Matrix.org Foundation - Managing Director
Element, United Kingdom
Job Description
Who We Are
The Matrix.org Foundation is a non-profit UK Community Interest Company that serves as both a guardian and champion of Matrix, an open standard and protocol for real-time communication that is used by an ever-growing global community. Matrix is to communicating in the 21st century what e-mail was to sending messages in the 20th - an interoperable and federated protocol that makes it possible for anyone, anywhere in the world, to connect to users anywhere on the global network in a safe, reliable manner.
While work on Matrix began in 2014, today ongoing development of the specification is entrusted to the Foundation, currently led by a group of five Guardians who keep a watchful eye on the Matrix Spec Core Team and its work, making sure the community stays true to its overall philosophy.
To date, most of the work of the Foundation has been provided through in-kind efforts of ecosystem leaders, such as Element. These contributions have included general outreach and advocacy for Matrix, operation of the massively popular Matrix.org homeserver, and funding software development for projects including end-to-end encryption, client SDKs and Synapse, the Matrix reference homeserver implementation. While these external contributions have been and remain critical, the Foundation takes seriously its responsibility to the long-term success of Matrix, and so recently began to transition into a more direct and hands-on role in key areas.
The Role
As we begin to prepare for the 2nd decade of Matrix and respond to the community's rapid growth, the Foundation is seeking its first Managing Director to: (a) build support for the evolution of the ecosystem of service providers and software developers building technology and services on the Matrix protocol, (b) to oversee development and operations of key technology infrastructure and community resources, and (c) to help ensure the Foundation's fiscal sustainability for the long term in order to provide stability and assurance to users and contributors.
This role is responsible for strategy, operations, and fundraising for the Foundation in service to the larger Matrix community. The role reports to the newly-forming Matrix Governing Board via the long-established committee of Guardians who have deep ongoing experience with the ecosystem's history, successes, and challenges. The person in this role will also initially be responsible for taking over certain tasks from predecessor volunteers and outsourced providers, including such tasks as annual tax amp; reporting filings, maintenance of the Foundation's online presence, and overseeing key community events/programs/activities (conferences, participation in standards groups, Google Summer of Code, etc.).
Requirements
The Foundation's inaugural Managing Director will have an especially critical responsibility to design strategic plans, operational approaches, and help to build a culture that is aligned with the long-term goals of the Matrix community and to the extent possible supports its work in all its forms. You will not only need to build the plans for the future of the Foundation, you will also be responsible to raise funds to execute those plans, and then transform those plans into reality through building internal teams and ecosystem partnerships.
Specifically, we are looking for someone who is:
- Intellectually and emotionally smart, naturally curious, and deeply enthusiastic about our mission.
- A compelling and articulate communicator (both in written form and through public speaking) who takes great pleasure in helping others be successful.
- Empathetic, with not only Matrix ecosystem members, but also users and potential supporters.
- Comfortable with the pace, trade offs, and ambiguity of an early stage non-profit organization, and who remembers how to balance their own self-care alongside caring for and supporting others in our community.
- Comfortable wearing many hats and taking on a variety of roles temporarily as the organization builds its team.
- Not afraid to explain to people that changing the world takes both resources and money, and to enthusiastically solicit financial support for the Foundation in doing so.
Your experience
First and foremost, we are looking for someone who is deeply passionate about the Matrix mission for democratising communication, and who will be an outspoken advocate for our work. We also need someone with not only deep experience in building organizations and communities, but also in organizational development work such as fundraising and partnership building. We expect the successful candidate to have the following experience:
- Past experience building a fundraising pipeline to support annual operating budgets. Based on the desired activities of the Foundation, our target annual bu