VP of Engineering

About Scale to Win

Scale to Win is a fully-remote, progressive, political tech company founded in 2020 by organizing leaders from the Biden/Harris, Bernie 2020, Warren 2020, Bernie 2016, and Hillary for America Presidential campaigns. Our product offerings include Scale to Win Text, our “all-in-one” shortcode and longcode texting tool, and the Scale to Win Dialer, a predictive calling tool. Scale to Win also offers turnkey “We Text” services, where our team builds text campaigns, sends messages, collects data, and ensures compliance on behalf of clients.

We work with more than 3,000 Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations driving change. Current and past clients include the Biden-Harris campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the Working Families Party, the AFL-CIO, UFCW, MoveOn, and For Our Future.

About the Role

The Vice President of Engineering is a strategic technical leader responsible for managing the Engineering team at Scale to Win. The VP of Engineering will also serve as a key advisor to the Executive Team, providing technical leadership to build robust systems that support the company's growth trajectory and long-term vision. At this stage of growth, the VP of Engineering will balance architectural decision-making and strategic planning while also maintaining hands-on involvement in product development, team management, and technical operations.

The Scale to Win engineering team currently consists of 6 senior engineers (8+ years of experience each) and will grow in coming years. It is part of the broader Engineering, Product, Design, and Data department, which has 2 senior product managers, a design director, a data director, and is led by the CTO. The VP of Engineering will manage and grow the engineering team, and work closely with the product, data, and design teams.

While direct experience in the political or progressive tech space is not required, a successful VP of Engineering will be comfortable quickly understanding the industry landscape and communicating technical concepts confidently with stakeholders, clients, and non-technical team members.

Core Responsibilities

Team Management and Engineering Culture (50%)

• Build, manage, and scale the engineering organization, including hiring, mentoring, and developing diverse technical talent
• Conduct regular performance reviews, provide career development guidance, and create growth pathways for engineering team members
• Foster a collaborative, supportive, and high-performance engineering culture that emphasizes learning, innovation, equity, and inclusion
• Implement engineering processes that support both individual contributor growth and team productivity
• Lead technical discussions, architecture reviews, and engineering planning sessions
• Cultivate cross-functional relationships with Sales, Client Success, and Operations teams to ensure technical solutions align with business needs

Technical IC Work (10-30%)

• As a leader of a small and very senior engineering team, you will be expected to spend meaningful time in the codebase, especially during your onboarding period. You will participate in frontend and backend development, design document drafting, code review, infrastructure deployment, our on-call rotation, and all other aspects of individual contribution on the Engineering team.
• Pinch-hit for the Engineering team, especially on backend, infrastructure, scaling, and security work.
• As you ramp up, you’ll likely scale back your direct IC responsibilities, but maintain enough day-to-day involvement to be up-to-date on our engineering practices and systems in order to effectively manage the team and contribute to incident response and election season scale-up.

Technical Leadership (10-30%)

• Guide the technical vision and architecture roadmap, ensuring scalable solutions that support business growth and client needs, especially around elections
• Lead the software development lifecycle from Product team handoff to deployment and ongoing monitoring, working closely with Product and Design teams to deliver high-quality, reliable features
• Maintain and improve engineering standards, code quality practices, and technical documentation across all projects
• Oversee platform security, reliability, and performance
• Serve as the primary point-of-contact with external technology partners, vendors, and consultants

Strategic Planning and Cross-Functional Collaboration (10%)

• Collaborate with the Executive Team on product strategy, technical feasibility, and resource planning
• Partner with the Leadership and the Operations team on technical budgeting, vendor management, and capacity planning
• Support sales and client success leadership with technical expertise during VIP client engagements and critical problem resolution

Required Skills and Attributes

• Demonstrated experience (10+ years) in software engineering with significant leadership experience (5+ years) managing technical teams in a startup environment
• Strong technical background with expertise in modern web technologies, cloud infrastructure, and scalable system architecture
• Proven track record of building, mentoring, and scaling engineering teams while maintaining high technical standards
• Excellent communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Experience working closely with product management, design, and business teams to deliver client-focused solutions
• Ability to organize and prioritize complex technical roadmaps with competing priorities and changing business requirements

The offer

• $250,000 yearly salary, plus bonuses during election years.
• Generous paid vacation (up to 24 days a year with time accrued monthly); paid sick leave; paid short-term medical, caregiver, bereavement, and other personal leave.
• Ten paid company holidays, two floating holidays, and a week and a half long holiday break at the end of the year.
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave and an additional 4 weeks of part-time, fully-paid flex time. This is available to all new parents of any gender, including adoptive parents.
• Fully-paid premium, $0 deductible, top-notch medical insurance, as well as dental and vision insurance, for you and your dependents.
• Remote working with flexible working conditions, a stipend to support your home office setup, and access to a company computer.
• Every employee is invited to donate 25,000 free texts to a non-profit of their choice each year.