About the opportunity

Springboard Collaborative invites talented and passionate candidates to apply for the position of Senior Director, Engineering. The Senior Director will be responsible for building, leading, and managing an engineering team to establish the future of Springboard’s software products, which support teachers and families in advancing their student’s literacy skills. This includes the Springboard mobile web app, a student data platform, and a digital assessment tool. The Senior Director will be well-versed in current tech trends, with strong strategic and systems thinking abilities. A successful candidate will be innovative and practical with the willingness to work with materials, systems, and people in a fast-paced, service-oriented environment.

The Senior Director will partner with the Springboard leadership team and Product Managers to translate strategic objectives into actionable development plans. Using a collaborative and agile approach, the Senior Director will build a vision for the Springboard tech platform, articulate the business opportunity, lead the build versus buy process, and then guide the team to synthesize technology solutions that strengthen our internal and external partnerships. Fundamentally, the Senior Director will leverage technology in order to dramatically increase Springboard’s scale and impact. This is an integral part of Springboard’s vision to transform the education sector by making family engagement a matter of course.

The Senior Director will report to the VP, Engineering, Systems, and Products and work as part of the Engineering, Systems, and Products team at Springboard. This is a great opportunity to support an entrepreneurial team in maximizing the impact of a rapidly growing organization.

Diversity is more than a commitment at Springboard Collaborative—it is the foundation of what we do. We are fully focused on equality and believe deeply in diversity of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, national origin, and all the other fascinating characteristics that make us different.

We believe that these diverse communities must be centered in our work. Hence, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities or who are members of other marginalized communities.

Who we’re looking for:

• Technical leader: You will execute the technology vision and roadmap for engineering to for our external products, using principles of Agile and continuous deployment
• Growth-oriented team manager: You will hire, coach, and mentor an exceptional team of developers
• Creative problem solver: You will think expansively about what is possible within constraints of time, budget, and resources to deliver the best possible experience for internal business users and external product users
• Collaborative strategist: You will work closely with other teams at Springboard, from our business users to our program designers and product managers, to develop strategies that meet user needs and explain technical roadmap to internal and external stakeholders

Responsibilities:

Set vision and direction for execution of technology objectives

• Develop goals, create and communicate metrics for success of Springboard’s technology products
• Collaborate with product managers on product strategy and roadmap
• Translate product vision into project implementation plans, manage timelines, and align cross functional teams toward a common goal and vision
• Contribute new ideas to the product roadmap based on experience and continued awareness of relevant industry and technological trends
• Effectively communicate technical and business risks to stakeholders to ensure that the most informed decisions are being made
• Design and execute processes for workflow and standards
• Manage progress, resource allocation, and budget

Ensure technical excellence

• Establish a culture of excellence in engineering that translates into a quality product experience for the end user
• Improve code quality, adopt best practices of quality assurance and test-driven development
• Grow our capacity in our Agile and continuous deployment practices
• Manage deliverables and partnerships with offshore development teams
• Lead build vs. buy decisions and selects vendors as partners in meeting business and technology goals

Coach and develop the Engineering team

• Provide leadership in defining clear objectives, milestones and measurements for the Engineering team
• Maintain a positive and inclusive environment that nurtures trust between you and your team
• Ensures proper training for all departmental personnel and actively mentors employees to support growth and professional development
• Collaborate with team members to plan and execute activities that lead to meeting departmental goals

While this description is meant to provide an overview of the responsibilities of the Senior Director, Engineering we are seeking candidates who demonstrate flexibility and can adapt to evolving needs in an entrepreneurial environment.

Required skills, qualifications, and characteristics:

• BS in Computer Science or equivalent
• 10+ years of software engineering experience
• 5+ years in a management role
• Experience managing offshore development teams
• Extensive experience coding in React, Javascript, and Ruby on Rails
• Delivered ideas from conception to production, specifically software that supports mission-critical enterprise scenarios.
• Track record of launching and scaling great products successfully, developing and implementing process and data driven approaches.
• Exceptional knowledge of data, web & mobile technologies and architectures, existing and emerging

Compensation

This is a full-time, exempt position offering benefits and a salary within the range of $155-170K commensurate with Springboard Collaborative’s Senior Director-level compensation band.

Benefits

At Springboard, we feel it is important to take care of our employees, which is why we offer a competitive benefit package. Some of these benefits include:

• 4 weeks annually, prorated from the date of hire
• 11 paid holidays, federal election day, birthday holiday, and two floating holidays according to Springboard’s Paid Time Off Policy
• Dental, vision, life insurance, and short and long term disability insurance are 100% covered by Springboard
• Cash Stipend available to those who waive healthcare coverage from Springboard
• Annual technology allowance
• Annual Professional Development allowance
• Twelve weeks paid parental leave for those employed for at least six months

Location

Springboard Collaborative’s headquarters is in Philadelphia, PA, although applications are welcome from any location. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all Springboard Collaborative offices are closed for the time being.

About Springboard

Children typically spend 75% of their waking hours outside of the classroom, yet our education system does shockingly little to capture instructional value from that time. Parents’ love for their children is the single greatest—and most underutilized—natural resource in education.

Springboard Collaborative has cracked the code on activating and equipping low-income parents to teach at home. Since launching 10 years ago, we have grown Springboard’s reach from 40 to nearly 15,000 students across 22 cities and 700+ schools. Amidst rapid growth, Springboard consistently delivers best-in-class results. Students average a 3-4-month reading gain during each 5- or 10-week cycle, closing the gap to grade-level performance by more than half. Weekly family workshops average 91% attendance. Springboard’s work has recently been featured by Forbes, NPR, and the New York Times (twice).