Full-time | Remote (Germany) 

Our Mission at Avaaz

Avaaz is an international campaigning and advocacy organization that provides its global membership of almost 70 million people with opportunities to make our world a better place.

We’re one of the world’s largest online global campaigning movements, with people from every corner in the world taking action to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want. This includes protecting human rights worldwide, supporting indigenous struggles, saving our planet from climate change and other threats, and fighting to stop disinformation and other cyber threats from undermining our democracies. 

Our model enables people to channel their voices into a powerful collective force at tipping point moments to impact the pressing global challenges of our time, from climate and ecological collapse to human rights abuses and the dismantling of democracy. Avaaz is funded through small donations from individual Avaaz members, no big money from governments or corporations. This keeps us independent and allows us to keep a laser focus on doing what the world needs.

VP of Engineering Position Overview

The Vice President of Engineering at Avaaz will define and drive the technical strategy behind Avaaz’s digital products, guiding a dynamic team of engineers to deliver tools and experiences that serve our mission and fuel growth. You’ll bring a bold, ambitious approach that enhances our technical strategy, advances our product vision, and enables global impact. This position is critical to the daily operations of our technology landscape, overseeing software development, tech operations, security, data, and platform support. By leading these key areas, the VP of Engineering will ensure that Avaaz's digital infrastructure is robust, secure, and scalable, enabling us to deliver on our goal to be the world’s most impactful campaigning community. This role will report to the Chief Product and Technology Officer. 

This role is perfect for a strategic engineering leader who thrives in dynamic environments and embraces the challenge of building and shaping teams while setting new standards in technical and product excellence. With an eye on sustainable growth, you’ll build on our strengths and set a technical vision that powers innovation today and positions us for long-term success. As Avaaz scales, your impact will grow, evolving to shape our technical strategy across new products, markets, and customer segments.

 Please note: While this role is being advertised as VP of Engineering to align with industry standards and reflect the experience level and salary, the internal title will be "Head of Technology" to reflect Avaaz's internal norms and naming conventions.

Why You'll Love This Role

• Impactful Work: Your efforts will directly contribute to creating positive social change on a global scale.
• Collaborative Environment: Work with a diverse, mission-driven team that values collaboration, creativity, and innovation.
• Leadership Opportunity: Lead and inspire a team of skilled engineers, driving technological excellence across the organization.
  

Key Responsibilities 

• Craft and communicate an ambitious technical vision that aligns with our organizational and product goals: Lead engineering with a clear, ambitious and well-communicated vision. Raise the bar for our capabilities as a tech team and keep the team innovating at full speed, investing in new, cutting edge technologies to bring transformative impact to our member experience. 
• Align with product and organizational goals: Work across departments to ensure engineering drives Avaaz’s long-term goals. Partner closely with the Product team to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions, define roadmaps, and ensure alignment between product vision and engineering execution to make development faster, clearer, and more collaborative. 
• Move with speed and intentionality: Evaluate and integrate emerging technologies, like the use of AI, that would better serve the organization and replace legacy or in-house systems with best-in-class, off-the-shelf solutions that improve efficiency, reliability, and maintainability.
• Build a scalable, resilient engineering culture: Review, establish, and optimize practices that drive accountability, speed, and continuous improvement. Lay the groundwork for growth, sustainability, and adaptability.
• Build and enable a high-performing team: Recruit and develop top talent, raising the bar with every new addition and empowering technical leaders. Create a culture where engineers thrive on challenge, drive rapid iteration, and grow into leaders.
• Manage engineering operations: Monitor the Tech budget and expenditures, ensuring cost-effective use of resources. Oversee the management of relationships with vendors, service providers, and technology partners to ensure the effective delivery of IT services and support.
•  Evaluate vendor performance, oversee contract negotiations, and manage service level agreements to optimize value and mitigate risks.
• Ensure that Avaaz systems and applications are consistently operational, efficient, and secure.
• Supervise IT infrastructure for functionality, efficiency, and security.

Qualifications 

Passion, experience, and the right mindset are the keys to success in this role. If you’re excited about using technology to create social change, we want to hear from you—even if you don’t meet every qualification.

• Passion and commitment to global justice, citizen empowerment, and positive social change and impact.
• Experience working in comparable technical leadership positions (e.g., VP of Engineering, CTO, etc.).
• Extensive experience in managing, monitoring and securing complex systems, infrastructure and applications.
• Thoroughly familiar with systems architecture, full-stack web development, system security, and data analytics.
• Strong leadership skills, comfortable in a highly collaborative team culture and a hierarchical team structure.
• High professionalism, self-motivation, efficiency, and results-oriented delivery on a short timeline.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Experience overseeing and managing engineering budgets effectively.
• Concrete understanding of web security, privacy, data protection, and regulatory compliance.
   

Nice to have

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field; advanced degrees (MBA or relevant graduate degree) are a plus.

Location

Avaaz is a virtual organization; most of our work is done online. Our staff are based all over the world. For this position, the candidate would ideally be based in Germany.

Compensation and Benefits

Salary varies with location and experience and is highly competitive with leading international nongovernmental organizations. The full-package salary for this position ranges from €120,000 - €140,000 EUR. Candidates will be provided with an accurate range in local currency.

The development of our employees is paramount. To support this, we include these benefits:

• 5 weeks paid vacation per year
• 10 paid holidays per year
• 2.500 EURO for training and development per year
• 1.250 EURO for language development per year
• Workspace support, including reimbursement for home office or co-working expenses

Application Timeline

We are reviewing applications on a rolling basis and encourage all candidates to submit applications as soon as possible. 

Our Recruitment Process

Avaaz undertakes a comprehensive recruitment procedure designed to select the most talented candidate for any given position. The recruitment process is comprised of the following steps:

1. Application Review
2. Screening Call
3. Interview 1
4. Exercise
5. Interview 2
6. Offer Call

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion 

As a global organization with millions of members worldwide, it’s important to us that our team reflects the diversity needed to lead a movement of people from across the planet, rising to meet some of the most complex challenges humanity has ever faced. We believe we can only succeed by building a diverse team full of fresh perspectives and original ideas, and we are committed to creating a working environment in which everyone has an equal opportunity to fulfill their potential.

Our team includes speakers of English as their first or second language, self-taught and university-educated, and people with all sorts of professional backgrounds. If doing the job you just read about would excite you to come to work every day, we want you to apply if you’re talented, hard-working, and committed to making a difference.

We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, color, ancestry, language and accent, national origin, citizenship, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, family/parental or marital status, political affiliation, religion, socioeconomic class/caste, or disability. 

We’ll provide reasonable accommodations for qualified applicants with disabilities or special needs to participate in the application process, so please let us know if you have such a request when you apply.

Please do not send your application via email. Only applications received via the form online will be considered. Thank you!