Chief of Staff to the CTO

Highlights: Location: Portugal, Remote Language: Fluent in English and Russian About Fundraise Up We’re Fundraise Up - a global fundraising platform built to make donating to nonprofits fast, seamless, and accessible to all. Every month, our technology powers tens of millions of dollars in donations across the globe. We focus on innovation that directly impacts results: faster load times, higher conversion rates, global payment support, and accessibility-first design. Our platform is trusted by many of the world’s leading nonprofits, including UNICEF, the Alzheimer’s Association, and a wide range of global NGOs. With a 4.9/5 rating across top software review platforms, we’re recognized not just for our impact - but for the quality of the product we deliver. A Truly Global Product We operate in the enterprise segment, serving nonprofit organizations across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Europe. We're building a large and complex product ecosystem that serves nonprofits, donors, and partners around the world. The platform includes a modern checkout experience and customizable widgets (each a standalone SPA), donor, organization, and partner portals, admin tools, and several internal apps. Our backend is powered by Node.js (Koa, NestJS) and MongoDB. The frontend stack includes Webpack, Vue.js, and React, with nearly all code written in TypeScript. For high-throughput messaging and background processing, we use Kafka (for millions of events) and Bull (Redis). Analytics data is stored in ClickHouse, and we use Elasticsearch for search. The Team We are a distributed team of 160+ product professionals, including 80+ engineers. Our team members are mainly based across Spain, Poland, Portugal, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, Turkey, and Cyprus. Despite our scale, we operate like a focused team — where every task matters and every voice is heard. We value thoughtful collaboration, strong engineering practices, and a product mindset. About the Role Engineering orgs rarely stall because nobody can decide. They stall because nobody owns the decision. You build and run the operating system of our engineering organization: the leadership cadence, the OKR and QBR cycle, the record of decisions and follow-ups, and the executive synthesis that reaches the CTO, the exec team, and — when the topic calls for it — the CEO and board. You work through process and influence rather than line authority; the engineering directors continue to report to the CTO, and architecture and technical strategy stay with the CTO, the directors, and our staff and principal engineers. This is a senior leadership role, not an executive-assistant one. You are not measured by how much you own — you are measured by how fast ownerless chaos becomes clear ownership, and how cleanly you hand it off. Our engineering leadership and much of the company work in English across European and US hours. What You'll Do Run the engineering leadership cadence. Own director-level syncs and the leadership rhythm end to end: agenda, documented decisions, follow-through. Take over the quarterly OKR and QBR cycle. This sits with the CTO personally today and is the single biggest reason QBR consumes his time. You drive teams to set and update objectives, chase the follow-ups, surface where they slip, and prepare the reviews. Keep one live record of leadership decisions and commitments, and chase every one to closure by its agreed date. Scan continuously for stalled or ownerless cross-team work — the kind that quietly dies when a delegated project's loop never closes — and bring it back on track with a named owner. Drive special projects to a chartered state, then hand them off — and stop holding them. Recent live examples: rolling out a new product-defined work-distribution model and its org-structure documentation; standing up a cross-departmental data team and driving the Analytics-vs-Engineering ownership question to a decision; running vendor selection, procurement, and the CEO-facing business case for an external security-consulting engagement; coordinating an internal AI-agent platform program across several teams; running technical audits, platform evaluations, and tool pilots. You own the coordination, planning, and tracking — the technical substance and the buy-vs-build verdict stay with the relevant engineers and leaders. Turn complex organizational and project inputs into concise, decision-ready material for the CTO, the executive team, and board-level audiences. Facilitate delegated decisions to closure — documented, escalated when they stall, communicated to the people they affect — so nothing waits on a calendar slot or gets re-litigated. You drive the process; you do not speak for the CTO or make the call in his place. Standardize how engineering leadership plans, tracks, and communicates. Build the rituals, templates, and operating rhythm that keep the org coordinated without being prescriptive at the team level. Partner across the organization on cross-cutting initiatives, procurement, pilot contracts, and engineering tool budgeting — see the interfaces below. At Fundraise Up, AI is a default tool, not an experimental one. We expect every team member to actively use AI in their day-to-day work, identify where AI can change the shape of problems in their function, and grow their fluency as the tools evolve. Cross-Department Interfaces Engineering Directors — alignment on execution, OKRs, and resolution of systemic bottlenecks. These are the people whose initiatives you coordinate without managing. Product — new work-distribution models, the AI-agent platform, and most cross-cutting initiatives originate or terminate here. Data / Analytics — the data-team ownership question and the data/agent platform sit across this boundary. Executive Team — data gathering and synthesis for board meetings and executive reporting. BizOps — co-stakeholder on security and other operational initiatives. Finance, Legal & IT — procurement, contract negotiation for pilots, and engineering tool budgeting. Role Boundaries (What You Won't Do) Administrative Support. This is a senior leadership role, not a PA or EBA. Technical Authority. You do not own architecture or technical strategy, and you are not expected to be the technical authority in the room or to arbitrate engineering trade-offs. Those stay with the CTO, directors, and staff/principal engineers. Direct Execution. You do not manage engineering teams or own product delivery timelines. These remain with the engineering directors. Final Accountability. You operate within the CTO's established direction and facilitate decisions; you do not make them in his place. The CTO retains final accountability for technical strategy, allocation, and organizational structure. Key Performance Indicators The first 90 days are about setup, not metrics: establish the cadence, map the ownerless initiatives, take over the OKR/QBR loop, and set the baselines. From there, reviewed quarterly: % of leadership follow-ups closed by their agreed date. Cross-team initiatives with a named DRI and a live checkpoint — versus work that is ownerless or untracked. OKR freshness — share of engineering OKRs with a current owner, status, and checkpoint date, with drift reduced quarter over quarter. Operational threads removed from the CTO's plate, quarter over quarter. Stalled or lost cross-team projects surfaced and reactivated per quarter. Initiatives handed off to a permanent owner — versus retained personally. A rising "retained" count is a warning sign, not a success. % of hand-offs that actually landed — with an accepted owner, scope, next checkpoint, and success criteria, so a hand-off is a real transfer rather than a formal toss. Requirements Engineering-operations / TPM leadership. A track record running the operating system of an engineering organization — most likely as a TPM lead, head of engineering operations, or equivalent. You have owned cadence, planning, and cross-team coordination at org scale. Cross-functional delivery. Demonstrated ownership of ambiguous, multi-team initiatives that you coordinated, drove, and landed through influence without direct authority. Executive synthesis. A track record of turning raw, complex information into brief, decisive, executive-level material. Operating discipline. You build durable systems and follow-up loops, not just meetings. Works well with engineers. You operate effectively alongside engineers, EMs, and directors and earn their trust through reliability and follow-through. Enough fluency to follow technical discussions and coordinate them — without needing to be the technical authority or make architecture calls. Languages: Fluent English (C1+) and Russian for internal and external technical communications. Nice to Have Prior Chief of Staff, Engineering Operations, or TPM-lead experience reporting into engineering leadership. Experience driving operational efficiency in engineering orgs of 100+ people, including use of automation and AI tooling to keep teams lean. Procurement, vendor-contracting, or budgeting experience. Nonprofit-tech or payments-domain familiarity. Familiarity with our environment is an advantage: Node.js/NestJS, React, MongoDB, ClickHouse, Kafka, Cloudflare; PCI DSS 4.0.1, SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001. You'll Thrive Here If You Find an ownerless problem and can't leave it alone until it has a name attached to it. Would rather build the loop that closes follow-ups than personally chase every one forever. Can say "this decision is stuck and here's who needs to make it" to a director — and stay welcome in the room. Hold your position with senior people when you believe you're right, and change it quickly when you're not. Measure yourself by what you successfully gave away, not by what accumulated on your plate. Write clearly and short, especially when the underlying situation is messy. Take the operating cadence seriously as a product: versioned, improved, and never left to run on habit. Are motivated by what the platform funds — the nonprofits on the other side of every donation. Compensation The compensation range for this role is: €7,700 - €8,800 gross per month. Final compensation will be determined based on relevant experience, skills, qualifications, and alignment with the role's requirements. Benefits Private medical insurance for the employee and their family 22 paid vacation days per year Up to 14 paid public holidays per year 5 company-paid sick leave days English learning courses Relevant professional education Gym or swimming pool Home Office Setup Assistance: the company offers assistance with purchasing furniture (office chair, office desk, monitor) and other items to create a comfortable workspace Co-working €50 monthly allowance to cover internet and mobile phone expenses Remote working **Please note: All official correspondence from Fundraise Up will exclusively originate from the @fundraiseup.com domain. Exercise caution and ensure the authenticity of emails claiming to be from our company.*** We are an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, national origin, disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law in the countries where we operate.