Data Intergration Team Lead

Work on Climate (WoCl) is a leading non-profit focused on mobilizing humanity’s talent to build a regenerative, climate-positive economy.

You probably know us for our online community — the world’s largest climate career and action community — which has helped thousands of people find climate jobs, start companies, and build impactful networks. We’ve been featured in Fast Company, the New York Times, Wired, and more.

But our work is entering a new chapter beyond helping individuals find climate jobs.

We’re now supporting professionals to engage in climate leadership — organizing, mobilizing, and transforming whole sectors and regions toward regenerative futures, through regional chapters of issue-focused work. (Read more about this transition in our announcement post).

About the Team

The Data Integration team (formerly Metrics & Data) builds the data infrastructure that enables Work on Climate’s programs to measure impact and make strategic decisions.

The team has two active workstreams: data engineering (pipeline architecture, ingestion, infrastructure) and data analysis (Hex dashboards, semantic views, self-serve tooling). Our goal is for program teams to self-serve answers to their strategic questions without needing engineering help each time.

Right now, these workstreams are tightly coupled — improving what analysts can do in Hex depends directly on getting the underlying architecture right. The team has identified a need to move from the current JavaScript framework to a more scalable Python-based architecture.

The current friction: Whilst work moves forward on individual pipelines, the overarching infrastructure of Work on Climate’s data remains unresolved. The incoming lead will set the technical direction for what comes next and manage volunteers through building and documenting this architecture.

We are geo-located across Canada, US, and Europe. Our standard meeting schedule is once a week on Tuesdays @ 9am PST (UTC-8).

Role Summary

We’re looking for a Data Integration Team Lead to architect the technical foundation for Work on Climate’s next chapter. As we move away from reactive data requests toward a “shift-left” approach—where data is designed into our programs from the start—you will lead the engineering team to build a scalable, Python-based data infrastructure. You will be the technical partner to our Director of Community & Operations and the data team’s analysts, ensuring that the “pipes” the data engineers build directly enable systems change through organizing and collective action.

Time commitment

This role is highly impactful and rewarding, but we want to be upfront that success requires sustained commitment:

• ~8-10 hours/week consistently for a minimum of 6 months, including the ability to join our weekly meeting on Tuesdays @ 9am PST (UTC-8).
• Being consistently available and responsive to your teammates and leadership on a daily basis, so that coordination isn’t bottlenecked by the lead’s absence.

What will I do?

You will lead the data integration workstream and ensure the entire data ecosystem (Engineering → Analysis → Insights and improvements) works harmoniously — bringing a “Penultimate Question” mindset: will this piece of architecture enable analysts to help the programs teams answer their questions?

• Enable the analyst bridge: You ensure that when a programmatic need surfaces, analysts can quickly determine if the existing data can support it and — in the case existing data cannot — guide the engineering team to build the necessary ingestion/transformation. This work will lay the groundwork for a robust semantic layer to be used in Hex.
• Guide technical direction of the work, serving as the team’s technical expert and guiding judgement calls on feature development vs. technical debt in an early-stage, volunteer-capacity environment.
• Serve as the technical sense check – you’ll help the Director and Analysts understand the trade-offs between the “ideal” data model and what is maintainable given the constraints of volunteer time and current maturation of our data and environment — and what meets programmatic needs.
• Create conditions for autonomous, quality work – you’ll empower the volunteer engineers to confidently assess when work is ready to ship via decision frameworks, clear guidelines, and transparente processes.
• Manage the team – you’ll coordinate work, motivate volunteers, and hold people accountable to their commitments. You’ll recruit when needed and track the team’s progress towards goals, keeping technical direction aligned with organizational evolution.

What skills and qualities do I need?

You should be a collaborative architect — more than building the pipes, you like understanding what goes through them. You enjoy working with non-engineers to ensure technical decisions serve human goals.

• 5+ years data engineering experience, including data modeling and semantic layer design with DBT or equivalent data transformation tools (such as an orchestrator, like Dagster)
• Systems Thinker: Ability to look across various program teams and identify the common data needs, building generalized infrastructure that serves the whole organization rather than one-off silos.
• Understanding of how LLMs work with structured data – “AI-native” in your own development workflow; sufficient technical knowledge of LLM capabilities and limitations to design data infrastructure that works reliably with AI-assisted analysis tools
• Comfort working across the stack – our stack includes GCP, Python, DBT, Hex, MySQL, and evolves over time (you’ll need to be comfortable reading/understanding JavaScript/TypeScript to understand where we’re working from); ability to learn new tools quickly with minimal guidance is critical
• Big plus: Experience with volunteer or nonprofit technical teams, and understanding how limited capacity shapes technical decisions

Personal qualities – among your peers, you have a reputation for:

• Being extremely dependable with a track record of sustaining multi-month commitments based on internal motivation rather than external accountability
• Being pragmatic and resourceful – you’re comfortable with “the simplest thing that works” whilst keeping a eye on long-term goals. You understand that in a volunteer-driven environment, maintainability is a feature.
• Making data accessible, not just available – designing systems where people can find what they need without deep institutional knowledge or extensive hand-holding
• Clear, kind, direct communication – very comfortable with feedback, accountability, and disagreement (both giving and receiving) across leadership, peers, and team members
• Getting to the most important point – able to explain complex topics concisely and learn from people who aren’t great explainers

Common Challenges

• Volunteer availability is the biggest challenge for any team lead. Your own availability matters, but so does navigating when teammates’ circumstances change or they bite off more than they can chew. Success requires mastering the full management toolkit: clear communication, careful recruiting, delegation, motivation, accountability, letting people go when needed.
• You’ll be designing data architecture while requirements are still emerging. Our programs are evolving as we shift from job placement to sector transformation. You’ll need comfort with building infrastructure that adapts to strategic pivots, not just optimizes for known use cases.
• Making “most important thing” calls with incomplete information. Program teams may not know what data can answer their questions or what’s feasible to collect. You’ll translate between their vague needs and specific data solutions, often with limited synchronous time to clarify.
• Balancing what’s buildable vs. what’s ideal in volunteer constraints. We need the simplest thing that works, not the most elegant solution. That requires high technical judgment about what’s maintainable with our resources while not creating unfixable technical debt.

Why volunteer with Work on Climate?

Our most impactful volunteers are internally motivated, and contribute to this work because they believe in our mission and see how their work makes a difference. However, if you are choosing between several impactful opportunities, consider that you’ll get to:

• Learn from exceptional teammates and culture – our volunteers consistently note that how we run things is different from their day jobs, in ways that feel like “a healing experience” compared to typical work cultures
• Be part of the forefront of the climate work movement — help build a new model for climate leadership and quickly see your contribution translate into real-world impact
• Deepen leadership skills in a unique context – leading volunteers requires different approaches than managing paid employees; you’ll build capabilities that transfer everywhere

I’m interested! What do I do?

Yay! We’re excited to learn more about you. Please fill out this application form to tell us about your skills and interest in volunteering with our awesome team. If you are selected for an interview, our team will be in touch in 1-2 weeks.