Managing Director

Movement Labs; United States; Remote; USD 200,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision

401(k)

work-from-home stipend

unlimited PTO

Job summary

Movement Labs is a program incubator and consulting firm that uses technology, data, and randomized controlled trials to win elections and build progressive power. This is a scaling leadership role reporting to the founder and CEO, who will continue to focus his energy on strategy, fundraising, new programs, and the greatest opportunities for impact.

You will ensure that the organization itself is built to support those goals.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional experience, including substantial experience managing managers and senior leaders in a high-performance environment.
• Demonstrated experience helping lead an organization, business, program, or major function through significant growth - ideally 2x or more - and personal ownership of the operational or organizational changes required to make that growth work.
• A builder’s understanding of scale: you have created or materially improved structures, roles, management systems, and operating rhythms rather than inheriting them.
• Exceptional judgment and general-management range. You move comfortably between strategy, people, operations, and execution; you have structured and hired roles to create leverage and built accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Deep motivation to work in the democracy space, and comfort with the urgency and intense sprints the election calendar creates.
• Ability to bring the right amount of order to an entrepreneurial environment: rigorous where rigor creates leverage, flexible where speed and experimentation matter.

Responsibilities

• Scale the organization. Translate the 2x growth strategy into an organizational and operating model that can support it.
• Lead the leadership team. Run the weekly leadership cadence, quarterly goal-setting, planning, and organization-wide decision processes.
• Manage and develop senior leaders. Directly manage a portfolio of VPs and/or directors, strengthen management quality across the organization, and build leadership capacity for a substantially larger enterprise.
• Design the organization. Shape structures, roles, accountabilities, cross-functional interfaces, and management rituals for a fast-growing, fully remote organization while protecting a high-performance, mission-driven culture.
• Serve as the CEO’s strategic partner and proxy. Help evaluate major investments and opportunities on both mission and business terms; resolve difficult internal questions; unstick decisions; mediate across teams; and turn strategy into execution.
• Operate at election-cycle speed. Create enough structure to support scale without bureaucracy that slows us down, and help teams decide well and fast when priorities shift.

Job description

Movement Labs is a program incubator and consulting firm that uses technology, data, and randomized controlled trials to win elections and build progressive power. Since 2017 we have run more than 250 RCTs on voter behavior.

We operate the largest evidence-based political texting programs in the country and incubate new electoral tactics - from Contest Every Race, which recruits Democratic candidates and supports 400+ local Democratic parties, to neighborhood captains, comedy persuasion, and organic social media. We are 110 staff in the 2026 cycle, fully remote, and aim to grow ~2x for the 27-28 cycle.

The Opportunity :

We are building the next generation of political infrastructure. Your job is to create the organizational leverage that lets exceptional teams execute.

This is fundamentally a scaling role. You report directly to the founder and CEO, who will continue to focus his energy on strategy, fundraising, new programs, and the greatest opportunities for impact. You will ensure that the organization itself is built to support those goals.

You have personally helped take an organization, business, or program through significant growth and understand what has to change as scale increases. You know how to translate growth strategy into operating reality: the structures, leadership capacity, management practices, planning rhythms, and decision rights that let a larger organization stay fast and effective.

The Leader:

The title Managing Director is intentionally broad. We are open to different leadership profiles and will shape the role around your strengths.

• You might be a highly strategic chief-of-staff-type leader: an exceptional generalist who runs the leadership team, drives priorities and decisions, solves complex cross-organizational problems, and serves as a close thought partner and proxy to the founder.
• You might be a more operational COO-type leader with direct responsibility for functions such as people, finance, legal, operations, technology, or program delivery.
• Many compelling candidates will sit somewhere between those two profiles. What is not flexible is the core mandate: create the organizational leverage, operating discipline, and leadership infrastructure that will enable us to approximately double in size while preserving the speed, experimentation, high standards, and mission focus that have made us successful.

What success looks like in year one:

• By Q2 2027, the 2027-28 plan and budget is robust, with clear choices and flex points, and has genuine buy-in from the leadership team.
• The organization has the structure, leadership capacity, decision rights, and operating systems required to execute the 2028 plan at approximately twice its current scale and net 1 point of presidential vote share in key states.
• Existing and new staff can sprint on the most promising tests ahead of 2028 without organizational bottlenecks slowing execution.
• Every VP understands what they own, what they can decide, where they need alignment, and how their work connects to organization-wide priorities.
• The leadership team operates on a predictable planning and decision cadence; cross-functional problems are surfaced and resolved quickly, and issues reach you before they need to reach the CEO.
• Communication and culture practices scale with the organization, ensuring that crucial program, business, and organizational information reaches staff clearly and consistently.
• The CEO spends substantially more time on strategy, fundraising, new programs, and big swings because you run the organization day to day.

What You’ll Own:

The Core Mandate…

• Scale the organization. Translate the 2x growth strategy into an organizational and operating model that can support it. Anticipate what will break at the next stage of scale and build the people, processes, systems, and decision structures before they become constraints.
• Lead the leadership team. Run the weekly leadership cadence, quarterly goal-setting, planning, and organization-wide decision processes. Create clarity around priorities, owners, timelines, budgets, and tradeoffs.
• Manage and develop senior leaders. Directly manage a portfolio of VPs and/or directors, strengthen management quality across the organization, and build leadership capacity for a substantially larger enterprise.
• Design the organization. Shape structures, roles, accountabilities, cross-functional interfaces, and management rituals for a fast-growing, fully remote organization while protecting a high-performance, mission-driven culture.
• Serve as the CEO’s strategic partner and proxy. Help evaluate major investments and opportunities on both mission and business terms; resolve difficult internal questions; unstick decisions; mediate across teams; and turn strategy into execution.
• Operate at election-cycle speed. Create enough structure to support scale without bureaucracy that slows us down, and help teams decide well and fast when priorities shift.

We are hiring first for excellence against the core scaling mandate and will finalize the org chart around you. You will directly own - or work closely with the leaders responsible for – some combination of:

• People and operations: hiring, onboarding, performance and growth systems, HR, organizational operations, and labor relations with the staff union.
• Finance: budgeting, projections, cash and margin across multiple entities (LLC, PAC, c4, c3), working with finance consultants or partnering with a standalone CFO.
• Legal and compliance: partnership with General Counsel on contracts, compliance, entity structure, and labor matters.
• Core programs and technology: teams designing and delivering established programs, particularly SMS turnout work.
• Consulting and partnerships: teams selling and delivering electoral and advocacy programs for campaigns, PACs, and partner organizations.
• New program lines and growth opportunities: including organic social media, field, warmed audiences, volunteer organizing, paid advertising, and potentially small-dollar fundraising.

Is This You?

Required

• 10+ years of professional experience, including substantial experience managing managers and senior leaders in a high-performance environment.
• Demonstrated experience helping lead an organization, business, program, or major function through significant growth - ideally 2x or more - and personal ownership of the operational or organizational changes required to make that growth work.
• A builder’s understanding of scale: you have created or materially improved structures, roles, management systems, and operating rhythms rather than inheriting them.
• Exceptional judgment and general-management range. You move comfortably between strategy, people, operations, and execution; you have structured and hired roles to create leverage and built accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Deep motivation to work in the democracy space, and comfort with the urgency and intense sprints the election calendar creates.
• Ability to bring the right amount of order to an entrepreneurial environment: rigorous where rigor creates leverage, flexible where speed and experimentation matter.

Beneficial

• Political campaign, party, or political-tech experience is a real advantage, although we have hired great leaders here without it. Advocacy, civic engagement, or other fast-moving mission-driven experience also helps.
• Strategy consulting or similar analytical training followed by meaningful operating responsibility.
• Experience in an evidence-driven organization where results are measured rigorously and resources are reallocated based on what works.
• Experience with tech-enabled or performance-marketing programs; SMS experience is particularly relevant.
• Experience with a unionized workforce.

Location:

• Fully remote, with travel for leadership retreats and key meetings.
• Salary: $200,000-$250,000, depending on experience and location, with additional incentive compensation tied to successfully achieving Movement Labs' growth and impact goals.
• Benefits: Health, dental, and vision; 401(k); work-from-home stipend; unlimited PTO.
• Target January 2027; flexible for the right candidate.