OpenDP Director of Operations and Community Engagement

Job Summary:

Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) seek a Director of Operations and Engagement to join the Faculty Directors Gary King and Salil Vadhan in leading the OpenDP Project (https://opendp.org/). OpenDP is an international community effort to build trustworthy, open-source software tools for performing statistical analysis and training AI models on sensitive private data. These tools offer the rigorous protections of “differential privacy” for the individuals who may be represented in confidential data. Founded in 2019 by Professors Gary King and Salil Vadhan, OpenDP has a highly respected suite of software that is used by industry, government, and academia, and has a large and thriving community of practitioners and scholars who volunteer time to OpenDP’s efforts. A major goal for the coming years is to expand OpenDP’s connections to industry, leading to a long-term sustainability model for the project. 

This is a one-year term position with the possibility of extension.

Job-Specific Responsibilities:

Working with the Faculty Directors and across partners, the OpenDP Director will have both internal and external-facing responsibilities.

Internally, they will:

• Effectively manage the OpenDP Core Team of developers, researchers, and administrative staff to bring out its best work.  This includes hiring and orientation, training and development, workflow and performance management, and the promotion of an inclusive and innovative work environment.

• Assign individual responsibilities, identify resources needed, and develop schedules to ensure successful completion of project milestones within schedule, budget, and design constraints.

• Manage the current and future financial resources of the project, including grant reporting and proactive fundraising.  

• Work collaboratively with administrative offices and projects across Harvard to leverage resources for successful project completion.

Externally, they will:

• Design and execute an outreach strategy for OpenDP, engaging and incentivizing stakeholders, including users, contributors, and funders from industry, government, and academia; and serve as the business point of contact with use case partners and collaborators.

• Develop a long-term sustainability and governance model for OpenDP, with robust industry support. 

• Create the programming and oversee the organization of in-person and in-person events for the OpenDP community, including community meetings, workshops, hackathons, and webinars.  Identify, assign, and support leaders of community working groups.  

• Develop a matrix communication plan based on content, audience, and channels.   Sustain an effective online presence, including websites, social media, public calendars, mailing lists, Slack, and other channels.  Maintain a repository of key project activities and accomplishments for communications and mandatory reporting.  Partner with collaborating organizations in message amplification. 

Working Conditions:

The work is performed in an office environment. This position requires working on campus at least 3 days a week.

Physical Requirements:

There are no significant physical requirements.