Director of Technology

Democracy Now! is a non‑profit news organization based in NYC. We produce an audience‑supported weekday news hour that reaches millions of people every month across broadcast and digital platforms. Everyone who works at Democracy Now! is committed to creating and distributing high‑quality independent news – it’s a great place to work.

Overview

The Director of Technology leads technology vision and execution for broadcast, digital and IT operations. This role requires a balance of technical expertise, leadership, and project management skills to oversee a diverse team and ensure seamless integration of technology systems across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Technology Leadership

• Ensure security, maintenance and resilience of technology solutions used across the organization.
• Advocate for strategic adoption of new technology to advance the organization’s mission and goals.
• Foster a team culture of excellence, innovation and collaboration.
• Provide supervision, mentorship and career development for a team of four full‑time staff and manage contractors.
• Manage budgets and timelines for capital projects.
• Work with vendors and service providers to get and vet proposals, ensure competitive pricing and monitor deliverables.
• Stay up to date with developments and trends in broadcast, IT and software engineering.
• Ensure that critical technology systems and processes are documented.

Broadcast

• Direct maintenance and deployment of baseband, IP and software systems for live TV & radio production facility including an extensive audio‑visual archive.
• Ensure compliance with regulations and standards for radio, TV and streaming media.
• Ensure affiliated broadcasters have access to high‑quality and reliable live signals and on‑demand files for distribution.

Digital

• Ensure that public facing products including website, mobile and OTT apps and podcasts perform reliably and can scale.
• Help define feature and technical roadmaps for web, mobile and OTT apps and feeds and manage day‑to‑day development and deployment.
• Optimize processes for encoding video and audio and publishing to third party platforms

IT & Systems Administration

• Ensure staff have the technology resources and training needed to advance their work including hardware, networking, software, productivity tools and enterprise information systems.
• Maintain adequate cybersecurity, disaster recovery and backup plans.
• Oversee the systems administration for on premises Linux and Windows servers, Mac workstations, NAS systems, virtualization as well as cloud‑based resources for services and hosting.

Compensation

The salary range is $130,000 - $150,000.
Benefits include health, dental, 401k, paid time off and more!

Other Information

This is an NYC‑based position with in‑person work requirements.

Qualifications

• Education or extensive professional experience in systems administration, broadcast engineering or software development
• 5+ years in a professional technology leadership role including team management
• Demonstrated record in technology project management
• Excellent written and in‑person communication skills for technical and non‑technical audiences
• Experience supporting 24/7 availability services
• Expertise in some of our core technology including newsroom automation software, MAMs, baseband broadcast hardware, audio and video over IP, linux and window server administration, network administration, virtualization, backup and archival storage, CRM, application development frameworks, cloud and self‑hosted‑enterprise productivity tools, cloud‑based web and mail architecture, configuration management and audio and video encoding.
• Commitment to Democracy Now!'s mission

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis as received, so applying early is strongly encouraged.
To join Democracy Now!, please submit a cover letter of no more than one page that discusses:

• How you connect with the mission and work of Democracy Now!
• How your personal and professional experiences equip you to carry out the responsibilities outlined in the job description.