Head of Engineering

About VoteMate

VoteMate is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit AI startup. Our app pairs an AI ballot assistant directly with a voter's real ballot, so people can research and understand what they're actually voting on. We've reached more than 35,000 lifetime voters across all 50 states and DC, and we're built by a lean team alongside partners including Ballotpedia, Democracy Works, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and Microsoft.

The Role

We're looking for a Head of Engineering to join VoteMate's leadership team and lead our engineering function as we scale toward the November 2026 election.

This is a hands-on leadership role with real organizational influence. You'll lead and mentor our engineering team, set technical direction, own the engineering quality bar, and partner directly with the Founder & CEO and leadership team on product roadmap, resourcing, technical strategy, and key partnerships.

We're looking for someone who can operate at both altitudes: stepping back to make strong technical and organizational decisions, then getting close enough to the work to review a PR, unblock an engineer, or contribute code when it matters. You'll bring a forward-deployed mindset: close to real voter needs, fast to ship, and quick to learn from what's live.

We build AI-native. We expect our engineers to treat AI-assisted coding as a core part of how they work, using it to move faster without lowering the bar on quality or accuracy. We're looking for a leader who believes in that model, practices it themselves, and can bring a ship-fast, stay-responsible mentality to a small team building something people trust with their ballot.

This role requires a minimum commitment of 10 hours per week. The scope is intentionally broad for the hours, so we're looking for someone senior enough to create leverage through judgment, mentoring, unblocking, and setting standards rather than trying to do everything personally.

What you'll do

• Serve as the engineering voice on VoteMate's leadership team, helping shape organizational priorities, roadmap, resourcing, and major strategic decisions
• Lead and mentor a team of engineers, setting technical direction, creating clarity, and helping them grow
• Make sound architecture and technical tradeoffs that balance speed, maintainability, trust, and election-cycle realities
• Own engineering quality through code and PR review, keeping the bar high without becoming a bottleneck
• Stay close to the code, contributing directly when it's the highest-leverage way to move the team forward
• Set the standard for how the team uses AI-assisted development well, fast, and responsibly
• Bring an engineering perspective to strategic technical partnerships and integrations
• Help shape how we build responsibly, given the sensitivity of election-adjacent AI

What we're looking for

• Senior engineering leadership experience, ideally as a Head of Engineering, VP Engineering, Engineering Director, or senior engineering leader in a startup or high-growth environment
• Strong technical judgment and enough hands-on depth to credibly challenge architecture decisions, review code, and coach senior engineers
• An ownership mentality: you identify what needs to happen, make decisions with incomplete information, and drive work forward without waiting for perfect direction
• Fluent with AI-assisted coding and genuinely convinced it's a force multiplier, not a novelty
• A bias toward shipping: you build against real user needs and iterate rather than over-engineering
• Strong judgment on where speed is an asset and where accuracy and neutrality have to win
• Comfort operating with ambiguity and limited hours, prioritizing ruthlessly and creating leverage through others
• Clear communication and a collaborative, mentorship-first leadership style
• Genuine alignment with our nonpartisan civic mission

Nice to have

• Experience with cloud-native architectures and multi-agent AI systems
• Background in civic tech, or building products where trust and accuracy are non-negotiable
• Experience shaping or evaluating technical partnerships

Details

• Volunteer / unpaid
• Fractional, minimum 10 hours per week
• Remote
• Reports to Founder & CEO
• Member of VoteMate Leadership Team