Community Lead
We are looking for
The Open Home Foundation is looking for a Community Lead based in Europe to lead our Community department. This is a newly created department, responsible for the relationship between the Foundation and our contributors, which includes everyone collaborating with our GitHub repositories, forums, Discord, content creators, and more. You will be working with a highly technical community of developers, smart home enthusiasts, and power users who are passionate about open-source home automation.
We consider ourselves stewards of Open Home projects for the community, which is why this position is incredibly important for us. While we have users from all walks of life, our more technical users tend to be particularly active and have strong opinions about the direction of our projects. One of our key strategy points is that we want our community, both users and maintainers, to have more opportunities to meet one another in person to share stories and brainstorm ideas
What you are going to do
- Lead and grow the Community department, working with team members who are already highly engaged and bring deep institutional knowledge about our community. Own hiring, mentorship, budget management, and resource allocation.
- Set vision and direction for community initiatives in partnership with leadership, balancing the Foundation’s core values with the strong opinions and diverse perspectives of our technical community.
- Monitor and identify trends in community health, engagement, and sentiment to proactively address emerging needs and opportunities, using both data and qualitative insights to inform strategic decisions.
- Architect engagement strategies across multiple community channels including forums, Discord, social media, and other digital platforms to build an active and supportive ecosystem.
- Design scalable event strategies and self-governance programs that enable both OHF-organized gatherings and empower local communities worldwide to host their own meetups, providing frameworks, resources, and support for grassroots initiatives and community-led decision making across different time zones and regions.
- Work closely with engineering, product, and marketing teams to bring community insights and data into product development and communication strategies, advocating for community needs in the decision-making process.
- Act as a connector within the organization, identifying opportunities when community members, hardware manufacturers, or ecosystem players express interest and routing them to the appropriate teams to deepen engagement.
- Build sustainable contributor ecosystem and growth pipelines, creating smooth onboarding pathways that enable community members to contribute through code, support, content creation, and community leadership initiatives.
- Represent the community internally and externally, nurturing relationships with key contributors while developing guidelines and policies that maintain a positive, inclusive environment.
- Navigate conflicts and controversies with diplomacy, managing crisis situations that arise in a highly technical and opinionated community while maintaining trust and cohesion
What you need to have
- 5+ years of experience managing and leading teams
- Demonstrated success in building, growing, and engaging online technical communities.
- Experience developing and executing community strategies in open-source projects.
- Experience with technical communities: Proven track record of working with developers, engineers, and technical enthusiasts who have strong opinions and high expectations.
- Technical communication skills: Ability to understand and communicate technical concepts effectively, even if not a developer yourself.
- Professional Fluency in English: Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English.
- European Residency: You must be currently based and eligible to work within Europe.
It would be great if you also have
- A passion for smart homes and automation
- Experience as a Home Assistant user
- Experience managing communities with diverse technical skill levels, from beginners to advanced developers
What we offer you
The Open Home Foundation is a fully remote organization that uses Remote to employ people from all over the world. You will be a normal salaried employee in your country.
This is a full-time position for 40 hours per week. Because we are a fully remote company, there is no fixed schedule. For the purpose of team communication, we do try to ensure at least 3 hours of overlap in the workday. You will report to the President of the Foundation, who is based in the United States.
Core to the establishment of the Open Home Foundation was the well-being of the people building the future of the smart home. We will provide all the benefits required by the country you reside in. However, we also want to make sure all our employees, regardless of country of origin, get at least a minimal set of benefits, including:
- Five weeks (twenty-five days) of paid time off.
- Fourteen days of paid sick leave if your country/laws treat them as unpaid.
- Six weeks of paid and six weeks of unpaid parental leave to be used in the first year after birth. We will provide the missing days if your country/laws do not provide such compensation.
- A budget for your work hardware once you start. After three years, you may keep this equipment for personal use.
- An annual smart home budget to ensure you keep up-to-date with the latest that smart homes offer.
- A 50% contribution to your internet connection fee at your home workspace.
- One day every two weeks to work on your personal projects.
- If you are currently working on Home Assistant-related side projects, you can spend work time maintaining them.
When first offering a position to a new member, the Open Home Foundation aims to provide a total compensation package that matches the 75th percentile for the new hire's role, seniority, and local market rates. For a Community Lead in our primary operating countries, the approximate yearly compensation will be the following:
- Netherlands: 111.000 EUR
- UK: 110.000 GBP
- Spain: 85.000 EUR
- Portugal: 85.000 EUR
- Other countries: compensation can be discussed during the first interview.
These figures may be adjusted based on experience, qualifications, and work hours.
About us
The Open Home Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Switzerland, with the objective of fighting for the fundamental principles of privacy, choice, and sustainability for smart homes. It does this by supporting the development of open-source projects, and open connectivity and communication standards.
A big part of this is Home Assistant https://www.home-assistant.io/, the biggest https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#the-state-of-open-source open-source project in number of contributors, but the Open Home Foundation also owns or collaborates with other projects important to promoting privacy, choice, and sustainability in the smart home, like:
- Open hardware tools (e.g., ESPHome https://esphome.io/, ESP Web Tools https://esphome.github.io/esp-web-tools/)
- Open standards (e.g., Python Matter Server https://github.com/home-assistant-libs/python-matter-server, Z-Wave JS https://github.com/zwave-js, ZigPy https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy, BTHome https://bthome.io/, Improv Wi-Fi https://www.improv-wifi.com/)
- Open voice (e.g., Rhasspy https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy, Wyoming Protocol https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/wyoming/, Piper https://github.com/rhasspy/piper)
- Music Assistant https://www.music-assistant.io/
The recruitment process
1. Apply for the role
2. Our HR team will review your application with the hiring manager
3. Interview with HR
4. Interview with the Leadership Committee
5. Interview with the Board
6. Offer
7. Join our team!
