Head of Technical Delivery Management

We're looking for a Technical Delivery Manager to strengthen the bridge between our Product and Engineering work. This isn't a traditional Product Manager role, and it's not an engineering role — it's the person who makes sure the work between those two functions is clear, moving, and shipping.

You’ll own our delivery process: turning design outputs into actionable tickets, keeping development cycles on track, facilitating estimation, and closing the loop to ensure QA happens and tickets get closed and shipped.

This role is well-suited to someone who has worked closely with engineering teams, has strong instincts for what makes work “ready,” and genuinely enjoys the operational side of software development. iNaturalist is one of the world’s largest biodiversity platforms—powered by millions of community scientists and supported by expert naturalists, researchers, and conservation organizations. With hundreds of millions of observations and 400,000+ active monthly contributors, iNaturalist data informs conservation decisions, accelerates biodiversity research, and inspires people everywhere to connect with nature.

Founded in 2008 and operating as a nonprofit committed to open data, iNaturalist blends crowdsourcing, machine learning, and community science to help people understand, document, and protect biodiversity. Our vision: a world where everyone can discover, understand, and help sustain life on Earth.

We’re growing—and we’re looking for people energized by purpose-driven work to help scale the platform and experience for millions around the world.

Planning & Scoping

Partner with product and engineering staff to produce engineering-oriented build plans for major features, platform work, and releases (e.g., Android beta, significant new features)

Manage ticket triage to ensure new tickets are getting attention at the right level.

Manage the backlog to make sure that lingering priorities also get attention.

Support Head of Product and Engineering in estimating engineering capacity and velocity.

Ticket Quality

Maintain backlog to help us stay focused on the most important work

Surface delivery risks early, before they become missed commitments.

Communicate with Community Technical Contributors

Manage public issues in our Github Repos and ensure clarity of tickets synced between Github and our internal Linear system.

Engage with our volunteer translators on the Crowdin platform to ensure their contributions are incorporated and that we’re maintaining our connection to them and their work.

Experience working in or alongside software engineering teams in a delivery, program management, or technical PM capacity.

Strong project management skills, with experience in agile methodologies and a track record of delivering projects on time and within scope, proven through 4-6 years of experience in a related role.

Enough technical fluency to draft a build plan, understand sequencing and dependencies, and recognize when a ticket is underspecified rather than just brief.

Strong written communication — you’ll be writing acceptance criteria, build plans, and coordination notes that engineers and designers will act on.

Bonus Points

Experience in open source, nonprofit, or mission‑driven software environments

Background in mobile development cycles or release management (iOS/Android)

Familiarity with scientific, biodiversity, or citizen science domains

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