FreeWill is an award-winning, social-good startup that has partnered with 1,800+ nonprofits who support our mission while raising more than $10B in bequests to charities since we were founded in 2017. We’ve been featured in the New York Times, Forbes, Oprah’s magazine, and our co-CEOs have even been named to Town & Country’s “Top 50 Philanthropists” list.

All of this is because we’ve figured out how to make some powerful (but complicated!) ways to donate much easier and more accessible. Our products make things easier for the donors who want to change the world and for nonprofits doing heroic work around the planet.

In the last 7 years, we’ve grown from 5 people to 200+ (all smart, tenacious, and kind), and continue to grow. We’d love to have you be a part of this adventure. In 2024, we were named a "Most Loved Workplace" by both Newsweek and Best Practice Institute; you can also check us out on Glassdoor!
Full-time • Excellent Benefits • Work from Anywhere in the US (except AL, CO, or LA)
About the Role

We are looking for a visionary product leader who is able to lead FreeWill in building products that fundamentally change the way that nonprofit fundraising teams are able to unlock transformational gifts.

The VP of R&D will lead the product, design, engineering, and IT / security teams, currently a total of over 30 US-based team members. This role recruits and hires, onboards, manages performance, and develops these teams. The VP is a member of our executive team, contributing to company-wide decisions and leadership. The VP will help us scale the company from 200 to 300 people and beyond over the next two years.

The VP will be customer-centric in their approach to building products, and will inspire the entire FreeWill team to be similarly customer-centric and focused on deep listening in their approach to the market. This person loves thinking about the business and social impact of their product strategy, is unafraid about making hard trade-off decisions, and should thrive in a fast-paced environment with ambiguity. This person should be an inspirational manager who has pattern recognition of what great R&D organizations look like. This person will be supported by a team that’s excellent at execution, low-ego, and makes sound business and product decisions come to life. This person will be smart, tenacious, and kind.

FreeWill has set compensation and a non-negotiation policy for fairness reasons (we don't think that an individual's pay should be determined by how comfortable they are negotiating). As a result, we like to be transparent and up front about the compensation. When we make an offer, we provide multiple options so that employees can choose between compensation packages that prioritize salary or stock options. The base salary range for this role is $240,000 to $260,000. This role also has the potential to earn an annual executive bonus.
Goals

Build and manage a strategic, high-performing product, engineering, design, and IT/ security team
Build a series of successful products that achieve product-market fit

Tactics

Hire and develop strong and diverse talent on the product, engineering, and design teams
In addition, to directly managed US-based team, work closely with our newly acquired tech team in Lahore, Pakistan to build and test MVPs of new products
Advocate for the right resources at the right times to achieve goals
Develop processes and best practices for product, design, and engineering departments to work well together
Ensure strong collaboration across the tech teams and the go-to-market teams (sales, marketing, customer success)
Help Co-CEOs articulate and perpetuate product vision throughout organization
Manage Director of Product Strategy, who owns product roadmapping and manages the product management team
Work closely with Director of Expansion to validate new product lines
Act with and lead others to act with FreeWill’s values of focus, joy, kindness, and courage

Skills and Experience:

5+ years of experience leading product or engineering teams
10+ years of experience in product or engineering management, including at a B2B SaaS company
Proven success in recruiting high performing, diverse talent at high velocity and building an effective and inclusive team culture
Expert at product management best practices including: feature work, growth work, scaling work, and PMF expansion
Strong problem solving skills. Makes data-driven decisions, and is open-minded towards different perspectives
Strong communication, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills – up, down, across, and externally
Acts with integrity, professionalism, low ego, and high self-awareness
Enjoys collaboration, listening, and learning
Comfort moving quickly in a fast-paced environment and making decisions with imperfect information
Impact and results-focused

Hiring Process

The hiring process for this role is as follows:

Recruiter Phone Screen (30 minutes)
Hiring Manager Interview minutes)
Live Exercise (we will send you something to prepare and then you will meet with team members to present)
Final interviews with 2-3 FreeWill team members (2-3 separate 30 minute interviews)
Offer (contingent on positive references)

Please note that steps in the hiring process can and may change and the Recruiter will be your point of contact in sharing any updates in terms of the process. If you are selected to move forward in this process, the Recruiter will share more details about the hiring process and interviewers. However, this is a good estimate of what you can expect. For most executive roles, our hiring processes take an average of 6-12 weeks.
Benefits

In addition to the immense personal and professional satisfaction you’ll gain from helping to raise $1T for high impact nonprofits in a kind and joyful work environment, full time employees at FreeWill are eligible for the following benefits:

Work from home
Unlimited PTO
Flexible hours
Competitive salary
Commuter benefits
Company stock options
401k
Medical/Dental/Vision (some single coverage medical plans are 100% employer paid, subsidized rates for spousal, parent-child, and family coverage)
Short-term and long-term disability insurance
Life and AD&D insurance
Free One Medical membership
Paid parental leave for all parents

Perks

Regular (virtual) team events
$250 monthly co-working budget which can be used for local co-working spaces
$300 annual budget to outfit your home office or cover utility bills
$1,000 referral bonuses for growing our FreeWill community
$1,000 annual professional development budget