/job/open-source-community-lead

Open Source & Community Lead

Upstream contributions, open-source strategy, technical education, speaking, mentorship, and community work.

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The mandate.

Own the outcome, stay close to the implementation, and improve the system around the work.

Connect credible engineering work, contributor experience, product strategy, and public education into an open-source programme people can trust and participate in.

The role should create healthy upstream relationships and useful feedback loops, not treat community as a distribution channel with a Discord server attached.

Impact
Material
Agency
High
Management
Context, then space
Bureaucracy
Low

What this role owns.

Responsibilities written as outcomes and systems, not a shopping list of meetings.

  1. OWN-01

    Develop open-source and OSPO strategy with clear goals for upstream contribution, governance, adoption, and product alignment.

  2. OWN-02

    Contribute technically, improve release and contributor processes, and help maintainers remove friction for new and existing contributors.

  3. OWN-03

    Create technical documentation, talks, workshops, demos, and examples grounded in real engineering work.

  4. OWN-04

    Build contributor recognition, mentoring, event, and community programmes that scale without burning out volunteers.

  5. OWN-05

    Bring community and customer evidence back to product and engineering teams in a form they can act on.

What this needs.

  • A visible, credible history of upstream contributions or project leadership in a significant open-source ecosystem.
  • Enough technical depth to review code, release software, debug contributor problems, and represent engineering accurately.
  • Strong public speaking, writing, teaching, facilitation, and community conflict-resolution skills.
  • Experience working across engineering, product, marketing, legal, OSPO, field, and executive stakeholders.
  • Comfort measuring community health without reducing people to vanity metrics.

What success looks like.

  • Contributors can understand the project, make useful changes, and receive timely feedback.
  • Upstream work and product strategy reinforce each other without compromising project trust.
  • Technical content and events help people solve real problems and create qualified product feedback.
  • Maintainers, advocates, and community members have sustainable processes and visible recognition.

Compensation target.

Top-quartile ranges for this scope. Ranges are base salary; equity and bonus may be additional. The cash/stock split is negotiable.

EMEA
€165k–€225kBase salaryTop-quartile EMEA target
US remote
$185k–$245kBase salaryRemote US target
US major hubs
$250k–$300kBase salarySan Francisco, Seattle, New York, and comparable markets

Who you need to be

  • At least 7+ years across software engineering, open source, developer relations, or technical community leadership.

  • Maintained or made sustained upstream contributions to a significant open-source project.

  • Improved release, governance, contributor, or documentation processes rather than only promoting the project.

  • Delivered technical talks, workshops, documentation, and mentoring to large developer audiences.

  • Worked across engineering, Product, Field Marketing, OSPO, legal, and community stakeholders.

Looks compatible.

Real impact, useful autonomy, and enough technical depth to finish the job.

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