Tails, a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship, is looking for a project manager to make our organization function better.

Summary

Tails, a portable operating system that protects against surveillance and censorship, is looking for a project manager to make our organization function better.

In the last 12 years, from a tiny volunteer-run Free Software project, Tails has grown to a setup in which almost all the work is done by paid workers, with a 350k€ yearly budget. This allowed us to increase by several orders of magnitude the quality and pace of development of our product.

However, this growth happened faster than the corresponding, necessary increase of our organization & social skills and capacity. As a result, lots of the organization and social work still relies on the founders of the project.

For our project to thrive sustainably, we want to establish a new role for someone who will work with us to develop our organization and manage our day-to-day operations, building upon our core values of transparency, autonomy, and horizontal decision-making.

About Tails

Tails is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower people worldwide by giving out an operating system that protects from surveillance and censorship.

We make digital security tools accessible to everyone, whenever they need it: activists, journalists, freedom fighters, and ultimately, you, whenever you need extra privacy in this digital world.

The Tails project was started in 2009 and has now more than 30 000 daily users.

Read more about our mission and values

Tails is:

• Non-profit — We put our users first, not profits.
• Free Software — All our work is published as Free Software and we work closely with related projects (Debian, GNOME, Tor, etc.).
• Small team — We are a small team that values transparency, autonomy, and horizontal decision-making.
• Remote and international — We are a fully remote team and our team members can work from anywhere they want around the world. We have workers in 10 different countries.
• Flexible commitment — People work for Tails full-time, part-time, or as consultants. If you like flexibility, Tails is a place for you.
• Equal opportunity, equal pay — We are committed to creating an inclusive and equitable environment for all. We have a transparent compensation scheme where everybody enjoys comparable pay and benefits.

About this job application

Role description

We are looking for someone who will work with us to make Tails a healthier organization & work place, and provide project-wide management, supporting both organizational and team-level objectives:

• Facilitation, community management: facilitate decision-making about collective processes, implement them. For example, deciding who is invited to our yearly gathering, setting up a process for responding to Code of Conduct violations.
• Project-wide management:
  • Help our teams function well and remain aligned with the priorities of the organization. Manage grant projects with deadlines.
  • Negotiate and document expectations. Set up self-evaluation, feedback, and accountability mechanisms.
  • Encourage workers to grow within the organization. Ensure their needs, desires, and problems they’re facing are heard and followed-up with.
  • Identify knowledge gaps and recruitment needs: which roles we should hire for and when.
• Facilitate the flow of useful information through the project, connecting it to the bigger picture as needed. For example, our Fundraising team needs to know about the capacity and priorities of our teams, so they can design grant proposals.

Transforming our organization is a substantial project. It will take time and multiple iterations. It’s OK: we are in it for the long run. You will have agency in shaping the role and setting priorities, in collaboration with the rest of team, based on which you will organize your work and time autonomously.

You will work remotely. Our team is global and with various degrees of involvement, so you will use mostly asynchronous communication channels (email and bug tracker), although we also use text-based chat and do plenty of video calls.

During non-pandemic times, some travel is expected, generally 2-4 times per year, including the annual gathering of regular Tails contributors.

Qualifications

• If you are part of a group that is under-represented in tech, we particularly encourage you to apply. We acknowledge that our community is not as diverse and equitable as we would like it to be. We understand that we are part of the problem. We want the Tails project to become more equitable.
• You can commit 25-35 hours per week on a long-term basis. The exact scope of your responsibilities will depend on how much you work within this range.
• You can work comfortably at least 3 hours during the peak of Tails activities: between 10:00 and 17:00 CEST/CET.
• Professional experience organizing team collaboration.
• Experience participating in groups that value transparency, autonomy, and horizontal decision-making.
• Group and inter-individual communication skills demonstrated, for example, by experience facilitating collective processes.
• Conceptual understanding of software development work.
• Enthusiastic about our mission and values, motivated by social impact.
• Some experience working fully remote, primarily with asynchronous communication.
• Good written and spoken English communication skills.

Additionally, although that’s optional, we would love it if you had experience participating in Free and Open Source Software communities.

Compensation and benefits

Pay scale is 40-100 k€ per year, including medical coverage.
The exact number depends solely on:

• How much time you work
• Your tax situation
• Cost of medical coverage

On top of this, Tails pays for:

• Exceptional health expenses not covered by your policy
• Computer equipment
• Travel expenses to work events

How to apply

See the job posting