Product Owner: Building Climate Solutions for Cities

Product Owner: Building Climate Solutions for Cities

Link to application: https://noteforms.com/forms/product-owner-job-application-m6ylpo

Have you built a solid career in technology and now want your work to actually matter?

Open Earth Foundation is a California-based nonprofit on a mission to create groundbreaking technology that helps combat the climate crisis.

Our flagship platform, CityCatalyst, supports cities around the world with data-driven climate planning and delivery.

We’re a diverse, global team working remotely and collaborating with partners worldwide to make real change possible.

With strong funding and a powerhouse team of innovators, we’re ready to tackle big challenges for a resilient Earth for generations to come and we need the planet’s brightest minds to help solve them!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

As a Product Owner at Open Earth Foundation, help drive the development of open-source climate data platforms like our main product CityCatalyst. You will work at the intersection of product, data, and program delivery: translating climate goals into engineering tasks, engaging directly with city governments and partners, and shipping with the team.

This role is for a builder who thrives in ambiguity, learns fast, and is comfortable wearing many hats.

You will be part of the product team and work directly with the other technical and product team members and a variety of team members in the organization.

This position is fully remote and international as our organization works across different time zones.

• Schedule flexibility is expected with a willingness to collaborate in overlapping core hours for meetings from 8am PST to 11am PST (GMT-8) for org wide meetings and 9am-5pm EST collaboration times for overlap with the product team.
• Availability to work with overlapping hours across U.S., Latin American and European time zones is preferred.

Priority will be given to applications submitted by July 24th.

The following requirements describe our ideal candidate. If you don't meet some of the requirements, you're encouraged to apply anyway. Let us know if there is something missing and how we can work together to make it up.

Essential Functions and Specific Duties: 

• Own your initiative. Take end-to-end ownership of your initiative within the broader product roadmap — you steer its direction, priorities, and trade-offs, and you keep its backlog groomed and ready for the team.
• Run delivery. Ensure ticket refining, write user stories, manage backlog, and keep everyone unblocked. Comfortable in Jira, Linear, Notion, or equivalent tools. Keep track of deadlines and delivery. 
• Get hands-on with code. Use AI-assisted tools (vibe coding, Claude Code, Cursor) to prototype, explore, and eventually contribute PRs when needed. You don't need to be an engineer, but you need to be able to dig in and willing to learn. 
• Face the client. Run demos, workshops, and feedback sessions with city governments and institutional partners. Communicate complex data concepts clearly to non-technical audiences.
• Work with data. Understand and shape data pipelines, visualizations, and platform architectures. Collaborate with data engineers and scientists on meaningful outputs.
• Keep learning. Bring intellectual curiosity to every sprint. Explore new tools, frameworks, and approaches, then share what you find with the team.
• Sweat the details. Hold a high bar for quality and polish. Obsess over the details, catch the rough edges before users do, and care deeply about shipping things that are done right.

 

Other:

• Actively participate in team building and culture development activities at Open Earth Foundation

Qualifications: 

• Proven experience in a product, technical, or delivery role — ideally at a startup or mission-driven tech organization.
• Ability to translate high-level goals into concrete engineering tasks and track them to completion.
• Confidence running presentations, client workshops, and stakeholder demos independently.
• Hands-on experience using AI tools in day-to-day work — whether for writing, prototyping, automation, or research. Curiosity about what's next.
• Comfort using AI to understand code; willingness to eventually contribute code to the team's codebase.
• Fluent English (written and spoken) — mandatory.
• Available to join meetings in US Pacific & Eastern time zone when needed, even if based in a different time zone.

Interpersonal Skills:

• Ability to work in an agile software development environment with a mix of data engineers, full-stack developers, product designers and product managers
• Ability to estimate and track time worked on tasks
• Communications skills necessary to document and present work

Other Qualities:

• Dedication to fighting climate change
• Focus on impact
• Interest in non-profit work
• Bias for speed and iteration - you'd rather ship and improve than plan forever

Compensation and Benefits: 

• This position is full-time with compensation of $40,000-$55,000/year (USD), dependent on experience and location (Paid in USD)
• Open Earth offers unlimited paid time off, paid holidays and paid sick leave
• You will work remotely within a dynamic and international environment 
• We celebrate our achievements during our annual team retreat

OEF is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, age, religion, national origin, or any other protected characteristic. We celebrate diversity, equity, and inclusion in our teams and believe people should align their work with their purpose. Join us if you love Earth.

We look forward to hearing from you! 

We use AI-assisted tools to help organize and summarize application materials. All hiring decisions are reviewed and made by people.