Technical Project Lead at Development Seed

We have established a great partnership with NASA around our shared commitment to advance open science in the cloud, push the boundaries of AI-driven Earth science, and build tools that magnify the impact of publicly funded research and data.

We are seeking an experienced project management professional to play a leading role in developing our partnership and ensuring success in our joint activities. This role will focus on managing cross-project coordination, stakeholder relationships, and project direction for major projects with NASA and partners.

We are looking for someone who is proactive, self-motivated, and able to work independently with minimal supervision. This person ensures that our technical expertise is incorporated into project strategy, that we understand what project success means to key stakeholders, and that we achieve this success. Experience working on projects in the government sector and/or research and development in geospatial technologies or natural sciences would be an asset for efficient communication and translation between scientific and engineering concerns. The ideal candidate will have a strong understanding of project management principles and practices, software development and data engineering, as well as excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Development Seed is a unique and rewarding place to do this work. Over the past two decades, we have honed our approach to stewarding projects from opportunity to successful, impactful products. Our partners are working on exciting and important problems. Our technical teams are built of curious, empathetic people with high intrinsic motivation and individual agency. We open-source a lot of our work, invest heavily in research and development that drives the field, and regularly reinvent the nature of our work.

This is a remote-first position with some required travel opportunities. You must have U.S. Central Time friendly working hours and be able to travel at least once per year to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama and occasionally meet our partners at key conferences. You’ll be working with our NASA partners in US time zones while also collaborating with our global team.

• Coordinate between NASA stakeholders, project teams, program managers, and technical experts
• Oversee the overall project scope, objectives, and timelines
• Provide project direction to engineering teams and ensure they have the necessary resources and support
• Represent Development Seed in forums and meetings with NASA and partners
• Develop a shared understanding of success with our stakeholders and track that we achieve it
• Build relationships with key stakeholders and leverage them for maximizing project outcome and long-term success

Qualified candidates will have:

• Experience in technical project or program management
• Experience with natural sciences and research
• Experience working on large-scale projects that involve collaboration with multiple stakeholders, including government agencies or other large organizations, contractors, and cross-functional teams
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of a team as well as independently
• Work schedule in a US time zone, and willingness to travel to Huntsville, Alabama at least once a year and attend key events like the AGU annual meeting
• Knowledge of software engineering principles and practices
• A pragmatic sense towards agile development methodologies

• Prior experience working as a software engineer
• Experience with implementing project management tooling and processes
• Familiarity with our partner organizations in the cloud-native geospatial space like Pangeo Forge, Microsoft Planetary Computer, AWS Open Data, Google Earth Engine, Earthmover, Carbonplan, 2i2c
• Activity in relevant open source tech communities and conferences like Pangeo, ESIP, IGARSS, FOSS4G, AGU

• Collaborate — Working as a team makes us stronger than any individual developer. You write clear GitHub tickets and communicate effectively on Slack and in person.
• Learn — We constantly evolve our technology stack and techniques to deliver the best work to our partners. You don't need to know any particular language or framework upfront, but demonstrate that you're able and excited to learn new building methods.
• Code — You write code that focuses on performance and maintainability. You also write detailed documentation before and after writing code.
• Care about the world and believe that we can do better — Social change is the foundation of everything we do. You are impatient about solving the world’s toughest challenges.

Are you not sure you tick all the boxes? We encourage you to apply. We have a culture of learning, and if this job description sounds exciting, we’d love to hear from you.

We have a comprehensive 5 step hiring process, designed to be thorough and engaging to ensure that you and our team have a clear understanding of how we can succeed together:

1. Application review
2. Introductory interview to get to know each other
3. Technical interview to talk about your skills for this position, prior experience, and answer hypothetical questions about how you’d approach future projects
4. Team fit interview to align with our team's culture and your longer term career goals
5. Paid full day virtual interview activity for you to collaborate directly with our team members

Development Seed earnestly embraces diversity and equal opportunity. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. The more inclusive we are, the better our work will be.