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Democracy Collaborative Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

Senior Platform Engineer

San Francisco, CA ยท On-site

$170K - $230K/yr

About Authorium Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We ... This is a foundational role for a senior engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative ...

Senior Software Engineer

San Francisco, CA ยท On-site

$170K - $230K/yr

About Authorium Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We ... This is a foundational role for a senior engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative ...

Software Engineer

San Francisco, CA ยท On-site

$148K - $201K/yr

About Authorium Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We ... This is a foundational role for an engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative environment ...

Senior Software Engineer

San Francisco, CA ยท On-site

$170 - $230/hr

About Authorium Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We ... This is a foundational role for a senior engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative ...

Legal Services Director

San Francisco, CA ยท Hybrid

$139K - $176K/yr

... National Democracy Initiative programs, and other emerging areas of law. Core Responsibilities ... Experience supervising staff and building effective, collaborative teams. * Experience in working ...

Legal Services Director

San Francisco, CA ยท Hybrid

$139K - $176K/yr

... National Democracy Initiative programs, and other emerging areas of law. Core Responsibilities ... Experience supervising staff and building effective, collaborative teams. * Experience in working ...

Showing results 21-40

Democracy Collaborative information

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a professional at the Democracy Collaborative, and why are they important?

To thrive at The Democracy Collaborative, you typically need a strong background in research, policy analysis, and community development, often supported by relevant academic credentials in fields like public policy, economics, or urban planning. Familiarity with data analysis tools, collaborative platforms, and experience with policy advocacy or stakeholder engagement systems is highly valuable. Exceptional communication, strategic thinking, and a passion for social impact distinguish top performers in this role. These skills are crucial for advancing innovative, community-focused economic initiatives and fostering systemic change.

What are some typical projects or initiatives that team members at the Democracy Collaborative work on, and how do they collaborate across different departments?

Team members at Democracy Collaborative often engage in projects focused on advancing community wealth building, such as developing inclusive economic strategies, researching policy impacts, and facilitating partnerships with local organizations. Collaboration is key, and staff frequently work in cross-functional teams that bring together experts in research, policy, communications, and stakeholder engagement. Regular team meetings, collaborative planning sessions, and shared digital platforms help ensure alignment and foster creative problem-solving. This structure supports both professional growth and the opportunity to make a tangible impact in communities.

What is the Democracy Collaborative?

The Democracy Collaborative is a non-profit research and advocacy organization focused on advancing economic systems and models that prioritize democracy, shared ownership, and community wealth building. Founded in 2000, the organization works with partners in the public, private, and non-profit sectors to develop strategies that create inclusive, equitable, and sustainable local economies. Their work includes research, policy development, and practical initiatives supporting employee ownership, anchor institutions, and democratic economic models. The Democracy Collaborative is best known for pioneering the concept of community wealth building and supporting cities and institutions to implement these strategies.

What is the difference between Democracy Collaborative vs Community Organizer?

AspectDemocracy CollaborativeCommunity Organizer
CredentialsTypically requires a background in public policy, social sciences, or nonprofit managementOften has grassroots experience; formal credentials vary
Work EnvironmentNonprofit organizations, think tanks, policy advocacy groupsCommunity-based settings, local events, grassroots campaigns
Industry UsageUsed in social justice, policy reform, community developmentCommon in activism, local advocacy, social movements

The Democracy Collaborative focuses on policy research and systemic change within nonprofit and advocacy settings, often working on large-scale initiatives. Community Organizers engage directly with local communities to mobilize support and drive grassroots change. While both roles aim to improve communities, their methods and environments differ significantly.

What cities in California are hiring for Democracy Collaborative jobs? Cities in California with the most Democracy Collaborative job openings:
Infographic showing various Democracy Collaborative job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 83% Full Time, 13% Part Time, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 74% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 23% Remote job distribution.

Senior Platform Engineer

Authorium, Inc

San Francisco, CA โ€ข On-site

$170K - $230K/yr

Full-time

Retirement, PTO

Re-posted 4 days ago


Job description

About Authorium
Authorium is building the operating system for the infrastructure of democracy. We are a GovTech SaaS platform that unifies the massive, complex workflows-procurement, grants, and budgeting-that keep state and local governments running.
Our platform replaces fragmented spreadsheets and decades-old legacy systems with a unified data layer that manages billions of dollars in public funds. We serve the agencies that support millions of citizens.
The Business: We are a 43-person company growing 45% YoY, with a clear path to profitability by Q4 2026. We have deep product market fit and are scaling to meet the demands of the world's most complex government agencies.
Why This Role Exists
We are establishing our San Francisco office as a strategic center for high-bandwidth engineering and product innovation. This is a foundational role for a senior engineer who thrives in an in-person, collaborative environment and wants to be "in the room" where our most complex architectural decisions are made.
While Authorium is a distributed company, our SF office is where we tackle our most intricate "war room" challenges-from modularizing our core domain to whiteboarding the next generation of our workflow engine. You will be a primary driver of the technical integrity of our platform, setting the quality bar and shipping the features that will power our next major phase of expansion.
What You Will Be Doing
  • Architecting the Platform: Own the most complex infrastructure work - designing internal developer platforms, CI/CD pipelines, deployment abstractions, and the foundational systems that product teams build on top of.
  • Technical Sovereignty: Make architectural decisions around reliability, scalability, and developer experience that hold up across multiple teams and services. You'll write ADRs and lead the modularization of platform primitives and shared infrastructure.
  • High-Bandwidth Collaboration: Work in-person (Monday-Thursday) with our SF engineering leadership to design platform capabilities, resolve production incidents, and translate engineering pain points into infrastructure solutions.
  • Technical Excellence: Set the standard for platform reliability. You'll lead infrastructure code reviews, define SLOs, and drive improvements to observability, automated testing, and deployment safety.
  • AI-Native Workflow: Use Cursor and Claude to automate infrastructure toil and focus on high-leverage platform design. You'll define our AI-first patterns for platform engineering - from AI-assisted runbooks to automated incident triage.

Requirements
Must Have
  • 6+ years of professional experience in platform, infrastructure, or DevOps engineering, with strong fundamentals in distributed systems, networking, and cloud architecture.
  • Systems Thinker: Proven track record designing and operating reliable, scalable infrastructure - including service meshes, internal tooling, and developer-facing APIs or abstractions.
  • High-Agency: You identify platform gaps before they become incidents. You partner with engineering teams to turn reliability pain into well-scoped platform investments.
  • Security Minded: You treat security as a first-class platform concern - deep understanding of secrets management, network policies, IAM models, and supply chain security.
  • Quality Obsessed: A history of high-quality infrastructure-as-code, runbooks, and a drive to build self-service systems that reduce toil for the entire engineering org.
  • San Francisco Based: Energized by an in-office (Monday-Thursday) collaborative culture.

Nice to Have
  • AWS Depth: Hands-on experience with ECS/EKS, CloudWatch, IAM, VPC design, Parameter Store, and modern IaC tooling (Terraform, Pulumi, CDK).
  • Developer Experience Focus: Experience building internal platforms, golden paths, or self-service deployment tooling that measurably improves engineering velocity.
  • Regulated Industry Experience: Previous work in compliance-heavy environments such as GovTech, FinTech, or HealthTech (FedRAMP, SOC 2, HIPAA) - ideally with a focus on infrastructure compliance controls.
  • Observability & Reliability: Experience owning SLOs/SLAs, building out logging/metrics/tracing stacks (Datadog, OpenTelemetry, etc.), and leading incident response.
  • Grow Stage Veteran: Previous experience at a company in the $5M-$30M ARR range where you were one of the senior-most individual contributors.

Compensation & Benefits
  • Salary: $170,000 - $230,000
  • Offers equity
  • 100% benefits coverage for employee
  • 401(k) plan
  • Flexible PTO
  • Home office stipend
  • Comprehensive wellness benefits
  • Commuter stipend for SF hybrid role