Job Purpose 

Remote, US | Engineering | FTE

CiviForm is an open-source software solution for governments that helps centralize and digitize application forms so that residents can apply for government services online. It was developed by the City of Seattle with pro bono support from the Google.org Fellowship program. The project is now stewarded by Exygy and is collectively developed and maintained in collaboration with the governments that use it. As Director of Engineering, you’ll lead the team that builds and maintains CiviForm in partnership with product, design, and our government adopters. You’ll set the technical and operational direction for the team, manage and grow a group of senior engineers, and uphold the bar of quality, security, and reliability that public-sector work demands.

Employment Terms

This is a full-time, remote position. 

Who Does This Role Report To:

Emily Theis, Director of Product - CiviForm

Management Expectations:

A small team of software engineers, including technical leads

Responsibilities 

Technical Leadership

• Bring strong familiarity with CiviForm’s stack (Java/Play, PostgreSQL, Terraform, AWS/Azure)

• Own infrastructure and security alongside the engineering team, including cloud infrastructure management, security incident response, and maintaining a strong security posture in production. 

• Provide technical judgment on architecture, security, and platform decisions,

• Lead the team through incident response and security work

• Own CiviForm's open-source strategy: grow and govern the external contributor community, manage adopter contributions, and support escalations

• Set the team’s technical mission and ensure it ladders to CiviForm’s product strategy and adopter outcomes.

• Serve as a senior strategic partner to Product, Design, Growth, and Exygy leadership, shaping CiviForm’s technical strategy, delivery model, roadmap tradeoffs, and long-term platform investment decisions.
  
  

People Leadership

• Manage a team of senior engineers, including a technical lead.

• Manage and develop CiviForm’s engineering organization across multiple workstreams or sub-teams, including senior engineers and technical leads. Set 

• expectations for delegated technical leadership, hold leads accountable for team execution and quality, and ensure engineering capacity is aligned to CiviForm’s product, adopter, security, and reliability priorities.

• Set clear performance expectations and deliver direct, specific, actionable feedback.

• Shape a feedback culture that is candid and constructive 

• Manage the performance review process

• Hire and onboard new engineers as the team grows.

• Own CiviForm's engineering operating model and evolve it as the team and adopter base grow.

• Make technical risk legible to CiviForm community Exygy leadership: surface security, reliability, and technical-debt tradeoffs proactively and in terms that non-engineers can act on.

• Own CiviForm engineering capacity planning, including staffing models, hiring priorities, team structure, succession planning, and tradeoffs between roadmap delivery, adopter support, security, maintenance, and technical debt.
  
  

Stakeholder Partnership and Growth

• Partner with Product, Design, and Exygy leadership.

• Engage directly with government adopters on technical questions, integrations, and roadmap input.

• Represent CiviForm’s engineering posture in security reviews, procurement conversations, and the broader civic tech ecosystem.
  
  

Engineering Quality and Product Mindset

• Set and enforce expectations for code review, testing, documentation, and technical design.

• Right-size rigor: prevent multi-week design docs on small problems and insist on depth where the risk warrants it.

• Champion a product-minded engineering culture: engineers tie their work to user and adopter outcomes.

• Partner with Product to scope, sequence, and de-risk work; make engineering tradeoffs legible to non-engineers.
  
  

Required Skills, Knowledge, and Abilities 

Required

• 7+ years of engineering experience, 3+ years managing engineers, including senior ICs.

• Track record of defining and evolving team operating models.

• Demonstrated experience giving direct feedback and coaching others to do the same constructively.

• Experience leading engineering work where user/adopter outcomes drove the technical agenda.

• Experience or familiarity with Site Reliability Engineering (on-call practices, observability, and monitoring in applications)

• Strong technical judgment in a comparable stack (server-side JVM, relational databases, cloud infrastructure).

• Demonstrated experience leading infrastructure and security work, including cloud infrastructure management, security incident response, and maintaining a strong security posture in a production environment.

• Comfort working across security, compliance, and government procurement contexts.

  
  

Bonus qualifications

• Open source project experience with external contributor communities.

• Civic tech, govtech, or regulated-industry background.

• Experience leading distributed/remote teams.

• Deep familiarity with the security and compliance landscape relevant to government software: FedRAMP, StateRAMP, CISA Secure by Design, OpenSSF Scorecard, penetration testing.

What Success Looks Like

• CiviForm maintains a strong, improving security posture: a clear security and compliance roadmap is in motion (e.g., OpenSSF Scorecard, penetration testing, CISA Secure by Design), and incidents are caught and resolved with declining time-to-detect and time-to-remediate.

• The platform is reliable for residents and adopters, with defined availability targets and observability that surfaces problems before adopters report them.

• The team is healthy and growing in capability: engineers operate with clear ownership, feedback is candid and constructive, and the org can absorb new adopters without heroics.

• Technical strategy is legible to Exygy leadership and to government adopters: risk, architecture direction, and platform investments are communicated in partnership with Product and Design in terms that non-engineers can act on.
  
  

Payment & Timeline

The annual salary band for this position is $175,000 - 195,000. Exygy’s compensation is benchmarked to national industry averages, not geographic location, ensuring equitable pay across all roles. Our hiring targets align with the median of the salary range for this position, with offers based on role requirements and candidate experience. 

Employees are eligible to enroll in our 401 (k) plan. We match 100% of the first 3% you defer plus 50% of the next 2% of each paycheck’s eligible compensation (maximum 4% match per paycheck). Healthcare benefits package with options up to 100% coverage toward select medical, dental, and vision plans. Exygy provides up to two weeks of sick leave, parental leave, and flexible PTO.

Exygy employees may work remotely across the US. Exygy employees' main residence must be within the US. Exygy proudly embraces work/life balance. Full-time employees are expected to work 32-40 hours in a typical week. We aim to hold all internal meetings between 10AM and 3PM PT, Monday-Thursday. We strive to keep Fridays meeting-free, allowing employees flexibility to catch up on their workload or take needed time to rest.

EEO & Commitment to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

We are actively seeking to create a diverse and equitable work environment because we believe that it creates a stronger team.

Exygy values a diverse workplace and strongly encourages women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, people with disabilities, members of ethnic minorities, foreign-born residents, older members of society, and others from minority groups and diverse backgrounds to apply. Exygy is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate against applicants because of race, color, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, religion, national origin, disability, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, medical condition, or any protected category prohibited by local, state, or federal laws. All employees and contractors of Exygy are responsible for maintaining a work atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment by treating others with dignity and respect.

 · APPLICATIONS DUE MONDAY, JUNE 22 AT 11PM PT ·