Senior Community Manager

For this role we are explicitly, but not exclusively, recruiting from our own communities, with a very strong preference to hire a community member to join the team.

Stack Overflow is the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. More than 50 million professional and aspiring programmers visit Stack Overflow each month to help solve coding problems, develop new skills, and find job opportunities.

Additionally, Stack Overflow network is a collection of 170+ communities that cover topics from parenting, to DevOps, to crypto, to role-playing-games. Our network hosts millions of users every month from all over the world that are working to establish the largest knowledge base of questions and answers that the world has ever seen.

We have a network of over 500 community-elected moderators who volunteer their time handling issues raised by site users. Moderators monitor our sites for posts and comments that have been flagged for moderator attention, resolve disputes between users, and escalate serious issues to the Community Management team.

As  Senior Community Manager, Engagement and Enablement, you’ll be helping build a safe environment for our users by identifying and addressing challenges to the safety and integrity of our communities. You will work on initiatives and tasks related to community and site operations and engagement. Reporting to the Director of Communities, you’ll be a key player within the larger Community Department.   

You will work to represent the voice of the community to the company, and the voice of the company to the community. You will use your well-developed community instincts to help hone and communicate our message, and will have the ear of our SVP, Communities in order to help shape and guide the future evolution of our product.

What you’ll do:

Day-to-day, you’ll interact with volunteer site moderators and community members to see what their needs are and reactively when they reach out for assistance. You’ll need to help inform policies that consider the needs of our global communities and analyze existing policies for improvement. We have an international audience, and navigating through different cultural contexts is common. Sometimes, you’ll need to act as an escalation point to our other community teams on all product policy matters, including responding to emergencies and content safety-related cases. This may include exposure to sensitive or graphic content, including but not limited to vulgar or derogatory language, violent threats, hate speech, and other forms of abuse.

 

You will need a proactive, detail-oriented attitude to work with team members, product managers, people drafting and enacting policies and practices for community management, with good practical methodology.  You’ll do well if you’re constantly driven to find the simplest and most direct solution to complex projects. 

This is not a support and/or ticketing-based role; we’re looking for an experienced self-starter with a passion for fostering community at scale. We empower our users to largely self-govern, and our elected moderators can handle most of the exceptions when users can’t. You’ll be there to help guide them in finding ideas and proactive interventions to bring about positive outcomes.

Additional responsibilities: 

• You’ll participate in weekly Community Engagement and Enablement meetings and work on issues or community requests that are shared between members of that team, including 
• Helping communities run elections for new volunteer moderators 
• Assisting communities with customizing their site settings to best meet their needs
• Work with new community proposals that come through our incubator site 
• Facilitate conversations with moderators and community members when they are escalated to the team 
• Help communities and individuals celebrate milestones such as site anniversaries and earning 1-million reputation on the platform 
• You’ll collaborate with your colleagues in the department on the Trust & Safety and Support Teams. As part of your first 60 days, you’ll spend time with these teams to get a basic understanding of the work they do. 
• As a member of the Community Department, you’ll be part of shared rotations and responsibilities, including: 
• Community Escalation Tickets: (Issues moderators flag to Community Managers) 
• Conduct Reviews 
• Community Emergency Duty Rotation
• Regular Virtual Meetups with Moderators  and Community Members 
• You’ll communicate with members and moderators in 1:1 and 1:Many scenarios 
• You’ll be part of our Product Liaison program, where you’ll sit in on meetings with one of our product teams and be responsible for community communication and feedback analysis on initiatives for that team

Who you are:

• 3-5+  years in a similar user-facing role within an organization with millions of users
• Experience with the Stack Overflow communities is a very strong plus - we want your deep knowledge of Stack Overflow communities.
• A natural diplomat.  You look for compromise, and advocate for what you believe in, while doing everything possible to create win/win/win outcomes.
• A self-starter who can work independently and collaboratively. You’re flexible and can easily shift priorities as needed.You have exceptional follow-through. If you say youve got something, youll deliver it on time. You value working on a team where your colleagues can trust you and vice versa.
• Someone with an understanding of technology, the Internet, platform content issues, and platform moderation.
• An excellent communicator, with the ability to explain product updates and experiments, user experience, and policy decisions both internally and externally in clear and understandable terms.
• Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to provide balanced and actionable feedback that influences decision-making without managerial authority.  The vast majority of our work is done in writing, so written communications skills are vital.
• Experience with SQL is a plus.
• Someone who either has experience working cross-functionally with product, engineering, research, design, and other departments and/or with an eagerness to jump in and learn. 
• Someone who is curious and can think outside the box. You’re not afraid to ask questions or make suggestions. 

The compensation range for this role is: $109,000 - $163,000 USD