Engineering Lead

Communitytechalliance; Washington (District of Columbia); Remote; USD 170,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Community Tech Alliance is looking for an Engineering Lead to modernize a key data system within progressive politics. This role involves hands-on coding, team leadership, and strategic technical execution while operating in a fully remote environment with synchronous working hours.

Qualifications

• Led a team on large, complex projects.
• Strong experience in data systems and engineering practices.
• Familiarity with GCP and BigQuery preferred.

Responsibilities

• Lead modernization of a critical data system.
• Write production-grade code and review PRs.
• Manage CI/CD, deployments, and technical documentation.

Skills

Experience with cloud migrations

Production-grade coding

Debugging complex issues

Performance optimization

Data orchestration pipelines

ETL workflows

Python

SQL

Job description

CTA is seeking an Engineering Lead to spearhead the modernization of one of the most critical data systems in progressive politics . CTA is undertaking work with a key progressive organization to completely rebuild and manage key data infrastructure. As an architect of this ground-floor initiative, you will play a central role in rebuilding a piece of data infrastructure central to the progressive ecosystem. This career-defining opportunity offers the chance to shape a high-impact project from the ground up, leveraging modern data technologies and engineering practices, all while assembling and leading a new, cross-functional team. You’ll work within the supportive framework of an established, mission-driven organization with a history of delivering transformative solutions.

Reporting to CTA’s Technical Director, the Engineering Lead will be a key technical executor for the initiative. They will take a hands-on role in writing production-grade code, reviewing PRs, optimizing performance, and debugging complex issues and edge cases. This role also includes leading CI/CD, deployments, and developer workflows, while translating technical architecture into day-to-day execution for the rest of the team. The Engineering Lead will work closely with the Technical Director, product peers, and client stakeholders to help synthesize diverse perspectives into a coherent technical strategy, and will bring care and precision to documenting and improving systems over time. This role requires an in-the-weeds technologist with the depth and breadth of experience to ensure the team is executing at the highest level.

About us

Community Tech Alliance is a group of progressive technologists and strategists formed to provide data infrastructure building blocks to the progressive ecosystem at a low cost. CTA seeks to uplevel program impact by unlocking the potential of data, using software and data engineering, and removing the barriers to entry. We are a small team of engineers, data practitioners, product managers, and strategists looking to create infrastructure for progressive change.

Community Tech Alliance believes strongly that

Inclusive teams are strongest, and supportive work environments take investment, intentionality, and openness

Empathy is the cornerstone of building smart technology solutions

All team members should take ownership of the project and team’s development

Iteration is key, and smart solutions require action not perfection

Nothing great has been built without making mistakes and learning from them

Other points relevant to this role

We are a fully remote organization, but have synchronous working hours

Our client for this project is in Washington, D.C. You must be available for synchronous work during Eastern Time business hours

Job requirements

About you

You have led or been on a team that has been accountable for a large, complex project

You are able to take in multiple perspectives from your team and stakeholders, synthesize tradeoffs, and chart a course of action that moves the project forward—all while remaining diplomatic

You think through migrations and understand dataflows across multiple systems as second nature

You can identify ambiguity and help the team find clarity

You have been on or worked with product engineering teams

You value continual learning and prioritize work and assignments that help the larger group develop deeper understandings

You are receptive to feedback and open to introspection when something goes wrong

You recognize that an environment of continuous improvement only happens when you support psychological safety

Technical background

Familiarity with cloud migrations including on-prem to cloud or cloud-to-cloud transitions

Strong experience writing production-grade code, debugging complex issues, and optimizing performance in real-world systems

Experience designing and maintaining scalable data processing systems, including data orchestration pipelines and ETL workflows

Familiarity with modern data warehousing solutions; hands-on experience with GCP and BigQuery is preferred

Comfortable serving as a scrum master, breaking down work and supporting team execution

Preference for open-source and cloud-native tooling where appropriate, with a bias toward maintainability and cost-efficiency

Experience documenting systems and processes clearly to support collaboration and long-term sustainability

Proven track record managing CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and developer workflows in cloud environments

Python, SQL

GCP: GCS, GKE, Composer, Cloud Functions, IAM, Pub/Sub, DataProc

Terraform

We don’t expect every applicant to have had the experiences described or have worked with every technology we’ve listed, so we urge you to apply if you’re interested and some of the above apply to you! We’re looking for the right humans and hiring for the people over the position above all else.

Additional requirements

Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without restriction

Must be located in the US and able to work ET business hours

The physical demands here represent those that an employee must meet to perform the essential functions of this job successfully. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions:

Ability to sit at a computer monitor for extended periods of time

Occasional travel to Washington DC and other US-based locations for company retreats

Salary and benefits

Salary is between $170/yr and $190/yr, commensurate with experience.

Community Tech Alliance provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.