Chief Technology Officer

Life at GDI - Creating a world free of disinformation and its harms.

Disinformation has become a business. Today’s internet business models reward engagement above all else. These models monetise attention without considering the quality of the content garnering that attention, or the harm that may result. There is a robust and growing community of industry, policy, and civil society advocates pressing for reform of this ecosystem, they all need data to inform their actions.

The Global Disinformation Index was born out of this need for data, specifically the need for transparent, independent neutral disinformation risk ratings across the open web. Thus, GDI was established in 2018 as a not-for-profit entity built on the three pillars of neutrality, independence and transparency.

At GDI, you’ll be surrounded by people who want to improve everything and support everyone around them. Our team are passionate about our mission, experts in their fields and are collaborative problem solvers.

We continually strive to model the following behaviours in our interactions with others:

- Positivity : Problem solver, not problem raiser.

- Responsibility : Make it your problem - if it’s not right, fix it.

- Trustworthy : Make sure others can depend on you - If you say you are going to do it, do it.

- Respect : treat everyone, especially those with whom we disagree, with courtesy and respect.

GDI is seeking a highly skilled Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to set strategy and make executive technology decisions on behalf of the organisation.

GDI is building the world’s first global capability to assess open web news sites on the adversariality of their content. We are doing this using a combination of cutting edge machine learning and human review by intelligence analysts. Our goal over the next 3-5 years is to scale up the technology and intelligence system to enable us to accurately detect adversarial narratives on web sites, video content, and podcasts in the 35+ most common languages on the internet. Our Policy team is working with regulators in key jurisdictions to encourage the use of this sort of third party signal by technology companies.

As CTO, your pivotal role is to strategically steer and leverage the intelligence, data science, engineering, and product teams towards the realisation of our global technology platform Your leadership will empower the Commercial Partners Director in driving the adoption of these invaluable datasets by technology and advertising companies worldwide.

You will work directly with the CEO, acting as both a technology and business expert, making decisions impacting current and future operations. As the CTO, you will oversee all technology and technological resources, establish the technology vision, strategies, and growth plans. You will also lead our intelligence analyst team to support using Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) to perform quality assurance on our systems.

• Provide technical leadership across the organisation.
• Interface between tech team and leadership team, board of directors, on all GDI technical products, intelligence and research activities.
• Represent GDI technical capabilities/support commercial partnerships lead to licensees and other external constituencies (funders, policymakers, media when necessary, etc.).
• Drive & Support : provide the oversight to ensure all GDI technical products and infrastructure are fit for purpose, robust and scalable, and secure.
• Implement innovative solutions while optimising existing systems, applications, and information.
• Making recommendations and presenting business cases for technology initiatives and improvements.
• Consulting on annual operating and capital budgets for purchasing, staffing and technology operations.
• Manage and develop all direct reports, provide final decision-making authority over technical products and teams.
• Support fundraising applications by translating organisational deliverables into clear technical specifications with LoE estimates and resource requirements.
• Oversee product and process management, including roadmap development and deconfliction, to ensure the team has resources necessary to support organisational goals and deliverables.
• Innovate : Drive tech strategy, new product and feature development to ensure GDI continues to find new ways to demonetise harmful online disinformation.
• Ensure the implementation and enforcement of the highest technology standards.
• Learn : Stay apprised of latest tech developments in the space.

Products : GDI builds well regarded products that:

• Accurately assess the risk of disinformation according to GDI’s adversarial narrative framework.
• Provide risk data to ad tech companies enabling them to monetise content in accordance with their policies.
• Combine the relative strengths of human intelligence analysts and artificial intelligence.
• Can be commercially licensed to provide enduring revenue to support the work of the GDI.

Team : Act as a role model of the “GDI Behaviours” for the technology and intelligence team at all times (Positivity, Responsibility, Trustworthy, Respect):

• Oversee the Data Science, Engineers, DevOps and Product functions.
• Maintain an active recruiting pipeline, ensuring all hires match job descriptions identified

• Essential
• Senior : 5-10 years of experience in a technical position collaborating with teams of data scientists, engineers and product managers.
• Great people manager: Leadership roles requiring the management of significant teams from different technical disciplines.
• Machine learning expert: An aptitude for technology innovation, especially in advanced machine learning fields. Experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP), especially large language models (LLMs) is preferred.
• OSINT understanding: experience or close collaboration with teams that use OSINT techniques to investigate the internet information landscape.
• Efficiency/scalability focus: Experience in process improvement successes, strong financial acumen.
• Technical fluency in python, system administration, data science tools, and cloud platforms.
• Excellent presentation, writing, and research skills.
• Tolerance for ambiguity and frequent pivots.
• Skills to operate effectively in a mission driven, cash constrained non profit.

• Preferred
• Professional fluency in languages other than English.
• Problem solver and doer; someone who just "steps up".
• Past experience working as part of a remote/virtual team.

LOCATION

Remote – Based, and right to work, in the UK, Germany, or the USA (preferably in the following states: Texas, New York, or D.C.).

REPORTING TO

CEO

DIRECT REPORTS

Lead Data Scientist, System Architect, Lead Product Manager, Lead Intelligence Analyst

HOURS

Working hours are flexible. Full-time (37.5 per week).

As a global organisation, some flexibility for cross-time zone communication to be available for limited virtual meetings outside of office hours is required.

TERMS

Competitive salary benchmarked to location and expertise. Best in class healthcare and benefits for US employees.

A place to be your authentic self

We are virtual by design to access a rich diversity of skills, expertise, experiences, and perspectives. Our commitment to neutrality is unwavering – across all of our work around the globe. Our employees are central to ourmissionand to our impact and we know that having varied perspectives helps generate better ideas to solve the complex challenges.