Talent Engagement Manager - Digital Delivery Team

About U.S. Digital Response

U.S. Digital Response (USDR) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps governments and organizations respond quickly and efficiently to support the critical needs of the public.

Leveraging an amazing internal team along with a network of pro-bono technical expertise and modern, resilient technology, USDR addresses and uncovers solutions for common, systemic challenges that public servants are facing, leaving them better equipped to deliver services and support to millions of people nationwide.

We operate with humility and deep respect for our partners and believe that modern and resilient technology applied in the public interest can deliver people-centered services at the speed of need.

Since March 2020, USDR’s projects have impacted 42M+ people in 38 U.S. states and territories. We've built deep partnerships with over 280 government and nonprofit partners, strong expertise across more than 350 projects, and repeatable processes to solve some of the most pressing challenges in order to help government meet the critical needs of people today, while building digital resilience to stand up to the crises of tomorrow.

Learn more about our last year in our annual impact report, 2022 USDR In Review.

About the Digital Delivery Program

When government delivers services digitally, people can apply for student loan forgiveness in just a few minutes or request COVID tests by submitting a minimal amount of information. Unfortunately, government services, too frequently, do not keep up with the public’s needs, particularly as services have moved from in-person to digital delivery, where the digital presence of the service is as critical as the service itself. Poorly designed, slow, out of date, and inequitable government services mean that residents—often the most vulnerable—are not getting the critical services they need to thrive.

Government often lacks the capacity needed to deliver services digitally. While this shows up most obviously in crisis moments, these gaps exist throughout the ecosystem of government delivery. USDR’s Digital Delivery program takes a two-pronged approach to address this capacity gap:

• Be the capacity: In instances where services can be immediately unblocked by a surge of tech talent, USDR volunteers build direct solutions with governments.
• Build the capacity: Digital Delivery helps governments build digital capacity for the long term by helping teams become fluent in digital best practices, policies, and tools and helping governments leverage each other’s good work.

About The Role

USDR’s Digital Delivery Program is seeking a Talent Engagement Manager to lead and grow the impact we can have by supporting governments in recruiting, hiring, and retaining high quality digital talent. This is a critical moment to help governments attract technology talent as shifts in the workforce are taking place. We are looking for someone who is excited about how technologists can deepen and accelerate state and local governments’ ability to deliver responsive services for residents.

You will be responsible for managing Digital Delivery’s Talent-related portfolio, working collaboratively with governments to define the scope of work for engagements, advising the engagement work as it is delivered by USDR volunteers, and staying engaged with government partners after engagements wrap up to manage additional needs. This role is highly collaborative and will work closely with other Digital Delivery team members to effectively scope engagements, the Volunteers Team to source volunteers for engagements, and with governments and ecosystem partners that are all working on the shared goal of expanding governments’ digital capacity.

This role might be a good fit if you have a background in government hiring with familiarity in building and supporting teams of technologists.

This is a termed role for one-year, salaried, with competitive pay and benefits.

You are excited about this opportunity because you will...

Manage Talent Engagements with Government Partners (60%)

• Lead on intake and supporting talent engagements with government, including: recruiting, operational process, evaluation methods, and hiring and onboarding strategies, tools and templates, knowledge management, policies and governance
• Play a key role in maturing governments’ processes and tools to enable technology talent to have a greater impact on the public sector
• Confidently translate governments’ technical talent needs into volunteer engagements
• Collaborate with the Volunteers Team to maintain and contribute to the workflows and processes of volunteer matching, outreach, and placement
• Build and manage a team of volunteers to support with scoping and delivery of talent engagements
• Build and maintain collaborative working relationships with government partners
• Collaborate with the Volunteers Team Lead and Digital Delivery team on strategies for implementing talent-focused experiments that align with the demonstrated needs of both governments and technologists.

Sustainable Success (30%)

• Create documentation, reports, and/or dashboards to capture outcomes from talent engagements.
• Reflect on results and opportunities for sharing findings with the broader civic tech ecosystem.
• Identify engagements that have potential to scale to multiple jurisdictions and develop a roadmap for scaling.

Internal Team Health and Effectiveness (10%)

• Look at macro opportunities and pain points strategically to create, innovate and implement improvements to USDR systems, processes, or practices.
• Collaborate with the Digital Delivery Team and Volunteers Team to ensure ongoing alignment with program goals.
• Effortlessly role model the values in our Volunteer Oath.

We're excited about you because you have/are...

• Experience successfully hiring technologists as a hiring manager or people operations leader or by supporting the needs of a hiring team at various levels of experience and confidence.
• Experience at any level of government working on talent and/or hiring
• Effectively collaborated across teams and organizations to build ways to attract technical talent and onboard them for success, bringing familiarity with common technology role titles and skills
• Comfortable reading technologist-focused role descriptions to understand the skills needed and how they contribute to better service design.
• The ability to communicate the employee value proposition for government technologists to both hiring managers (aka government partners) and potential technology, design, and operational talent.
• Familiar with modern remote collaboration tools and quick to acclimate to new tools and workflows.
• Strong work ethic, keen analytical and problem-solving skills, and the ability to manage complex projects and multi-task with excellent organization skills, a default to action, and a strict attention to detail.
• Outstanding written and verbal communication skills. Experienced and comfortable with presenting work to executives and large groups. Strong interpersonal, networking, and rapport-building skills with government partners, the executive team, team leads, and community partners.
• Sound judgment, demonstrated ability in providing high integrity leadership, and capable of making smart decisions in the face of ambiguity and imperfect information.
• Sensitivity towards equity concerns and a desire to work toward creating an organizational culture and project offerings that reflect anti-oppression values.
• Or any combination of education, experience, and measurable performance that demonstrates the capability to perform the duties of the position.

Skills and experience are necessary, but we hire on value alignment first, so if you feel you would be a good fit with us, still consider applying.

What you’ll get:

• A competitive salary, consistent with similar roles in other tech non-profits in major U.S. metropolitan cities. The annual salary range for this role is $140,000 - $160,000 depending on experience.
• Full health, dental and vision benefits (USDR pays 100% of the cost for our employees and 80% of the cost for their dependents).
• 401K with a matching contribution of up to 3 percent of your pay with $1 for each dollar you contribute and for more than 3 percent and up to 5 percent of your pay with $0.50 for each dollar you contribute.
• An equipment reimbursement for the purchase of a computer and peripheral devices of up to $2,000 along with a Work from Home allowance of $100 each month to support employees as they navigate working from home.
• A discretionary budget of $500 per year per employee for learning and development along with an organization-wide L&D budget to support individuals and teams with work-related learning and development expenses
• A supportive community where everyone can thrive and find a balance between working hard to make a difference and taking care of themselves. This means that we are committed to a fully remote work environment (for US-based employees) along with flexible schedules and time off policies that work with your life.

Equal Employment Opportunity

U.S. Digital Response is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer fully dedicated to achieving a diverse staff. All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation), disability status, protected veteran status, political party affiliation, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We encourage and welcome all interested potential applicants, regardless of background or prior experience volunteering with U.S. Digital Response, to apply.