Job description
About Open Philanthropy
Open Philanthropy is a philanthropic funder and advisor; our mission is to help others as much as we can with the resources available to us. We stress openness to many possibilities and have chosen our focus areas based on importance, neglectedness, and tractability. Our current giving areas include potential risks from advanced artificial intelligence, global health and development, scientific research, global public health policy, farm animal welfare, and biosecurity and pandemic preparedness. In 2024, we recommended $650 million to high-impact causes, and we’ve recommended over $4 billion in grants since our formation.
About the role
At Open Philanthropy, we use Salesforce to manage our grantmaking. We aim to make our system a user-friendly, end-to-end solution for grant processing and information management. Our Salesforce user base is around 150 and growing, and our instance is low-record-volume but high-touch and high-complexity, with lots of customization, and an unusually complex security model. To support this work, we’re looking for an experienced jack-of-all-trades, with strengths in most or all of the following areas: solution architecture, development, DevOps, business analysis, and project management. If you’ve served as a senior admin or architect at a medium-sized organization, or have some consulting experience switching hats between these roles, this opportunity might be a good fit for you. The Solutions Architect and Senior Administrator will work closely with our existing team to support the following functions:
Salesforce architecture and development:
Design and build complex Salesforce solutions, demonstrating expert understanding of platform capabilities and limitations
Make informed decisions on solution trade-offs, considering factors such as scalability, maintainability, and user experience
Develop custom solutions using Apex, SOQL, and potentially Lightning Web Components and Visualforce
Lead requirements-gathering sessions with stakeholders and users, translating business needs into technical specifications
Collaborate with stakeholders and Salesforce team members to refine and implement solutions
Mentor junior team members and provide technical guidance on complex issues
Evaluate, recommend, implement, and manage Salesforce features and third-party tools
Help oversee the team’s user support function, and help resolve escalated cases
Contribute to the continuous improvement of our Salesforce architecture and development processes
Project management:
Lead Salesforce-adjacent projects from inception to completion:
Define and manage project scope
Allocate engineering capacity and keep stakeholders informed about project progress
Ensure all stakeholders meet deadlines and resolve any blockers
Implement and refine agile methodologies within the team, facilitating the estimation, prioritization, and execution of tasks
Balance multiple concurrent projects and initiatives, adjusting priorities as needed
DevOps:
Implement and advocate for DevOps best practices within the Salesforce team
Use and help junior team members gain skills with our preferred IDE, IntelliJ+Illuminated Cloud
Serve as the team’s release manager, or mentor members of the admin team to serve in this capacity
Who might be a good fit
We are looking for someone with extensive experience in Salesforce administration and development, with a strong background in solution architecture and technical project management.
A successful candidate will also demonstrate most of these qualities:
Expert-level knowledge of Salesforce platform capabilities and limitations
Proficiency in Apex and SOQL; with experience in Lightning Web Components and Visualforce as nice-to-haves
Strong understanding of Salesforce best practices and design patterns
Experience implementing and leading DevOps in a Salesforce context
Familiarity with agile methodologies and their application in Salesforce projects
Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to think creatively to overcome complex challenges
Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
A track record of successful project delivery in complex Salesforce environments
Ability to mentor and guide junior team members
Salesforce certifications (e.g. System Architect, Application Architect, or developer certifications) are a plus
Philanthropic and/or nonprofit experience is a plus
You might work on:
Designing architecture for custom budget allocations that allow our grantmaking to be analyzed according to multiple dimensions
Creating an application, including the UI and business logic, for users to input and manage a series of predictions about our grantmaking, and creating custom visualizations about those predictions using complex statistical methods
Designing a Salesforce-based system to replace an existing grant approval process that currently happens over email, which would us to structure key data earlier in the grant’s life cycle
Creating a flexible and easy-to-update tagging engine for our grants that will allow robust reporting, which may vary from program to program
Improving our existing code base and refactoring existing code
Our team values
Curious: our team wants to know more about the “why.” We want to know how users interact with the products we build for them.
User-centered: our team gets satisfaction from making our users’ lives easier. We’re relentless in our desire to eliminate unnecessary friction for our staff and grantees.
Tenacious: we approach technical challenges with a try-and-try-again approach. We don’t give up when the first or second approach doesn’t pay off.
Steady: we keep our cool when asked a question we don’t know the answer to (yet!) and when dealing with all kinds of users, from new hires to senior leadership.
Great communication: we communicate clearly, concisely, and with an appropriate tone in documentation and written communication.
Approachable: we want users to feel happy to ask us questions, tell us when something is slowing them down, and seek our help.
Flexible: we don’t get tied to one solution; we’re able to cater to many stakeholders with different preferences and processes. We know that occasionally abandoning good ideas and project progress in response to new organizational needs is part of the work.
Organized: we love to make plans and see them executed, keep people around us on track, and demonstrate excellent attention to detail.
Problem-solving: we find creative new approaches and then tweak them (and tweak them, and tweak them again). We enjoy the puzzle-like aspect of solving hard problems in novel ways. We pride ourselves on coming up with a few possible solutions to a challenge and then picking the very best option.
We expect all our staff to:
Put our mission first, and act with urgency to help us realize our ambitious goals.
Work to model our operating values of ownership, openness, calibration, and inclusiveness.
The ideal candidate for this position will possess many of the skills and experiences described above. However, there is no such thing as a “perfect” candidate. Above all, we are looking for people motivated to contribute to our mission of helping others as much as we can with the resources available to us. Whatever your background, please apply if this role would make you excited to come to work every day.
Role details & benefits
Compensation: The compensation for this role is $181,735.12, which would be distributed as a base salary of $158,735.12 and an unconditional 401(k) grant of $23,000.00 for U.S. hires.
These compensation figures assume a remote location; there would be geographic adjustments upwards for candidates based in the San Francisco Bay Area or Washington, D.C.
All compensation will be distributed in the form of take-home salary for internationally-based hires.
Time zones and location: You can work remotely. While we are unable to sponsor visas for this role, we are open to hires outside the U.S. Our Salesforce team lead is based in New York, so this position would require enough flexibility to overlap with Eastern Time for at least 5-6 hours of the work day.
Start date: We’d like a candidate to start as soon as possible after receiving an offer — likely in September 2025.
Benefits: Our benefits package includes:
Excellent health insurance (we cover 100% of premiums within the U.S. for you and any eligible dependents) and an employer-funded Health Reimbursement Arrangement for certain other personal health expenses.
Dental, vision, and life insurance for you and your family.
Four weeks of PTO recommended per year.
Four months of fully paid family leave.
A generous and flexible expense policy — we encourage staff to expense the ergonomic equipment, software, and other services that they need to stay healthy and productive.
A continual learning policy that encourages staff to spend time on professional development with related expenses covered.
Support for remote work — we’ll cover a remote workspace outside your home if you need one, or connect you with an Open Phil coworking hub in your city.
Note: We can’t always provide every benefit we offer U.S. staff to international hires, but we’re working on it (and will usually provide cash equivalents of any benefits we can’t offer in your country).
Note: US-based operations staff are typically employed by Open Philanthropy Project LLC, which is not a 501©(3) tax-exempt organization. As such, this role is unlikely to be eligible for public service loan forgiveness programs.
We aim to employ people with many different experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds who share our passion for accomplishing as much good as we can. We are committed to creating an environment where all employees have the opportunity to succeed, and we do not discriminate based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or any other legally protected status.
If you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, or have any other questions about applying, please contact [email protected].
The deadline for this application is July 16 at 11:59pm Pacific Time.
