Director of Digital Products - Iraq Afghanistan Veterans of America - New York, NY

New York, NY. Full Time

Based in our New York City Headquarters Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) is seeking a Director of Digital Products. This is an exciting opportunity to join the nation’s first and largest organization dedicated to improving the lives of troops and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Founded in 2004 by Iraq veterans, IAVA is a young, dynamic nonprofit with over 200,000 veteran members and grassroots supporters in 50 states. We’re winning major battles in Congress, helping thousands of veterans and making national headlines daily. If you care about new veterans and their families, and want to play a powerful role in changing their lives, IAVA may be the right fit for you.

The Director of Digital Products maintains a portfolio of digital products which IAVA operates in service of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. These products would include our organization’s website, iava.org; a social media platform for vets, myiava.org, and mobile applications serving the IAVA community. For each product you are responsible for:

Roadmap : Synthesizing needs and requirements from a variety of internal and external stakeholders into a cohesive product roadmap. You’re the person who’s pulling together input from users, org leadership, staff with content expertise, and other advisers, and synthesizing it into a thoughtful and coherent vision and strategy for the product.

Budget and Timeline: Managing the budget of the product to balance needs with available resources and timelines. Looking at a long list of needs, you figure out the most strategic use of resources, and manage the project to hit those needs on budget and in time.

User Experience: Constantly gathering feedback from end users. You are relentless and passionate about understanding the experience of a user of the product. Maybe it’s organizing focus groups or user testing over beers, maybe it’s surveys, maybe it’s randomly calling up members.

Development: Working as the point person for developers and tech consultants to scope, request, and implement new iterations and features. You may or may not have all the technical chops yourself, but you can ask questions until you understand key decisions that need to be made.

Analysis: Developing the set of key metrics used to meaningfully measure success of the product, and staying on top of those religiously. At any given time you can probably spout out the numbers that best represent whether the product is hitting its targets.

Support: Ensuring that users have the support they need to successfully learn and use the product. You may jump in directly to help users, or you may be putting a process in place to ensure users have the support they need to be successful with the product.

Communication: Representing, articulating, and advocating for the product among organization leadership, funders, users, and other stakeholders. You’re the key advocate of the product internally and externally. You can fight for the product among leadership, or even against the product if appropriate. You can pitch the product to potential funders, or you can explain the product to end users.

In addition, The Director of Digital Products plays a key role in defining IAVA’s overall digital strategy, cultivating relationships with external partners, and showcasing IAVA’s products on big stages.

This position reports to the Chief Digital Products Officer and oversee a team of two – a Digital Products Manager and Online Community Coordinator. The position will also work extremely closely with with designated point people from the departments whose work is most relevant to each product in your portfolio.

Required Qualifications

At least three years experience in product management; preferred focus on mobile apps, websites, and/or data visualizations aimed at a wide audience;

Experience in iterative, test-based product design;

Experience collaborating with project/product teams comprised of people with diverse skill sets;

Experience using agile development techniques and ability to communicate effectively with software engineers;

Strong communication, organization, prioritization and analytical skills;

Strong sense of empathy; you will be engaging numerous stakeholders and technical experts all with unique perspectives and priorities;

Ability to drive analysis and insight; you must have a strong sense of how and when to employ different research methods and quantitative techniques to determine the best way to understand user behavior;

Attention to detail without losing sight of big picture vision;

Strong project manager, able to make sure targets are getting hit even on tight deadlines;

Proactive and positive;

Excellent communicator, both verbal and written;

Work well with multiple teams;

Able to function well in high-pressure environment;

Excellent multi-tasker. Keep in mind you have to manage a portfolio of digital products as described above (not just one), as well as pitching in elsewhere around the organization when needed;

Bachelor’s degree

Preferred Qualifications

Familiarity with Salesforce will only help, since it provides the backbone of IAVA’s systems;

While you don’t have to be a front end developer by trade, understanding the basics of coding in HTML, CSS, and Javascript is a plus;

UI/Ux design experience;

Familiarity with Scrum a plus

Application deadline: Rolling.

Salary and Benefits : Salary is commensurate with experience. IAVA provides comprehensive health and dental coverage, access to vision benefits, a Flexible Spending Account, Transportation Savings Account and a 403(b) retirement plan, in addition to thirty Paid Time Off days per year.