Technical Lead

Who we are

The News Literacy Project, a national, nonpartisan education nonprofit, is building a national movement to advance the practice of news literacy throughout American society, creating better informed, more engaged and more empowered individuals — and ultimately a stronger democracy. NLP is the leading provider of news literacy education to students primarily through our signature e-learning platform, Checkology®, and to the public through our website, RumorGuard™.

Where you fit in

Founded in 2008, the News Literacy Project is a national nonpartisan education nonprofit that empowers educators to teach middle and high school students how to sort fact from fiction in the digital age. Our central offering is the Checkology® virtual classroom, an online e- learning hub. Since the platform was introduced in 2016, almost 50,000 teachers have registered to use it in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, four U.S. territories and 113 other countries. We are seeking a technical leader who can build and manage in-house and contracted software engineers and provide technical strategy to support our product roadmap.  This is a great opportunity for you to leverage your technical expertise to make America more news-literate.

 The ideal candidate will have most, if not all, of the following:

Proven software engineering experience including writing, maintaining, and deploying a variety of web applications using modern development technologies and frameworks.

• At least one year of experience implementing and maintaining front-end and backend infrastructure, including Vercel, Laravel and AWS.
• At least one year of experience leading, managing or mentoring junior software engineers.
• Demonstrated success in designing and constructing stable, scalable, and maintainable systems.
• Familiarity with components of our current stack (including Next.js, React, PostgreSQL/MySQL, PHP, Laravel, AWS) with proficiency in relational database design and query optimization.
• Experience implementing or optimizing deployment pipelines.
• Experience with systems integration and/or EdTech is desired.

We’re looking for someone who can have an immediate and meaningful impact on our work, through both hands-on expertise and technical leadership.  We anticipate this role will initially have 30% of your time spent writing code, with the other 70% allocated to strategic planning, management, and mentoring.  We expect these tasks to balance out over the first year.

This position reports to the vice president of product.

About the position

This position will directly impact many thousands of learners in schools across our country and plays a pivotal role in shaping and achieving our organizational strategy.  As the leader of our engineering team, you’ll partner with the vice president of product to ensure our products meet customer needs and can scale as we achieve our growth goals.  You will mentor and coach our in-house engineering team and manage our external contractors.  You will provide technical strategic leadership to the organization and get your hands dirty in our codebase.

Specifically, in this job, you will:

• Collaborate with NLP’s product team to define and implement new features to support K-12 students and educators ensuring alignment with technical feasibility and scalability.
• Assist in managing the engineering team’s sprint and backlog work ensuring efficient delivery of high-quality code and adherence to engineering best practices.  
• Contribute to the codebase and conduct code reviews.
• Develop and execute a technical strategy to enable our strategic goals, including leading buy-vs-build and partnership decisions, with a focus on engineering excellence and scalability.
• Research and support integration requirements of school districts and their learning management systems.
• Manage and optimize our technical infrastructure within budget constraints, implementing efficient deployment pipelines and scalability measures.
• Mentor and support our engineering team, both in-house and contracted, and participate in hiring decisions.

About you

In addition to the qualifications noted above, the successful candidate will have all or most of the following:

• You know your value as a software engineer starts before you begin coding and doesn’t end until the customer’s problem is solved, and you are able to jump in at any stage of product development.
• You love to streamline, optimize, and simplify complex or fragmented systems.
• You avoid dogma yet have tried-and-true methodologies for improving software development and deployment processes.
• You are motivated by taking ownership of problems, and you expect to be accountable for the value of your solutions.
• You know, or will quickly learn, EdTech integration standards as well as U.S. K-12 data privacy laws.
• You can demonstrate either engineering management or mentorship practices and a commitment to collaboration.

 NLP operates entirely remotely with staff in all time zones.  This position is 100% remote with an annual in-person planning retreat. Highly qualified candidates who live anywhere in the United States are encouraged to apply.

To apply, upload a cover letter and a résumé at https://bit.ly/NLPJobs. The application deadline is 5 p.m. ET on Friday, May 17, 2024. We hope to hire as quickly as possible for a start date no later than July 22, 2024.

The News Literacy Project welcomes applicants from diverse backgrounds. We offer equal opportunity in employment for all qualified persons and prohibit discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to job requirements, genetic information, military service or other protected status.

We deeply value diversity in the workplace and strongly believe that a diverse team enriches our organization and strengthens our ability to realize our mission (read/print NLP’s Organizational Values [PDF] and Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [PDF]).

NLP also offers outstanding benefits, including bonus, health and dental insurance, a 401(k) plan match and more. For an overview of our generous benefits package, check out our HR benefits summary.