabled tools and human-centered approaches to keep Code for America at the forefront of government service improvement. The role reports to the Senior Director of Safety Net and requires no more than 15% travel. Code for America is based in California and can employ individuals residing full-time within the United States. This is a remote position.

Requirements

8+ years of experience in project management, delivery operations, or a PMO function, ideally within a digital services, consulting, government, or related civic technology organization.
Demonstrated experience designing and implementing delivery frameworks, standards, or playbooks.
Demonstrated ability to set priorities across a delivery domain — deciding where to invest in standardization, where to leave flexibility, and how to communicate those tradeoffs to senior stakeholders.
Strong coaching and change management skills, with a track record of driving adoption of new practices across teams and anticipating resistance before it becomes a blocker.
Ability to learn fast, act with conviction, and stay open to feedback.
Experience facilitating project kickoffs and structuring handoff processes between teams or functions.
Deep familiarity with project and delivery management tools (e.g., Asana, Airtable, Jira, Smartsheet) and the ability to configure and support broad adoption.
Experience identifying and integrating AI tools into delivery or project management workflows, with a practical and responsible approach to doing so.
Experience supporting a portfolio of concurrent projects, with the ability to spot systemic delivery risks and support course-correction across programs.
Comfort working in a highly collaborative, cross-functional environment where influence matters more than authority — particularly in close partnership with product, partnerships, and program functions.
Experience navigating scope changes, escalations, and shifting partner expectations in complex, multi-stakeholder projects.
Curiosity about emerging AI tools and a commitment to using them responsibly and effectively.
A deep commitment to Code for America's mission of making government services work well for the people who need them most.

Nice To Haves

Experience working in civic tech, government services, or public sector delivery contexts.
Familiarity with human-centered design or agile delivery methodologies as practiced in digital government work.
Experience building delivery operations functions from scratch in a growing or scaling organization.
Background working with or alongside government partners (state agencies, federal programs).
Experience developing training curricula or facilitating communities of practice around delivery or project management.

Responsibilities

Own and continuously improve Code for America's delivery methodology, including project management standards, tools, templates, playbooks, and governance frameworks.
Set and drive strategic priorities for delivery infrastructure investment in alignment with senior leaders, making explicit tradeoffs about where standardization adds the most value and where over-prescribing would create friction rather than consistency.
Design and maintain protocols for the full project lifecycle: information handoffs from the Partnerships team at cultivation close, project kickoff facilitation and team onboarding, scope revision processes, and project close-out.
Collaborate with product operations to leverage learnings and best practices for common processes across product and advisory work.
Own and administer delivery tooling (e.g., Asana, Airtable), including configuration, project structuring, and ensuring visibility into project effectiveness across the portfolio.
Maintain a living library of easy-to-use delivery resources — templates, how-to guides, playbooks — that teams can access and apply without reinventing the wheel.
Identify and integrate AI tools into delivery workflows where they can meaningfully improve consistency, efficiency, or quality of execution, modeling responsible adoption for the broader team.
Provide day-to-day support to project leaders to ensure delivery standards are understood and consistently applied across their projects.
Roll out training, tools & resources, and onboarding support to build project management capability across program teams.
Drive adoption of delivery standards through intentional change management — not just defining the practices, but creating the conditions for people to use them consistently.
Anticipate any resistance to new delivery practices before it surfaces, and work to understand and address it proactively.
Design and facilitate feedback loops — through quality assurance reviews, retrospectives, and structured check-ins — that surface what's working and what needs to evolve.
Identify patterns across projects (recurring risks, scope issues, handoff breakdowns) and translate them into updated guidance and coaching.
Ensure strong communication and feedback loops with project teams to track delivery effectiveness, surface emerging risks, and provide hands-on support when projects need to course-correct from a project management perspective.
Support scope revision processes from a project management perspective, helping teams manage and reset expectations in a structured way.
Partner with the Partnerships team to ensure smooth handoffs at the transition from cultivation to delivery, with clear shared accountability and no loss of critical context.
Continually assess effectiveness and efficiency of existing and new governance mechanisms, including regular project check-ins, reporting, and communication processes that give senior leadership timely visibility into project status, risks, and delivery effectiveness across the portfolio. Recommend and implement changes to improve them.
Track adoption of delivery standards across projects and flag gaps proactively.
Support Program Directors in preparing for project reviews and escalations with consistent, well-structured information.
Partner with senior program leadership to ensure delivery operations stay aligned with evolving program priorities and organizational strategy.
Anticipate systemic challenges across the portfolio before they become blockers, and develop solutions that address root causes rather than individual project symptoms.
Engage in ad hoc projects and initiatives as required by the organization's evolving needs.

Benefits

Laptop provided
A one-time $700 payment for remote environment setup; $200 stipend (in first paycheck) and up to $500 reimbursement, in accordance with our equipment policy
Cell phone and/or internet reimbursement of $50 per month
$500 annual (per calendar year) stipend towards professional development; prorated at time of hire
Up to $500 of professional development funds can be rolled over each year, up to a maximum of $1000
Training / guidance for staff required to utilize AI as part of their role, plus opportunities for employees to gain AI-related skills to support job and career growth
100% employer match on the first 3% of 401k contributions.
Additional 50% match on 401k contributions between 3% and 5% for employees with 3+ years of service, for a maximum employer contribution of 5%
At least one no cost health insurance option for full-time employees for employee-only coverage
A minimum of 80% of the cost of dependent coverage for health insurance
Open personal time off (subject to manager approval)
A minimum of 14 paid holidays
Org-wide closure from Christmas Day through New Year's Day
Paid sick time; up to 96 hours annually
17 weeks of paid parental and family leave
3 weeks of paid sabbatical after 5 years of service