VP of R&D (Engineering, Product, Design, IT) Save

VP of R&D

Full-time •  Excellent Benefits • Work from Anywhere in the US (except CO, AL, or LA)

About Us

FreeWill is an award-winning, social-good startup that has partnered with 1,800+ nonprofits who support our mission while raising more than $10B in bequests to charities since we were founded in 2017. We’ve been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Oprah’s magazine, and our co-CEOs have even been named to Town & Country’s “Top 50 Philanthropists” list.

All of this is because we’ve figured out how to make some powerful (but complicated!) ways to donate much easier and more accessible. Our products make things easier for the donors who want to change the world and for nonprofits doing heroic work around the planet.

In the last 7 years, we’ve grown from 5 people to 200+ (all smart, tenacious, and kind), and continue to grow. We’d love to have you be a part of this adventure. In 2024, we were named a "Most Loved Workplace" by both Newsweek and Best Practice Institute; you can also check us out on Glassdoor!

About the Role

We are looking for a visionary product leader who is able to lead FreeWill in building products that fundamentally change the way that nonprofit fundraising teams are able to unlock transformational gifts. 

The VP of R&D will lead the product, design, engineering, and IT / security teams, currently a total of over 30 US-based team members. This role recruits and hires, onboards, manages performance, and develops these teams. The VP is a member of our executive team, contributing to company-wide decisions and leadership. The VP will help us scale the company from 200 to 300 people and beyond over the next two years.

The VP will be customer-centric in their approach to building products, and will inspire the entire FreeWill team to be similarly customer-centric and focused on deep listening in their approach to the market. This person loves thinking about the business and social impact of their product strategy, is unafraid about making hard trade-off decisions, and should thrive in a fast-paced environment with ambiguity. This person should be an inspirational manager who has pattern recognition of what great R&D organizations look like. This person will be supported by a team that’s excellent at execution, low-ego, and makes sound business and product decisions come to life. This person will be smart, tenacious, and kind.

FreeWill has set compensation and a non-negotiation policy for fairness reasons (we don't think that an individual's pay should be determined by how comfortable they are negotiating). As a result, we like to be transparent and up front about the compensation. When we make an offer, we provide multiple options so that employees can choose between compensation packages that prioritize salary or stock options. The base salary range for this role is $240,000 to $260,000. This role also has the potential to earn an annual executive bonus. 

Goals

• Build and manage a strategic, high-performing product, engineering, design, and IT/ security team
• Build a series of successful products that achieve product-market fit

Tactics

• Hire and develop strong and diverse talent on the product, engineering, and design teams
• In addition, to directly managed US-based team, work closely with our newly acquired tech team in Lahore, Pakistan to build and test MVPs of new products
• Advocate for the right resources at the right times to achieve goals
• Develop processes and best practices for product, design, and engineering departments to work well together
• Ensure strong collaboration across the tech teams and the go-to-market teams (sales, marketing, customer success)
• Help Co-CEOs articulate and perpetuate product vision throughout organization
• Manage Director of Product Strategy, who owns product roadmapping and manages the product management team
• Work closely with Director of Expansion to validate new product lines
• Act with and lead others to act with FreeWill’s values of focus, joy, kindness, and courage

Skills and Experience:

• 5+ years of experience leading product or engineering teams
• 10+ years of experience in product or engineering management, including at a B2B SaaS company
• Proven success in recruiting high performing, diverse talent at high velocity and building an effective and inclusive team culture
• Expert at product management best practices including: feature work, growth work, scaling work, and PMF expansion
• Strong problem solving skills. Makes data-driven decisions, and is open-minded towards different perspectives
• Strong communication, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills – up, down, across, and externally
• Acts with integrity, professionalism, low ego, and high self-awareness
• Enjoys collaboration, listening, and learning
• Comfort moving quickly in a fast-paced environment and making decisions with imperfect information
• Impact and results-focused

Hiring Process

  The hiring process for this role is as follows:

• Recruiter Phone Screen (30 minutes)
• Hiring Manager Interview  minutes)
• Live Exercise (we will send you something to prepare and then you will meet with team members to present)
• Final interviews with 2-3 FreeWill team members (2-3 separate 30 minute interviews)
• Offer (contingent on positive references)

Please note that steps in the hiring process can and may change and the Recruiter will be your point of contact in sharing any updates in terms of the process. If you are selected to move forward in this process, the Recruiter will share more details about the hiring process and interviewers. However, this is a good estimate of what you can expect. For most executive roles, our hiring processes take an average of 6-12 weeks.

Benefits

In addition to the immense personal and professional satisfaction you’ll gain from helping to raise $1T for high impact nonprofits in a kind and joyful work environment, full time employees at FreeWill are eligible for the following benefits:

• Work from home 
• Unlimited PTO
• Flexible hours
• Competitive salary
• Commuter benefits
• Company stock options
• 401k
• Medical/Dental/Vision (some single coverage medical plans are 100% employer paid, subsidized rates for spousal, parent-child, and family coverage)
• Short-term and long-term disability insurance
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Free One Medical membership
• Paid parental leave for all parents

Perks

• Regular (virtual) team events
• $250 monthly co-working budget which can be used for local co-working spaces
• $300 annual budget to outfit your home office or cover utility bills
• $1,000 referral bonuses for growing our FreeWill community
• $1,000 annual professional development budget

FreeWill is an equal opportunity employer and we value diversity. We are committed to finding talent that is not determined on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

We are a remote-first company that’s able to hire in 47 states and D.C. Unfortunately, we are unable to hire in Colorado, Alabama, or Louisiana at this time. We also can’t sponsor working visas, so all applicants will need to have work authorization in the US.

Don’t check off every box in the requirements listed above? Please apply anyway! Studies have shown that marginalized communities - such as women, LGBTQ+ and people of color - are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. FreeWill is dedicated to building an inclusive, diverse, equitable, and accessible workplace that fosters a sense of belonging – so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to still consider submitting an application. You may be just the right candidate for this role or another one of our openings!