Facing History & Ourselves uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry and hate. Our classroom resources and professional development offerings examine racism, antisemitism, and prejudice at pivotal moments in history; we help students learn about the impact of choices made in the past, and connect them to the choices they will confront in their own lives.
Facing History & Ourselves is a global education non-profit organization that challenges teachers and students to use lessons of history to stand up to racism, antisemitism, and other forms of bigotry and hate.
Position Description: The Associate Director provides technical leadership, solutions architecture, senior web development skills and strategic guidance to build, extend, and sustain Facing History’s digital infrastructure. This role oversees the architecture, design, and development of core platforms, systems, and applications, with a primary focus on FacingHistory.org, a Drupal-based platform, and its interconnected third-party systems.
You will drive the technical implementation, ensuring our digital infrastructure delivers seamless, secure, and scalable experiences for educators and administrators. Your work will prioritize best practices in user experience, accessibility, and web development.
Collaborating across teams—including product, design, and engineering—you will lead the technical development and delivery of impactful digital products. As part of the Technology team, you’ll join a culture that values flexibility, a growth mindset, and humor as we navigate the organization’s evolving needs.
Who You Are: You are a collaborative and growth-minded technical leader who excels at navigating complex technical landscapes while fostering inclusive and equitable team environments. Known for your ability to think critically and execute effectively, you balance technical expertise with empathy and communication to ensure the needs of both end-users and team members are met. You embrace challenges as opportunities to innovate, consistently demonstrating accountability, resilience, and a commitment to building trust and strong relationships across diverse stakeholders.
Who We Are: The Technology team is collaborative, supportive, and flexible. We are customer focused and appreciate our role in supporting the work and mission of Facing History and Ourselves. We embrace a growth-mindset and we are able to pivot/adapt to changes and are good natured in our approach to shifting priorities. We value the strengths we each bring to our team. We deal with complex and sensitive issues, and work to maintain professionalism and a good sense of humor, too.
You Will:
- Oversee the Dev Ops and technical architecture for Facing History, www.facinghistory.org (Drupal). Lead development efforts for our sprints, ensuring alignment with key objectives and metrics.
- Supervise and provide direction for one internal developer while effectively interfacing with external technical partners and developers to ensure alignment, quality, and timely delivery of platform enhancements.
- Collaborate with our project manager to assess and prioritize tickets based on our goals, timelines and stakeholder needs to ensure the successful delivery of development tasks.
- Scope and write clear technical requirements documents using tools such as JIRA or ClickUp.
- Estimate tickets, manage engineering capacity in coordination with the internal and external project managers, and monitor and adapt when estimates are inaccurate.
- Translate technical challenges into actionable opportunities that support long-term scalability, and ongoing optimization of functionality, integrations, and system performance.
- Work on development tickets, both front-end and back-end, and complete code reviews for peers.
- Maintain and monitor SSO integrations (Google, Clever, Canvas), multidevs, and major platform integrations.
- Oversee testing, QA, and release management to ensure high-quality deployments. Execute code deploys.
- Troubleshoot complex and/or urgent website issues, coordinate effectively with external developers, internal leadership, and 3rd party vendors. Occasionally requires off-hours work.
- Support best practices for coding standards, security, stability UX design, accessibility, and iterative development.
- Partner with teams to integrate third-party platforms (e.g., Salesforce, event registration systems) with Drupal-based solutions, and support the ongoing documentation and quality of these integrations.
- Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) for platform health and operational efficiency. Standardize and provide regular reporting on health or the platform.
- Create and maintain documentation for technical solutions, workflows, and product specifications. Lead technical training and troubleshooting efforts by developing resources and providing guidance to stakeholders.
- Manage and provide web development support to end users through Salesforce cases and for internal teams through Slack channels. Ensure efficient issue resolution and identify opportunities for process improvements.
Professional Development
- Maintain proficiency, obtain certifications, and increase expertise in Drupal, CMSs, technical architecture, and nonprofit technology solutions and use cases by attending trainings, reading industry-relevant resources, attending conferences and more
- Model and nurture Professional Development plan development and knowledge acquisition and knowledge sharing practices for team
- Seek opportunities to submit proposals, join panels, and present our work
Community & Commitment
In addition, qualified candidates can expect to:
- Center principles of equity, inclusion, and belonging in all work.
- Demonstrate a commitment to the mission of Facing History & Ourselves.
- Demonstrate a commitment to diversity using a personal approach that values all individuals and respects differences in regards to race, ethnicity, age, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, religion, disability and socio-economic circumstance.
- Demonstrate a commitment to work collaboratively and respectfully toward resolving obstacles and/or conflicts.
Essential Skills, Qualifications and Competencies:
Facing History understands that restrictive job requirements may exclude historically marginalized groups from applying to jobs for which they are qualified. We take an equitable and holistic screening approach. If you feel you have demonstrated experience and expertise relevant to perform this role, please don’t hesitate to apply!
- Customarily requires BS/BA in related discipline or equivalent related experience. Specific certification may be preferred.
- At Least 5 years experience as a technology lead deploying enterprise-class solutions for managing data, content, and transactions, at least 3+ years specifically with Drupal. Experience with Drupal-Salesforce integration is highly preferred.
- Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, with the demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex technical solutions to non-technology staff, and to be able to translate business needs into clear technical requirements.
- Consistently demonstrate strong ownership of projects end-to-end, a track record of successfully rolling out infrastructure, and collaborating with multiple stakeholders to deliver successful solutions.
- Strategic thinker and contributor with in-depth knowledge of web development tools (CSS, HTML) and programming languages (PHP, JavaScript).
- Knowledge and experience in established best practices for web development, accessibility, security and performance. CMS management, and content authoring. Proven experience with Agile methods strongly preferred.
- Maintains an understanding of and a perspective on web technology trends within the Drupal space and beyond to understand how they can be applied to maintain stability and enable opportunities for product growth.
Benefits Summary: In addition to meaningful and rewarding work, Facing History provides an excellent and competitive compensation and benefits package including medical with a fully employer-sponsored health reimbursement account (HRA), dental, vision, life & AD&D, long-term & short-term disability insurance, 403(B) retirement plan with a discretionary organizational contribution, generous paid time off, an employee assistance program, travel assistance plan, pre-tax commuter spending accounts, flexible spending accounts, voluntary Colonial Life group plans, robust wellness programs through aHealthyMe, an employee discounted marketplace through BenefitHub, weekly virtual yoga and meditation, 403(B) advisement, and a friendly work environment.
Facing History values a diverse workforce and an inclusive culture. We encourage applications from all qualified individuals without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, marital status, citizenship, disability, veteran status and record of arrest or conviction, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.
Facing History’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. At Facing History, we honor and value the uniqueness of each and every human being. Our strength as an organization that provides and distributes educational content and pedagogy to teachers across the globe is directly tied to our diversity of staff, leadership, educators, students, scholars, and volunteers. Our commitment is to treat individuals with dignity and to build and maintain a community of full participation, inclusive of the voices, needs, and contributions of all. As an organization, we are deeply aware of the legacies of injustices that persist in society and in the workplace, and we value and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their association with excellence.
Remote-first/Hybrid Work Model: Facing History and Ourselves operates in a remote-first/hybrid work model, allowing staff flexibility in both schedules and work locations. This particular position is home-based. Some travel is required.
Title: Associate Director, Website Development
Reports To: Senior Director, Digital Operations and Strategy
Location: Home Based Office (US)
Status: Full time; Exempt (IC3/B7)
Salary Range*: $105,000 - $125,000
IN LIEU OF A COVER LETTER, PLEASE REVIEW THE PRE-SCREEN QUESTIONS
* We strive to offer competitive salaries commensurate with experience in a similar position. New hires are typically brought into the organization at a salary range between the minimum and midpoint depending on experience and in alignment with internal parity.
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