NOTE: This position has now been filled. Thanks for your interest, and keep an eye out for future opportunities at the Rebus Foundation.
The Rebus Foundation is a Montreal-based non-profit focused on tech, books, open education and open culture. We are looking for a Product Manager for a new software development project: “Rebus Reader: An Open Platform for Scholarly Reading.” The ideal candidate will have a minimum 3-5 years relevant experience (technology product management), to start a new role in July 2018 or soon after. The job is at the Rebus Foundation HQ, in Montreal. Salary is in the range of CDN$65,000-75,000.
About Rebus
We have two main projects:
- Rebus Community, a collaboration platform that helps guide communities through the publishing process, with a focus on supporting open textbook/Open Educational Resource (OER) publishing.
- Rebus Reader, an open source web platform for scholarly reading.
Rebus is born of an idealistic vision of the web, and we believe in increasing access to knowledge and education. We love books, and spend our time reimagining how books can be made and used in a web-connected, digital universe, then trying to build things to make these re-imaginings come true. We believe in the power of technology, done right, to do good things, and ultimately we believe in giving people more access to tools to help them build, share and interact with knowledge. We are driven by this broad set of values, and it’s important that new team members share our sense of purpose.
About the Project
We are looking for a Product Manager, whose mandate will be to help shape the development of a new open source software platform for digital scholarly reading. The project team will be small but focused, and will include two developers and a designer, as well as a marketing manager and the Executive Director of the Rebus Foundation. We may also have support from external design agencies. The clients for the software will include mainly academic libraries, and the end users are scholars and students, mainly in higher-education.
About You
We are looking for a very particular kind of person: most importantly, the product manager should be someone who is passionate about web technology and (digital) books, and who has had experience as a product manager or project manager on technology development projects and/or implementation. The product manager should have opinions, and be able to embrace, refine and drive a vision of new technology that makes reading better.
Among other things, the PM should:
- Be comfortable with technology and web development
- Have strong interpersonal and communication skills
- Be comfortable in an agile/scrum development environment
- Have a good understanding of scholarly reading
- Be able to work with potential clients (often academic librarians, CIOs) and end-users to solicit feedback
- Be a self-starter, who can do the right things in a small team
- Be familiar with the open source/free software ethos
- Have experience in:
- Project management
- Product management
Ideally, you should also have an understanding of and/or experience with some of the following:
- Books and/or publishing
- Technology and/or start-ups
- Open Access / OER / Open licensing
- Academia / academic institutions
- Libraries
- Nonprofits / community-driven organisations
- Online mass collaboration (e.g. Wikimedia)
Note: you should apply even if you don’t feel that your credentials are a 100% match with the position description. We are looking for relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the position itself.
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Rebus is committed to building a diverse team, with people from a range of backgrounds. We believe that diverse teams help drive innovation. Equity, inclusion and diversity are core values for us, for the technologies we build and the communities we support. We strive to ensure that our team reflects these values. Our work environment is also supportive of those with family caregiving responsibilities.
Next steps
Please send an email to hi@rebus.foundation with the subject line “Product Manager”. We encourage you to apply by June 30th, 2018 for a tentative start date of August 1st, but are flexible on timing for the right person.
Please include your CV, links to relevant things, and an explanation of why you’d like to join us.
Does this position provide the opportunity for telecommuting?
Hi there! Right now, our preference is for someone to be on-site, but if we’re unsuccessful in finding someone to be based in Montreal, we will open up for a second round of interviews with those who prefer remote work. Please feel free to send us an email so we can contact you if/when we undertake that second round.