ProPublica, an independent nonprofit newsroom, is hiring a Director of Product Engineering to steward the technology and teams behind our core digital products. This role is responsible for our publishing systems, main website, data pipelines, and infrastructure, balancing strategic technical leadership with hands-on development to ensure our platforms are scalable, efficient, and user-centric.
What You'll Do
- Directly manage and mentor a team of software engineers, including leading performance management and providing regular feedback.
- Foster a collaborative, inclusive, kind engineering culture that promotes learning, innovation, and technical excellence.
- Collaborate with the senior director of technology on major technical infrastructure decisions, security implementations, and strategic engineering planning.
- Contribute to technology strategy discussions and provide engineering perspective on product decisions.
- Establish and maintain engineering standards, best practices, and coding guidelines across all product development.
- Directly commit code where necessary alongside software engineers, leading by example.
- Drive continuous improvement in development processes, including code review, testing, and deployment pipelines.
- Manage technical debt and refactoring initiatives to maintain code quality and system health.
- Implement and maintain development workflows, including CI/CD pipelines, testing automation, and deployment strategies.
- Ensure engineering work uses open standards, meets accessibility requirements, and is performant.
What We're Looking For
- Seven-plus years of software engineering experience with at least three years in engineering management.
- Demonstrated success managing and mentoring engineering teams of three to eight people in lean, scrappy environments.
- Strong background in modern web development stack: front-end frameworks like SvelteKit, back-end systems in Python and PHP, and AWS/Google Cloud (data pipelines, Dagster, BigQuery).
- Deep understanding and ability to apply core web principles including open standards, performance optimization, and accessibility.
- Strong knowledge and ability to apply data security and privacy best practices.
- Experience with agile development methodologies and DevOps practices.
- Proven track record of running and scaling effective, sustainable teams in mission-driven organizations.
- Experience with hiring, performance management, and career development for technical staff.
- Experience building consumer-facing digital products, preferably in media, journalism, or mission-driven organizations.
Nice to Have
- Experience in journalism, media, or nonprofit technology environments.
- Background with content management systems like WordPress, digital publishing platforms, or news applications.
- Familiarity with data visualization and interactive storytelling technologies.
- Experience with security considerations for protecting sources and sensitive information.
Technical Stack
- SvelteKit
- Python
- PHP
- AWS
- Google Cloud
- Dagster
- BigQuery
Team & Environment
You will manage a dedicated team of product engineers while collaborating with designers, product managers, data analysts, and agency partners. This role reports to the Senior Director of Technology.
Benefits & Compensation
- Full-time position with benefits
- Salary range: $170,000 to $180,000
Work Mode
This is a hybrid role open to candidates in New York City or remote within the United States.
ProPublica is an equal opportunity employer and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any kind. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age or any other status protected under applicable law.
