Founding Head of Technology

Role: Founding Head of Technology

Reports to: CEO

Salary: $200K

Status: Full-time

Location: Remote, U.S.-based (approximately 10-20% travel)

Who We Are:

National Math Stars ensures mathematically extraordinary students from all communities have the resources they need to reach the frontiers of math and science.

Through our Awards Program, we collaborate with schools and districts to identify and recognize their highest-achieving 2% of 2nd- and 3rd-grade math students. Those students are invited to a competitive admissions process, which aims to select the top talent from all communities. (You could roughly think of this as “the best young mathematician in every ZIP code,” if the US didn’t have quite so many ZIP codes!)

We admit those top students to our Stars Programs and work with them (and their families) over the course of a decade to support their journeys to the frontiers of STEM. All Stars receive access to advanced math opportunities, family guidance, and community gatherings. Within the Stars Program, we have two tracks: (1) our fully-funded Voyager Stars program, targeted at families with significant unmet need for guidance and financial support, and (2) our Pathfinder Stars program, which provides lighter-touch advising and access to partial funding for STEM opportunities. We currently serve over 900 Stars across ten states and are rapidly expanding our reach.

Role Overview:

As our Awards and Stars programs rapidly expand, we need to build and maintain digital infrastructure. As our first executive-level tech hire, the Founding Head of Technology will lead these efforts. Their team will own our databases, dashboards, application systems, parent portals/websites, and other custom software tools. Some of these are existing infrastructure that require monitoring and improvements; others must be built from scratch, from user needs exploration through testing, launch, and maintenance.

The Head of Technology will also play a key role in supporting org-wide responsible AI adoption. They should build an AI-first software development team, as well as helping other departments find and deploy the highest-leverage use cases for technology and automation (including AI).

This is a player-coach role. The Head of Technology will design and build software themself, as well as hiring/managing a small team. They will also help set organizational strategy, alongside the rest of National Math Stars’ executive team and Board.

This is a U.S.-based remote position with estimated 10-20% travel for team meetings, coworking, and conferences.

Key Responsibilities:

Internal tools, databases and dashboards

• Collaborate closely with outreach and programs teams to understand their uses cases, workflows, and needs
• Maintain and improve our CRM systems for tracking outreach, applicants, and Stars program participants
• Work with team and data partners to ensure relevant data is logged and cleaned with minimum friction
• Build internal dashboards and tools to help teams understand and act on key information

Family-facing tools

• Conduct user research with team and participant families to understand needs and pain points
• Design, build, and maintain family-facing tools such as applicant portals, parent portals, budget utilization trackers, STEM pathways/badging, and more
• Connect custom builds to off-the-shelf tools (e.g., CRM database, email managers) and (as relevant) partner tools for smooth data integration and user experience

Automation and AI

• Build an AI-first software development team
• Help other departments identify and deploy high-leverage use cases for automation and AI
• Lead technology-related trainings, knowledge sharing, and change management
• As needed, build tools, wrappers, and custom connectors to support AI usage throughout the organization

Team

• Lead and grow a small in-house end-to-end design and development team
• As needed, select and manage contractors to support additional tech talent needs
• With the rest of the executive team and Board, help set NMS strategy

Skills and Experience:

The right candidate for this role will have deep expertise building software end-to-end, from needfinding through deployed-in-production tools. You should be comfortable integrating AI into your development processes, in ways that enhance team collaboration and prioritize privacy and security. We expect you’ve managed people before – and maybe even led a team or department.

You might be a good fit if you are:

• Excited about supporting profoundly gifted young mathematicians
• A curious listener who digs deep to understand stakeholder needs
• Skilled at developing software solutions from scratch, from user research through product design, development, testing, and launch
• An experienced software architect who can build the harnesses and structures to ensure high-quality code in an AI-supported collaborative development environment
• A problem solver who constantly sees opportunities for process/systems improvement (and acts on those opportunities)
• An internal champion and educator for automation and AI – not for their own sake, but for cases where they can improve outputs, support scalability, and/or save time
• A skilled people manager who holds a high bar for excellence in hiring and team performance
• (Preferred but not required:) Experienced with customizing and maintaining databases/CRM systems

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We value and encourage diversity and solicit applications from all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, gender, sex, age, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, marital status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, veteran status, gender identity, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local law.

U.S. work authorization is required; National Math Stars is not currently able to support visa applications.

All full-time roles at National Math Stars include a competitive benefits package:

• Fully paid health, vision, and dental coverage for employees, plus partially paid coverage for dependents
• 401K plan with automatic company contributions
• Work-from-home stipend for purchase of a laptop and/or home office supplies
• Generous paid time off from day one, including parental leave
• Free pie every Pi Day