Job detail for Manager, Software Engineering

Who We Are

At Murmuration, we believe that America’s promise is shaped and reshaped by the best ideas and ideals of its communities, and the dreams of the people who believe in a better life for themselves, their families, and each other.

We help organizations build power in their communities in four key ways: we organize a network of values-aligned partners; we provide deep, data-driven insights into people, places, and perspectives; we develop tools that make organizing and engagement easy and more effective; and we offer services that strengthen our partners’ capacity to lead change in their communities.

We envision an America where every community has what it needs to help people lead healthy, free, and dignified lives. We work to redesign the systems and structures we all depend on — how we learn, live, govern, and solve problems — so that they are just, equitable, resilient, and rooted in shared responsibility. By strengthening the ties that hold communities together, we aim for civic life defined by collective action and care, with effective leadership that truly represents everyone.

We are a collaborative, curious, and creative team of organizers, scientists, teachers, technologists, campaign veterans, and more who share the unwavering belief that we can use our gifts in service of transforming America — together. We’ve built our team guided by the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And so we support each other relentlessly — rallying together to face challenges the same way we celebrate each other’s wins.

About the Position

Do you see yourself as a mission-driven engineering leader who believes that great products come from strong teams? Do you do your best work in the stretch between "it works for a few pilot partners" and "it works reliably for everyone, at scale"?

We are seeking a Manager, Software Engineering to lead the Explorer Team as we bring the product from limited alpha to general availability. Explorer is a data visualization product that facilitates political data exploration through interactive maps and exportable tables, supplemented by an NLP-powered search function. It is live today with a limited set of partners. Getting it to general availability involves establishing the engineering patterns, operational foundations, and testing strategies the product will run on for years.

You will lead the small, close-knit team doing that work. You are inheriting an engaged core group and hiring alongside them, which means the team you finish general availability with is a team that you helped build. This is a role for someone who reads a shifting roadmap as a problem to solve rather than a sign something is broken, and who treats team health as a delivery strategy, not a separate initiative.

What You'll Do

Manage and grow the team

• Manage a team of up to 10 engineers, ensuring each person a clear understanding of how their work aligns with our engineering vision and benefits our Partners;
• Cultivate an inclusive, high-trust culture aligned with Murmuration and engineering values on a team small enough that culture is set by daily behavior rather than policy;
• Manage performance directly and early with support from your director and the people team; and
• Grow the team through participation in our candidate vetting and hiring processes.

Deliver Explorer to General Availability

• Own our sprint planning and scrum ceremonies, keeping them aligned with product priorities and genuinely useful;
• Lead effective retrospectives with an eye toward team-level learning and improvement over time;
• Oversee the software development lifecycle for Explorer, ensuring the platform we hand to partners is robust, stable, secure, and maintainable;
• Create project plans in partnership with other technical leaders, and provide technical project management to ensure delivery of team goals; and
• Identify process and technical challenges and propose solutions that improve both team effectiveness and team health.

Navigate ambiguity

• Partner with product management to deliver the Explorer roadmap and to prioritize and scope work with the team's input;

• Handle multi-month initiatives and prioritization across competing work, making decisions about process, work allocation, and technical approach as requirements firm up;

• Absorb unexpected inputs in partnership with your cross-functional stakeholders and your director, and translate them into a workable plan;

• Coordinate parallel workstreams within the team and collaborate with dependent engineering teams and cross-functional partners across product, design, research, data, and partner success; and

• Communicate proactively and bridge technical and non-technical audiences, sharing updates and risks clearly and early.

• 4+ years of management experience on a high-performing software engineering team, including performance management and individual development;

• Technical depth sufficient to review designs, ask the right questions about architecture and tradeoffs, and earn the trust of experienced engineers. This role may, in rare cases,  require you to carry sprint work, but in all cases requires strong technical judgment derived from direct experience;

• Production experience with AWS;

• A track record of leading delivery through ambiguity, and of keeping a team steady and productive through it;

• A track record of coaching with a multiplier effect: the people you mentor go on to coach others the same way;

• Demonstrated commitment to building inclusive, high-trust, high-performing teams, visible in how you run a team and handle conflict;

• Experience partnering closely with product management on roadmap, prioritization, and scoping; and

• Belief, like ours, that how we build is just as important as what we build.

Nice to Haves

• Familiarity with Voter File Data;
• Experience with or interest in political data; and/or
• A background in political tech, civic tech, advocacy, or mission-driven organizations.

The Manager, Software Engineering role is a full-time, salaried position with a comprehensive benefits package (detail below), open to candidates anywhere in the United States.

The starting salary for this position is $196,105. We set compensation using market data and apply it consistently across the organization to ensure fairness and transparency for everyone in similar roles.

Our Culture of Care

We work hard to create a culture of care to ensure that our staff are best equipped to lead happy, healthy, and balanced lives. To that end, we offer a comprehensive benefits package which includes:

• Health, vision, and dental insurance with 100% of premiums covered for you and qualifying family members;
• Retirement benefits with a 5% employer match;
• A flexible unlimited PTO plan;
• Generous paid parental leave;
• Pre-tax commuter benefits;
• A company laptop;
• A flexible remote work environment;
• A home office setup stipend for all new employees;
• Monthly reimbursement for remote work expenses;
• A yearly professional development fund;
• Mental health and wellness benefits through Calm and Better Help;
• Yearly in-person staff retreats; and
• A welcoming culture that celebrates diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.

At Murmuration, we believe a vibrant, representative democracy depends on the inclusion of diverse voices, lived experiences, and perspectives. The best ideas don’t come from a single person or ideology — they emerge at the intersection of different backgrounds, identities, and viewpoints. We are proud of our commitment to building an organization and culture shaped by respect, empathy, and collaboration, where our team’s diversity fuels innovation, civic engagement, and meaningful change. We welcome new colleagues who will help us nurture this collective effort. Join us.

An Equal-Opportunity Employer with a Commitment to Diversity

Murmuration is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and as an organization committed to diversity and the perspective of all voices, we consider applicants equally of race, gender, color, sexual orientation, religion, marital status, disability, political affiliation and national origin. We reasonably accommodate staff members and/or applicants with disabilities, provided they are otherwise able to perform the essential functions of the job.

Note: Murmuration is two organizations working together to pursue our mission of amplifying the power of civic engagement: Murmuration Research Institute, a 501(c)(3) that conducts research to identify, design, and create the data, tools, and insights that build healthier and more equitable communities; and Murmuration, Inc., a 501(c)(4) that supports organizations working across the country on the nation’s most challenging issues with access to data, tools, and research that build healthier and more equitable communities.