Staff Software Engineer, Platform

WHO WE ARE

ActBlue is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating cutting-edge technology that fuels Democratic victories and enables progressive causes to thrive. 

Our vision is simple: building change through the power of people. Since our founding, we’ve been building innovative solutions to revolutionize grassroots fundraising – if you’ve donated to a Democratic campaign or a progressive organization online, you’ve probably used our platform! We believe in putting power in the hands of small-dollar donors by helping thousands of groups — from local candidates to national movements — mobilize their communities and create a lasting impact. Every member of our team is deeply committed to advancing our shared mission and core values. Together, we are shaping the future of democracy. 

THE OPPORTUNITY

We're looking for a Staff Engineer to serve as a technical leader and force multiplier on the SRE team. This is a role for someone who thrives at the intersection of deep systems expertise and organizational influence — someone who can own multi-quarter reliability initiatives, drive observability strategy across our platform, and build the practices and culture that make ActBlue's systems resilient at scale.

You'll operate as a senior technical voice within Platform Engineering, collaborating across SRE, application teams, and infrastructure to reduce systemic risk, advance SLO-based reliability, and build an incident response program that the entire engineering org can trust.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

Technical Leadership

• Own and drive SRE technical strategy in key domains: observability, incident management, reliability engineering, and platform operations
• Serve as a go-to consultant for infrastructure and reliability concerns across engineering teams
• Lead architecture decisions for monitoring, alerting, and SLO frameworks; contribute to org-wide RFCs
• Provide L2 on-call support for the most complex and urgent incidents; actively build incident response capability across teams
• Draw on past incidents and post-mortems to drive systemic prevention, not just remediation

Delivery & Impact

• Lead multi-quarter SRE initiatives with complex cross-team dependencies (e.g., observability buildout, on-call training program, service ownership registry)
• Remove blockers for teammates; move stalled projects forward
• Define and maintain SLIs/SLOs for tier-1 business flows: contributions, disbursements, compliance reporting
• Contribute to ActBlue's multi-year reliability roadmap; anticipate how upstream team decisions affect SRE goals
• Prefer automation over manual process; reduce toil through tooling and systemic fixes

Collaboration & Communication

• Work across team and org lines to build buy-in for reliability investments
• Communicate technical strategy and its business value to non-technical stakeholders
• Document and evangelize SRE practices through Architecture Council, team wikis, and cross-team forums
• Mentor engineers at all levels on observability, incident response, and reliability principles
• Provide high-quality feedback on technical proposals that have reliability implications

Enrichment

• Set the technical standard for the SRE team; model the practices you want the team to adopt
• Contribute to a culture of psychological safety and blameless post-mortems
• Help build an on-call program that is sustainable, well-supported, and continuously improving

WHAT YOU BRING

Must-Haves

• 8+ years of experience in SRE, DevOps, or systems/infrastructure engineering
• Deep expertise in observability tooling (we use Datadog: APM, RUM, DBM, dashboards, SLOs, alerting)
• Strong command of Kubernetes and cloud-native infrastructure (we run EKS via Flux on AWS)
• Experience defining and operating SLIs and SLOs in production environments
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional reliability initiatives and build organizational buy-in
• Strong incident management experience: on-call, post-mortems, blameless culture

Strong Pluses

• Experience with CDN and edge infrastructure (we use Fastly with VCL)
• Familiarity with Rails monolith operations at scale
• Experience with FinOps / cloud cost accountability
• Exposure to PagerDuty, Jeli, or similar incident tooling

Who Thrives Here

• You think in systems, not just symptoms
• You bias toward automation, documentation, and enabling others
• You're comfortable operating with ambiguity and driving toward clarity
• You believe reliability is a shared organizational responsibility, not just an on-call team's job

WORK & BENEFITS SNAPSHOT

This posting is for a full-time, remote, salaried position. Travel may be required on a limited basis to attend all-staff and departmental retreats (1-2 times per year). Additional travel may be required for select positions. 

Registered States*: 

Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Washington D.C.

*While ActBlue is currently registered to support remote work in the states listed above, we possess the ability to register in additional states as needed. If you are located in a state not listed, we may still be able to proceed with your application, but please note that the offer process may take longer to accommodate registration requirements.

Work Schedule: 

This role requires availability during established, regular business hours (Mon-Fri) and is expected to be a part of an on-call rotation which will result in working nontraditional hours as needed.

Work Environment: 

Employees can expect to work with distributed teams across all U.S. time zones. Our roles require extended technology usage, and proficiency with virtual communication tools such as Zoom and Slack. Regular attendance in virtual meetings is inherent to every position.

Salary Range Details: $191,679- $216,566 - $241,452

ActBlue is committed to consistent compensation practices across our organization. Final salary offers will take into account factors such as candidate experience, interview performance and current team salary parity. 

Benefits: 

• Flexible work schedules and an unlimited time-off policy
• Fully paid and trans-inclusive health, dental, and vision insurance for employees and their families; plus fully-paid health reimbursement arrangement to use for out of pocket expenses and fully-paid short- and long-term disability 
• Fully paid basic and AD&D life insurance and a voluntary supplemental life insurance option
• Dependent and health care flexible spending account options
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP) benefits for employees 
• Automatic 2% Employer-paid 401K contribution, plus up to an additional 6% match on employee contributions
• A minimum of three months paid medical, family and parental leave (for all new parents, adoptions included)
• Commuter or home-office benefits, including a $1,000 home-office setup allowance for all new full-time remote employees
• Additional perks including quarterly snack deliveries and digital subscriptions to the Boston Globe & New York Times

ActBlue is unable to sponsor work visas at this time.

UNION INFORMATION

The terms and conditions of this position are subject to a collective bargaining agreement with the Communications Workers of America, the exclusive bargaining agent of covered ActBlue Technical Services employees.

BACKGROUND CHECKS

As part of our hiring process, ActBlue will conduct a background check at the time of offer. This will be completed in compliance with applicable laws and will not be initiated without your consent.

INCLUSION STATEMENT FROM ACTBLUE

ActBlue is committed to equal employment opportunities and fostering a diverse, inclusive workplace. We celebrate unique perspectives, honor the dignity of all individuals, and recognize that diverse backgrounds and identities strengthen our mission.

If you’re passionate about our work and see yourself in this role, we encourage you to apply—even if you don’t meet every requirement.

We also provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities throughout the hiring process and employment. To request an accommodation, email [email protected].