Head of Engineering

Before you apply. This is an unpaid volunteer role. It needs 5 to 10 hours a week, consistently, for at least a year. Most of the work is async across time zones. If any of that doesn't fit right now, we'd rather you knew before applying.

About Wevise. Wevise is a nonprofit that matches people breaking into tech with mentors already working in it. Our engineering team is about ten volunteers across the US, Latin America and Europe. We're building the application and matching flow for our second cohort, which launches in early 2027.

The role. You'd lead the engineering team day to day. In practice this is closer to an engineering manager who can read and judge code than to an architect who also manages. Most of your hours go on people and delivery:

• Deciding who takes what, and moving work on kindly when someone goes quiet
• Making sure tickets are small and clear enough that a volunteer with a few hours can pick one up and finish it
• Code review, and building a team where review isn't one person's job
• Running releases, and keeping the board and docs honest
• Setting technical direction with the CTO, and writing decisions down
• Working with our Head of Product on scope and priorities

You'll write some code: reviews, small fixes, the occasional unblocking change. You won't be the person building the critical path, because 5 to 10 hours a week can't carry that and lead a team at the same time.

What stays with others. The CTO keeps the final call on architecture that's hard to reverse, and QA reports to the CTO. The Head of Product owns scope and priorities. You can recruit engineers yourself through our open volunteer postings.

You'd do well here if you have:

• Led a team of engineers before: owned what the group delivered, not only your own part. Mentoring alone isn't quite enough for this role
• Kept work moving with people who don't report to you, or whose time you don't control
• Found your way around a codebase you didn't write, and made decisions about it
• Used AI tools in your daily work, and know how to check what they tell you
• A real reason to care about access to tech careers

Our stack. Next.js, React and TypeScript, PostgreSQL with Prisma, Tailwind, NextAuth, deployed on Vercel with AWS for email and storage. You don't need every piece, but you should be comfortable reviewing full-stack TypeScript.

How we work. Tickets and status live in GitHub. Decisions are written down in the repo, and day-to-day talk is in Slack. Calls are rare and short.

What you get. No pay or perks. What you do get is a leadership role on a real product, and connections across a mission-driven team and the mentors and leaders around it.

Process. A 30 minute call with our CTO, then a conversation with a member of our leadership team. After you start, we check in at 30 days on whether the hours and fit are working for both of us.