Director of Software Engineering (Execution Focus)- Volunteer Role

About Us:

The Donovan’s Venom is a 501c3 nonprofit organization focused on curating universal accessibility to fine arts and music education for all. We are passionately dedicated to ensuring that everyone, regardless of financial circumstances, has access to high-quality music education, performance opportunities, and fine art. We aim to inspire, empower, and uplift communities by fostering a love for music and the arts through our commitment to education, inclusivity, diversity, and social impact, which drives us to expand our reach continually and enrich the lives of those we serve.

Position Overview

The Donovan’s Venom is seeking a high-impact Volunteer Director of Software Engineering to lead software engineering execution and delivery across our technology initiatives.

This is a hands-on leadership opportunity for an experienced engineering professional who can translate organizational priorities into clear technical plans, organize distributed volunteer teams, remove roadblocks, and consistently drive projects toward completion.

The Director of Software Engineering will serve as a critical bridge between the organization's mission, the CTO, and our engineering volunteers. The primary focus is execution over perfection—creating the structure, processes, and accountability needed to help volunteer engineers deliver scalable, secure, and reliable software with minimal administrative overhead.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical judgment with exceptional project coordination, communication, and people leadership skills. Experience leading distributed, remote, volunteer, or open-source engineering teams is highly valued.

Key Responsibilities

1. Engineering Execution & Delivery

• Drive Engineering Velocity: Establish and maintain an execution-focused roadmap that enables decentralized volunteer teams to deliver high-quality software predictably.
• Translate Priorities Into Action: Break organizational and technical goals into clear, actionable initiatives, milestones, and engineering tasks.
• Streamline Developer Onboarding: Improve documentation, development environments, workflows, and tooling so new volunteers can become productive quickly.
• Remove Roadblocks: Proactively identify and resolve technical, operational, process, and documentation bottlenecks.
• Establish Delivery Processes: Implement practical processes for sprint planning, task tracking, code reviews, releases, and project status reporting.
• Maintain Pragmatic Quality: Promote automated testing, appropriate code review standards, CI/CD, monitoring, and deployment practices.
• Track Progress: Maintain visibility into project status, dependencies, risks, blockers, and upcoming deliverables.

1. Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Maintain Technology Alignment: Ensure engineering teams follow established architectural principles and make appropriate use of Next.js, React, Vercel, TypeScript, Bun, and Azure.
• Guide Backend Architecture: Provide technical leadership around microservices, APIs, asynchronous processing, service communication, and scalable application design.
• Optimize Cloud Infrastructure: Work with the technology team to improve Azure infrastructure performance, reliability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Manage Cloud Resources: Help maximize nonprofit cloud credits and available infrastructure grants while maintaining appropriate availability and security.
• Balance Technical Debt and Delivery: Make pragmatic technical decisions that balance long-term maintainability with immediate organizational priorities.
• Promote Security: Ensure engineering practices incorporate appropriate application, infrastructure, access-control, and data-security considerations.

1. Volunteer Engineering Leadership

• Coordinate Engineering Volunteers: Organize and support distributed contributors working across flexible schedules and varying levels of availability.
• Coach & Mentor: Help engineers improve their technical skills, development practices, and understanding of the organization's systems.
• Match Skills to Priorities: Assign projects and tasks based on volunteer expertise, interests, availability, and organizational priorities.
• Create Accountability: Establish clear ownership, expectations, deadlines, and communication practices while maintaining a supportive volunteer environment.
• Recognize Contributions: Foster an environment where volunteer contributions are visible, valued, and connected to measurable community impact.

1. Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner closely with the CTO to translate technology strategy into executable engineering plans.
• Collaborate with product, operations, program, and other organizational leaders to understand priorities and dependencies.
• Communicate engineering progress, risks, resource needs, and delivery timelines to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Participate in technology leadership and cross-functional planning meetings.
• Help ensure engineering priorities remain aligned with the organization's mission and community needs.

Required Skills & Experience

Professional Experience

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams, technical projects, open-source repositories, or distributed development efforts.
• Experience coordinating multiple projects, contributors, or technical workstreams.
• Experience working in remote or asynchronous environments.
• Experience managing technical volunteers or distributed, part-time engineering teams is highly desirable.

Technical Proficiency

Frontend

• Strong familiarity with Next.js and React.
• Experience with Vercel and modern web deployment practices.
• Understanding of edge routing, caching, performance optimization, and modern web application architecture.

Backend

• Strong experience building backend services using TypeScript.
• Experience with Bun and/or Node.js.
• Strong understanding of RESTful APIs, service boundaries, asynchronous processing, and scalable backend architecture.

Cloud & Infrastructure

• Practical experience with Microsoft Azure.
• Familiarity with services such as:
  • Azure App Services
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  • Azure Functions
  • Azure Cosmos DB
  • Azure Event Hubs
• Understanding of cloud cost optimization, resource management, security, and availability.
• Experience working with nonprofit cloud credits or grants is a plus.

Architecture

• Strong understanding of microservices architecture.
• Experience designing clean, maintainable APIs.
• Understanding of distributed systems and asynchronous/event-driven architectures.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and modern DevOps practices.

Leadership & Execution Competencies

The successful candidate should demonstrate:

• Exceptional project management and organizational skills.
• Strong ability to prioritize and execute in a resource-constrained environment.
• Excellent written and asynchronous communication skills.
• Ability to coordinate contributors across different schedules and time zones.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities.
• High empathy and emotional intelligence.
• Ability to establish accountability without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Ability to communicate technical concepts clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
• A mission-first, execution-oriented mindset.
• Ability to distinguish between issues that require immediate action and those that can be addressed later.

What This Opportunity Offers

• Your work will directly support technology initiatives that advance The Donovan’s Venom's mission and serve the community.
• Lead engineering initiatives using a modern technology ecosystem including Next.js, React, Vercel, TypeScript, Bun, and Microsoft Azure.
• Build and demonstrate experience leading distributed engineering teams, shaping technical execution, and managing large-scale software initiatives in a nonprofit environment.
• Collaborate with passionate engineers, technology professionals, organizational leaders, and volunteers from diverse backgrounds.
• The role is designed around a remote and asynchronous operating model, allowing volunteers to contribute around their existing professional and personal commitments.
• Gain meaningful leadership experience and the opportunity to demonstrate measurable technical and organizational impact through mission-driven projects.

Volunteer Commitment

• Estimated Commitment: 15–20+ hours per week.
• Schedule: Flexible and primarily asynchronous.
• Location: Remote.UK, U.S. or Canada-based volunteers preferred
• Responsiveness: Volunteers should maintain reasonable responsiveness to project, operational, and security-related needs.
• Leadership Participation: Participation in technology leadership, engineering planning, and cross-functional meetings is expected.
• Collaboration: Consistent communication through the organization's designated collaboration and project-management tools is required.

Success in This Role

Success in this role will be measured by the team's ability to consistently ship meaningful software.

Within the role, the Director should help the organization:

• Increase engineering delivery velocity.
• Reduce volunteer onboarding time.
• Improve documentation and developer experience.
• Reduce technical and operational blockers.
• Establish predictable development and release processes.
• Improve software quality and reliability.
• Optimize Azure infrastructure and cloud costs.
• Increase volunteer engagement and ownership.
• Keep engineering priorities aligned with organizational mission and impact.

Important Disclaimer

This is a volunteer position and does not constitute employment.

We are onboarding individuals who are ready to contribute immediately.

Please only apply if you are prepared to begin within the next 10 days.