Head of Product & Engineering

One Degree is entering an exciting new chapter: building AI-powered tools and shared technology infrastructure that make it easier for millions of families to access essential services and public benefits. We’re developing next-generation intake, enrollment, and coordination solutions while expanding partnerships with 211 organizations and other community institutions. As Head of Product & Engineering, you will join our executive team and lead the product and engineering functions, helping turn this vision into reality. We’re looking for an entrepreneurial engineering leader who can build new products, strengthen our engineering organization, and serve as a strategic partner to the CEO. This is a hands-on role in a small organization where you’ll move between strategy and execution, develop talented teams, and take ownership of delivering technology that makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Within One Degree’s strategy, approved budget, and partner commitments, you will lead the product and engineering functions and own technical direction, engineering execution, and team performance. You will work closely with product leadership to establish priorities, make tradeoffs, and translate organizational goals into executable plans, bringing decisions with significant organization-wide or resource implications to the CEO and executive team.

About One Degree

One Degree is a national nonprofit investing in next-generation service navigation solutions that empower people to build healthy and fulfilling lives by improving access to life-changing social services. In the U.S., over 90M people live in a household where it is a daily struggle to meet basic needs. We are public-interest technologists committed to building the digital infrastructure communities need to help families take on the challenges they face everyday.

We listen to and learn from our communities to design technology that supports people on a path toward economic and social well-being. We bring our personal and professional experiences to our work and strive to understand the challenges facing the communities we serve.

We are a small but mighty team of people who care deeply about using our skills for impact. We’re low-ego, collaborative, curious, and serious about our mission. We are also joyful in how we work together and support one another along the way.

We are committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. We know that a team with wide-ranging ideas, perspectives, and backgrounds fosters a stronger and more creative work environment. We especially encourage applications from people from underrepresented communities, including people of color, LGBTQ+ community members, people with lived experience of poverty or navigating social services, and people with disabilities.

Description

As Head of Product & Engineering, You Will…

Lead and develop the product and engineering team

- Directly manage and develop engineering, product, design, and devops staff. Set clear expectations, provide feedback and coaching, support performance and growth, and build a culture of ownership, quality, learning, and steady delivery. - Guide day-to-day engineering work, remove blockers, and help the team make realistic commitments connected to organizational priorities. - Assess the team’s strengths, capacity, and practices, and shape the engineering structure and hiring plan with the CEO and executive team, within approved budget and priorities.

Set technical direction and build

- Turn organizational and product priorities into a clear technical direction and roadmap, including architecture, platforms, data, integrations, security, privacy, reliability, and responsible use of AI. - Partner with product lead to shape product strategy, establish priorities, and balance user and partner needs, technical feasibility, staff capacity, cost, time to market, and long-term maintainability. - Balance investment in new products with support for existing products, technical debt, bug fixes, security updates, and partner commitments. Identify and address risks before they threaten users or delivery. - Work hands-on with the engineering team to design and build solutions, review code, prototype new capabilities, troubleshoot complex technical challenges, and accelerate product delivery. Be comfortable contributing production code when needed.

Drive execution and operational excellence

- Establish pragmatic engineering practices for planning, technical design, development, testing, deployment, documentation, and maintenance. - Build a delivery rhythm that makes engineering commitments, progress, risks, and decisions visible and supports reliable releases. - Assess build-versus-buy options, infrastructure and vendor costs, support models, and scalability so technical choices are sustainable for a nonprofit organization.

Provide executive leadership and strategic partnership

- Serve as a strategic partner to the CEO as a member of the executive team, to help shape organizational strategy, identify opportunities and risks, and translate One Degree’s vision into technology and product priorities. - Exercise independent judgment and take ownership of consequential technology, product, and organizational decisions, escalating issues when they have broader strategic, financial, or operational implications. - Represent One Degree’s technology strategy with board members, funders, partners, and other stakeholders, communicating complex technical concepts and tradeoffs clearly to nontechnical audiences. - Partner across One Degree to make sure technology plans reflect community needs, product priorities, partner commitments, and the organization’s mission.

If you…

- are a thoughtful, hands-on leader who enjoys setting direction and doing the work to move it forward - have managed engineers and know how to help a team make progress through clear expectations, coaching, and sound technical judgment - are an experienced engineering leader ready to take full ownership of a product and engineering organization - can balance early-stage building with the care and improvement of products people already rely on - exercise sound executive judgment, make difficult decisions independently, and know when to engage others on issues with broader organizational implications - are comfortable with ambiguity and can create useful structure without adding unnecessary process - care about building technology with and for communities, and bring humility, curiosity, and respect for different perspectives - are comfortable working remotely and collaborating across a small, distributed team

And have…

- Approximately 7-10 years of software engineering or technology experience, with increasing responsibility. We value relevant depth and impact more than a particular title or an exact number of years. - Demonstrated experience managing engineers, including setting goals, providing feedback, supporting development, and helping a team deliver. - Demonstrated experience building and launching new software products or capabilities from concept to production, ideally in a startup or similarly resource-constrained environment. - Strong technical judgment and experience making or guiding decisions about software architecture, systems, infrastructure, security, and product delivery. - Demonstrated ability to independently lead complex technical initiatives, translate organizational goals into actionable priorities, make difficult resource tradeoffs, and take accountability for results. - Experience leading technical work from early planning through implementation and ongoing support, with the ability to contribute hands-on when the work calls for it. - Experience partnering with product leaders and cross-functional teams to translate user and organizational needs into plans, manage tradeoffs, and communicate progress and risks. - Familiarity with APIs, data flows, integrations, and cloud-based systems; experience in a mission-driven or social impact organization is a plus. - Clear communication skills and the ability to make technical concepts useful to nontechnical audiences.

You do not need to have held a Head of Product and Engineering or CTO title before. We are looking for an experienced engineering leader with demonstrated technical judgment, strong people management skills, and a track record of building and delivering products. What matters most is your ability to take ownership, lead a team, and deliver results.

Then you should…

Apply with:

- Your resume - A cover letter describing your interest in One Degree and how your experience would help you lead and build our technology function

Our Hiring Process

Our hiring process will include an initial conversation with our team, interviews with One Degree leaders and colleagues, and a practical exercise related to the role. We will share details and expectations for each stage in advance. If you require an accommodation to complete the application or participate in the hiring process, please contact [email protected]. Employment is contingent upon successful completion of reference and background checks, consistent with applicable law.

Location and Travel

One Degree is a remote organization, and this position may be based remotely in the United States. The Head of Product and Engineering will travel to California for organizational retreats and may occasionally travel to meet with partners or support other business needs. Unfortunately, we cannot provide employment sponsorship at this time.

Benefits

One Degree offers comprehensive benefits, including flexible paid time off, with a three-week minimum for new employees that increases with tenure, plus 13 annual holidays, one floating holiday, one volunteer day, and a winter break at the end of the year.

We cover 100% of medical, dental, and vision insurance premiums for full-time employees and 75% for dependents. Additional benefits include a 403(b) retirement program with an employer match, a monthly remote-work stipend, and employee-funded flexible spending accounts for medical and dependent-care expenses.

Beyond preventing discrimination and harassment based on protected categories, One Degree strives to foster an equitable, inclusive, and welcoming workplace.

Salary

$165,000 - $190,000 per year