Overview:
Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7, high-quality text-based mental health support and crisis intervention by empowering a community of trained volunteers to support people in their moments of need.
Our mission is at the intersection of empathy and innovation — we promote mental well-being for people wherever they are.
Our vision is an empathetic world where nobody feels alone.
Our core values are at the heart of all we do: connect with empathy, center equity, get it done together, and reflect and evolve.
Why you should join our team:
- Our work is transforming the way people in pain access support at their fingertips
- Our work is innovative in the crisis response space
- Our dynamic, fun, and diverse culture
- Our meaningful cause, led by empathy and innovation
- Our strong values at the center of all we do
- Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion
- Our commitment to engagement and belonging
- Our commitment to our employees and their holistic wellbeing
- Our value of work/life balance
- Our growth mindset and prioritize professional development
- Our leaders who truly care
What you'll be doing:
Role: Interim Candidate Engaged in posting
As the Director of Product - Programs & Operations at Crisis Text Line you will be a change agent, helping shape the portfolio roadmap and planning processes to align with strategic business priorities, rolling work up into annual OKRs and using quarterly goals to measure progress towards deliverables.
This role is responsible for improving internal team collaboration, planning, and efficiency through effective agile coaching and the development of standard program management practices. You will streamline and implement processes and best practices. You will provide mentoring and coaching to teams and product managers to ensure the successful adoption of the agile mindset, principles, and standard frameworks.
You will be responsible for strengthening our user engagement and satisfaction with our service, partnership, communication, and collaboration. You will oversee the continuation and creation of healthy, collaborative, and successful partnerships with our existing customers and with new customers we onboard to the platform. This includes driving complex launch initiatives as well creating and managing release processes, establishing customer success processes, improving the SLDC, and establishing trackable KPIs.
This position will play a key role in driving continuous improvement and building efficient, repeatable processes as we scale to support mental health around the world. You will drive operational excellence across the product development organization, building a culture of psychological safety, transparency and trust. You must be skilled at driving change, leading by influence, and comfortable communicating at all levels of an organization
Responsibilities
Enhance Team Collaboration and Efficiency
- Establish portfolio planning processes to create realistic, dependable roadmaps and release plans aligning with strategic objectives and priorities.
- Design, pilot, and roll out a build organization quarterly planning event and process to facilitate feature prioritization, sizing, and roadmap creation.
- Roll out new processes, best practices, standards, and KPIs as needed to improve team efficiency and effectiveness while avoiding unnecessary duplication of/variation from standard processes.
- Coach cross functional teams to adopt standard agile mindset, principles, and techniques to achieve the greatest business value.
- Collaborate and coach Product Managers to define and scope work into features.
- Champion the key agile principles of continuous improvement, self-management, and sustainable development pace. Facilitate problem-solving to identify root causes of issues and ensure countermeasures address the problem effectively.
- Identify and monitor KPIs to enable standard measurement across product / engineering teams.
- Orchestrate Communities of Practice, Lunch & Learn forums, and other workshops as needed.
Strengthen Affiliate Satisfaction and Engagement
- Responsible for fostering a collaborative working relationship with existing affiliates.
- Creation and facilitation of regular sync meetings to ensure open lines of communication, address concerns in real-time and gather feedback to inform product development.
- Oversight of monthly affiliate meetings to discuss strategic initiatives, product roadmap, upcoming releases, and joint problems and concerns.
- Develop communication plan for releases, training, and onboarding to the platform and to new features.
- Primary operational liaison for our affiliates, resolving questions, bugs, etc. Develop feature request and bug reporting process and pipeline.
- Develop a unified system for customer feedback and insights to drive product planning and prioritization.
- Define and implement an incident management process to ensure swift resolution and prompt communication when experiencing production issues.
Drive Operational Excellence
- Responsible for leading major software initiatives from planning to implementation, incl. projects in the areas of process optimization.
- Apply essential program management skills including: developing strategies/timelines/milestones, risks identification/mitigation, build processes to scale, excellent communication skills to enable stakeholder comms and leadership comms, project reviews and project tracking.
- Ensure that milestones and releases deliver business value/outcomes.
- Identify, communicate, and escalate (as necessary) impediments and roadblocks across multiple, interdependent streams of work. Help teams to successfully self-manage their dependencies and blockers.
- Collaborate with senior leadership to identify improvement opportunities, develop and implement processes to streamline the product development lifecycle.
- Develop repeatable processes for onboarding and launching new customers on the Crisis Text Line software platform.
- Establish and refine release processes and communications to ensure smooth transitions from legacy software to new releases. Iteratively improve the process to increase efficiency and capacity.
- Regularly evaluate the product tools and resources used by our team looking for opportunities to optimize processes and/or reduce costs.
- Develop and maintain the process and standards for product and development documentation.
Qualifications
- 10+ years experience as a Program Manager with demonstrated experience supporting multiple complex initiatives across multiple teams.
- 5+ years experience as an Agile Coach and Scrum Master with an Agile certification such as Certified Scrum Master or Certified Agile Coach.
- 5+ years of release management experience.
- Ability to influence and lead others without direct management responsibility or authority.
- Highly organized and detail-oriented.
- Strong communication, facilitation, conflict resolution, and team building skills.
- Experience with GitHub, Miro, Asana, JIRA and Confluence.
- Experience working in a remote first environment with teams across different time zones and cultures.
Attributes
- Obsessed with quality improvement and delivering frictionless experiences for users.
- Strategic thinker, planner, and leader who is also willing to do hands-on work.
- Flexible mindset that enjoys creating new processes, working in a fast-paced environment, and collaborating with a diverse team
- Comfortable operating with a high level of autonomy while taking accountability and ownership for delivering qualityShares ideas freely and constructively and advocates for the user throughout the development life cycleStrong ability to analyze problems and trace issues to the root cause
Reliable High-Speed Internet Required: Must have a stable high-speed internet connection to support seamless remote collaboration, virtual meetings, online job tasks, etc.
The full salary range for this position, across all United States geographies, is $156,816 to $170,000 per year. The upper portion of the salary range is typically reserved for existing employees who demonstrate strong performance over time. Starting salary will vary by location, qualifications, and prior experience; during the interview process, candidates will learn the starting salary range applicable for their location. We pay competitively in the tech-forward nonprofit space and offer a robust benefits package.
Only candidates in the following states will be eligible for employment: CA, CO, CT, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, IA, MD, MA, MI, MO, NJ, NM, NY, NC, OH, PA, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA.
Benefits:
Crisis Text Line employee benefits are thoughtfully designed using an equity lens, acknowledging that we are all unique human beings with individual life circumstances that require flexibility and support.
Benefits include:
- 20 paid holidays including:
- Federal holidays like Juneteenth and Labor Day
- Election day
- Holiday break from Dec 24 through January 1
- 2 renewal days
- 2 floating holidays
- Flexible paid time off, including:
- 15 vacation days
- 3 personal days
- 7 sick days
- Medical, dental, and vision benefits for the staff member and family at no cost to the employee
- 403B retirement plan (the nonprofit equivalent of a 401K): 3% contribution by Crisis Text Line to support building financial wellness, regardless of personal contribution
- 12 weeks paid parental leave (after 6 months of employment)
- Student loan repayment (after 2 years of continuous full time service)
- Family support through a virtual childcare platform
- Stipends/Allowances
- Mental health (Monthly)
- Internet Service (Monthly)
- Professional Development (Annual)
- Wellness (Annual)
- Home office setup (One time/First year)
(Benefits are only for US-based employees. International benefits may differ).
Crisis Text Line is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. We provide reasonable accommodation to individuals who have a disability and meet the skill, experience, education, and other job-related requirements of the role to allow the individual to perform the essential functions of the job.
