Director of IT and Digital Platforms

Description

Do you love using your technical skills to manage and extend a network of media properties? Knit together SaaS services and develop streamlined business processes that make an organization hum? Are you also mission-driven and inspired to help strengthen local journalism? 

The Embarcadero Media Foundation is seeking a passionate Director of IT and Digital Platforms to support our network of seven hyper local news publications and our marketing, fundraising, sales and business operations teams.

About Us

We believe in the vital importance of local news as a cornerstone of healthy democracy. We seek to enhance the quality of life and democracy in the San Francisco Bay Area by reporting and publishing high quality local news and information that lead to a more informed, equitable, engaged and cohesive community. 

After serving our communities as a for-profit company for over 40 years, we have just converted to non-profit status to focus on our public value and rely more explicitly on our communities to maintain our sustainability. Our publications include the Palo Alto Weekly, Pleasanton Weekly, the Almanac and hyperlocal digital news sites and newsletters serving 11 communities on the Mid Peninsula and Tri-Valley. 

We’ve earned tremendous trust in our communities through our decades of delivering our high quality journalism. In 2024, we earned 57 awards for our work from the California News Publisher Association and we are commonly seen by our readers as the voice of the community. We believe we are in the vanguard of legacy print publications transforming ourself for the digital age and providing an example to others across the country about how to sustainably publish local news.

About the Role

Our 45-50 person company operates on a tech stack centered around mostly SaaS applications as well as a handful of home-grown web applications. The core SaaS services we use include:

• Google Workspace
• Newspack (Wordpress) with WooCommerce
• Braintree
• Mailchimp
• Google Ad Manager
• Google Analytics
• Looker Studio
• Chartbeat
• Quickbooks
• Bloomerang
• Airtable

We are seeking an IT generalist who can support, evolve and extend our infrastructure. Extensive experience with Wordpress (Newspack experience a big plus) and Mailchimp is a must. Some chops with PHP/MySQL based web applications to help us migrate some legacy systems is a big plus.

This position is remote and open to people from across the US. Familiarity or presence with the San Francisco Bay Area is a plus.

This position will report directly to the CEO.

Key Responsibilities

• Work within a team to manage and maintain our IT infrastructure, support our staff and their business needs.
• Maintain our external services and manage our vendors to ensure stability and that our business needs are met.
• Develop and implement a strategy to migrate our PHP/MySQL systems and rebuild key services with a preference to using no-code tools like Airtable and Zapier.
• Build metrics and reporting dashboards.
• Evaluate and be able to execute transitions to our tech stack, in particular sales CRM tools.
• Experiment and identify ways to leverage AI to improve our business processes, especially to support our sales processes.
• Be adept at understanding and designing business processes and creative at using software to simplify and streamline those processes with our staff.

Compensation and Benefits

• Salary $90K - $110K based on experience
• Health and dental insurance for employees and their dependents, covered at 50-70% (based on tenure with the company).
• 403(b) retirement plan
• Two weeks vacation
• Opportunity to work for a mission-driven organization that makes a real difference in local communities
• Collaborative and supportive work environment.
• Be a part of a team of passionate community builders.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience developing and leveraging web applications and services
• Experience integrating web services via APIs 
• Extensive Wordpress and Mailchimp experience
• Testing and debugging
• Connecting and building workflows across applications 
• Great collaborator with strong interpersonal skills
• Business process analysis - be able to identify opportunities to use technology to improve processes and work with colleagues to understand requirements and deliver a solution
• A passion for local news and a commitment to community journalism.
• CRM system experience

To Apply

We know that great candidates don’t always have all the required background and experience. If you love this and want to help, please reach out for a discussion. We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our organization. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.