About Horizontal

Horizontal is a nonprofit organization serving frontline defenders, activists and journalists through digital security and tool development. We empower grassroots communities to use technology effectively and to operate safely from surveillance, censorship and repression.

Working at Horizontal

Horizontal’s values drive both our collaboration with partners and our work internally. We believe in the power of group consensus in decision-making, and strive to ensure that all team members are heard and contribute to the success of the organization. Just as important as the success of projects is each team member learning, growing, and feeling fulfilled in their work.

We are a distributed team, with members located on different continents. Team members are free to work from wherever they want as long as they have a good enough connection to join our online meetings and collaborate effectively. While we make sure to respect each other’s boundaries and work/life balance, remote work requires some flexibility to accommodate different time zones.

We are a small team in a young and growing organization. We are intentional in how we develop our organizational culture and processes, and hope to recruit someone interested in being part of this journey and investing themselves for the medium to long-term.

As a community-centered organization, diversity of life experiences makes a big difference in how we identify needs, and design and implement solutions. As a result, we deliberately seek applicants with different perspectives, identities, and experiences to build an inclusive workplace to better inform our programs and processes. Horizontal is an equal opportunity employer and encourages people of all races, genders, ages, abilities, orientations, ethnicities, and national origins to apply.

Women, People of Color, LGBTQ+, and disabled folks are highly encouraged to apply and self-identify in the application.

The Role

Responsibilites

• Manage products through the full product lifecycle, including building product roadmap, defining products, writing requirements, prototyping, developing, and launching products.
• Work with a cross-functional team to build products, including designers and software engineers.
• Draft internal documentation, including product definitions, internal processes, and technical documentation.
• Draft external documentation, including user guides and tutorials.
• Ensure that our products are secure, usable, and accessible, including to high-risk communities and users with low tech literacy.
• Ensure that we set realistic deadlines and meet internal and external deadlines while retaining a healthy working environment and work/life balance for the product team.
• Identify inefficiencies in internal processes and make proposals for improvements, including through automation.
• Provide support and troubleshooting to community partners and users.

What we need (required qualifications):

• You resonate with Horizontal’s values.
• You have 3 to 5 years of demonstrable experience as a product manager or equivalent role defining, designing, building and managing user-facing web or mobile apps and coordinating a product team, including designers and software engineers.
• You have excellent English written skills and experience writing product requirements and documentation.
• You have excellent organizational and prioritization skills, you pay close attention to detail in all your work and are able to keep a team on track as we work on several projects simultaneously, including through project management tools, git and asynchronous communication.
• You have excellent communications skills. This is critical as you will lead internal team meetings, coordinate projects, and communicate with external partners.
• You have a keen interest in design to be able to critical assess the usability and accessibility of our products
• You are flexible and independent. We are a distributed team and remote work isn't for everyone: it requires discipline and the ability to work independently, communicate daily over several different platforms, and be flexible to accommodate meetings across multiple time zones. You should also be able to work on multiple projects simultaneously.

What we would like (preferred qualifications):

• You are fluent in a language other than English.
• You have experience working on civic tech, human rights, internet freedom, social justice, or activism (not necessarily as a product manager).
• You have experience working with users in emerging digital communities, such as in the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia, or Latin America.
• You have experience working on security or privacy tools.
• You can code and/or are familiar with CI/CD.
• You have experience designing on Figma.
• You are familiar, or have interest in, design justice.

What we DON'T need:

• You don’t need formal education. We are looking for skill and passion more so than degrees.

Conditions and benefits

• Salary depends on location and experience.
• Remote: we are open to people based in the Global South (Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East, Subsaharan Africa, Central and South Asia, East and Southeast Asia)
• Flexible: make your own work schedule. As long as you can join team meetings, work whenever you want.
• Unlimited personal days (for personal medical needs, family care, menstruation days, mental health, and bereavement).
• Public holidays from your country of residence and cultural holidays you observe.
• Five weeks paid leave.

Apply

We want to hire individuals who are in line with our values and mission, are a good match at a technical level, and who can join the team for more than a few months (and ideally for many years!). For this reason, the application process is a little lengthy. But we are committed to completing the whole process in about two months.

The different steps of the application process are:

• Initial review of the application: we assess whether you’d be a good match with our organization in terms of values and mission, and if you have all of the required qualifications.
• Interview: you will meet with the programs lead and/or the operations lead to chat about your previous experience and your interest working at Horizontal.
• Technical assessment: you will be asked to complete a task so that we can better assess your skills. The test will take no longer than five hours. Nobody should work for free, so this assessment is compensated.
• Team interview: you will meet with 4 or 5 team members for a casual conversation on your work habits and preferences, your motivation in joining us, and how things work internally at Horizontal. This is as much for team members to get to know as for you to get to know us and make an informed decision on whether Horizontal is the right place for you!

In your application, make sure to include:

• a CV
• explanations on why you want to work at Horizontal and why you are qualified for the position
• links to your personal website, portfolio, or Git repositories.
• a writing sample, preferably tech documentation.