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Job Opportunity: Director of Product Engineering

About CC
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Creative Commons Global Summit 2015. Sebastian ter Burg CC BY 2.0

On February 7, 2017, Creative Commons released a public beta of CC Search. Our goal was to inspire discussion, debate, and ideas on how we can build a front door to the commons, and make content more discoverable and usable, and foster a culture of collaboration and gratitude. Now we’re looking for a Director of Product Engineering to lead that team at CC.

At Creative Commons it’s important to hire talented, diverse teams and advance women in leadership roles, and we’ve worked diligently this past year to ensure more of those voices are part of our team. You can help: if you know a bright, creative, technically-proficient woman or someone from a diverse community who wants to change the world with us, encourage them to apply. If that person is you, I can’t wait to hear from you.


Job Opportunity: Director of Product Engineering

The universe of openly licensed content is massive and growing, and we want to light it up — make it more discoverable, usable, and connected. This is the opportunity: to build products and services — both standalone and within our partner platforms — that will bring the commons to life with greater use, re-use, and contribution. Our first project to realize this goal will be CC Search.

There is no “front door” to the commons, and with over 1.1 billion works on platforms all over the world on over 9 million websites, the tools people need to curate, share, and remix works aren’t yet available. We launched the CC Search beta on February 7, 2017, indexing about 1 percent of the commons, and a focus on images as a first media type. We have had a great initial response and positive media coverage. But we have so much more to do to reach the scale of our ambition.

This project will unite billions of records for works and metadata, multiple platforms, diverse media types, and a variety of user communities and partners. It’s a difficult but rewarding problem for an inspired and creative leader. We want to build this product with a small dev team as part of an open community, and create something useful, delightful, and essential to the work of creators, educators, scientists, cultural institutions, and our partners.

Primary Responsibilities

The Director of Product Engineering reports to the CEO and will lead the development and implementation of CC’s products and services. You’ll be responsible for the CC Search roadmap and the review and enhancement of existing tools to ensure their successful adoption on the web. This is a rare opportunity to lead within an organization that is fundamental to sharing online, operating at a global scale. The successful candidate will lead a technical team to meet the needs of this vital organization, and to build a more vibrant, usable global commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude.

We believe that diverse teams build better organizations and better services. Applications from qualified candidates from all backgrounds, including those from under-represented communities, are very welcome.

The Director of Product Engineering leads the technology team to:

Qualifications and requirements

Work Environment and Location

Creative Commons is a distributed organization. This position is available to applicants in Canada and the US, in a remote working environment, provided they have reasonable mobility for necessary travel, and high-speed broadband access. Laptop/desktop computer and necessary resources are supplied. May require some travel.

How to Apply

Please email your cover letter and resume as a single PDF to “jobs@creativecommons.org” with the subject heading of “Director of Product Engineering / [Last Name].” No phone calls, please.

About CC

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. We are a leader in the global movement for free culture and open knowledge with an affiliate community in 85 countries. Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” The first phase of CC’s work was about establishing the licenses as standard, and growing the archive. The next phase will establish a more vibrant, usable commons powered by collaboration and gratitude. Today, the global commons stands at over 1.1 billion licensed works, made up of photos, video, audio, datasets, open textbooks, research, 3D models, and more.

Posted 14 February 2017