Hi! We're Forerunner.

We believe that climate adaptation is a necessity, not a luxury, and communities deserve access to powerful software that helps them plan for the future. The challenge of climate change is complex – it implicates how municipalities plan, manage capital, and communicate to both residents and higher levels of government. Forerunner helps local communities do these things better by empowering them to access, understand, and mobilize local-level flood risk data at scale.

The Role

We are looking to bring on a VP of Engineering to lead the engineering org through our next stage of growth.

The engineering team at Forerunner strives to be small but dedicated, working relentlessly to help government agencies better understand flood risk. The domain is complicated, nuanced, and rapidly changing. Our work at Forerunner breaks down this complexity for our users, so that they can spend more time on more impactful work.

Engineers at Forerunner can work remotely from anywhere within the United States, so long as they are willing to work on either Eastern or Central time zones. We offer schedule flexibility and ask for accountability in return. We are unable to sponsor H1-B visas at this time, so permanent residency or citizenship is required.

Our tech stack and other engineering tools include, but are not limited to:

• Typescript / React.js / React Native frontend with jest for testing
• GraphQL API powered by a Node.js / Typescript backend with jest for testing.
• Postgres as our database, alongside heavy use of postgis
• git, Github and Github Actions for code review and CI
• Deployment to AWS using ECS and similar products

While expertise with all of the technologies above is not necessary, a working understanding of at least a few of them is required.

We strongly encourage people from underrepresented groups to apply - the problem of climate change impacts all of us, and we want to reflect that within our team's composition.

What You'll Do

As the VP of Engineering at Forerunner you will:

• Manage 2-3 Technical Lead Managers that guide our team of full stack engineers.
• Partner with the Leadership team to build efficiency and efficacy across the engineering organization while scaling the team and product.
• Construct measurable success metrics to provide clear guidance around performance expectations within each level on the engineering team.
• Code alongside the engineering team to show what engineering excellence looks like.
• Guide the Engineering team to add accuracy to planning and estimation of tickets to ensure we achieve our goals.
• Collaborate with our Talent & People Lead to identify, hire and onboard key engineering talent as the team scales.
• Build internal structure suitable for scaling with a culture that fosters growth, collaboration, quality and customer empathy.
• Partner with the Product Lead to build out best practices and resource plan against upcoming efforts.
• Drive consensus across engineering, product, design, and customer success to determine priority projects.

What We Offer

Forerunner is an early stage company with an interdisciplinary team. We are motivated by seemingly intractable problems and work hard to support one another.

We're mission-driven. Our mission orients our business strategy and pushes us to work with a sense of urgency. We’re in the weeds - our entire team spends time engaging with our partners in the field to better understand the real-world problems they face.

We're a small team. As a member of our growing team, you will quickly become an invaluable part of our organization and have a meaningful impact on our business and technical direction. We welcome unique perspectives and backgrounds. Your opinion matters and we hope you'll share it.

We build each other up. A team works best when its members are adequately equipped with the tools to tackle the problems they are facing. Forerunner strives to provide adequate feedback and appropriate learning opportunities to help all its team members expand their skills.

We want you to be happy and healthy. Forerunner offers competitive compensation, health/vision/dental coverage, a 401k plan, and one expensed lunch per week. We also have a quarterly wellness reimbursement so that you can have flexibility in defining what “health” means to you.

The salary range for this position is $200,000- $300,000. This posting may span more than one career level. Compensation is determined based on a variety of factors, including an individual’s skills, experience, qualifications, and working location.