ABOUT CAUSE STRATEGY PARTNERS 

Cause Strategy Partners works at the intersection of nonprofits and corporations to connect a diverse network of talented professionals interested in board service with value-aligned nonprofits seeking new board members.

Our curated and technology-enabled BoardLead process matches potential board candidates from the world’s leading corporations, professional services firms, and foundations with vetted nonprofits in their cause area. Through our BoardLearn platform and ongoing live trainings, we train candidates to be effective board members from day one.

Our individualized Concierge Board Placement service connects senior executives at top companies with high-profile nonprofits that have openings on their Board of Directors.

We partner with Fortune 500 companies and global professional services firms in the US and UK to help them retain talent, offer professional development opportunities, and advance their community engagement and CSR goals.

We train nonprofit leaders to work effectively with their board, help them attract talented potential board candidates via our BoardLead platform, vet candidates, and reduce friction in finding and selecting board members who can help them drive their mission forward.

See www.causestrategypartners.com to learn more about our work.

ABOUT THIS ROLE

Cause Strategy Partners builds and runs the technology behind its board matching and governance work, delivered by a small but mighty team. As the organization has grown, requests for that team come from different locations, follow different planning processes, and compete for the same limited engineering capacity. Prioritization happens within individual work streams rather than across the organization.

The Product & Portfolio Director changes that. This is a new leadership role that owns product and portfolio strategy at CSP. The CEO and leadership team set the business strategy; this role translates it into product roadmaps, investment priorities, and a sequenced portfolio of technology work, then is accountable for delivering it. It combines product management, portfolio planning, business analysis, release planning, and continuous improvement into a single function that ensures the organization builds the right things in the right order. The role takes significant planning and coordination work off the CEO and frees the Director of Technology to focus on architecture, engineering quality, and technical leadership.

This is a hands-on director role in a small, remote-first organization. The person in this seat will shape product strategy and write user stories in the same week. This role is well suited to an experienced product leader seeking mission-driven work, and equally to a strong senior product manager or platform product owner ready to step into their first director seat and own a portfolio end to end.

DESCRIPTION​ &​ ​RESPONSIBILITIES

The Product & Portfolio Director will be responsible for:

Portfolio Ownership & Prioritization

• Own the technology portfolio end to end, spanning all products, strategic initiatives, operational support, technical debt, and infrastructure investments
• Establish and run a single intake process so all technology work is visible before priorities are set, regardless of where a request originates, including work arising from strategic initiatives and R&D pilots
• Partner with the CEO and leadership team to continuously prioritize work by customer value, business impact, risk, and available capacity
• Maintain a single portfolio view so leadership understands total commitments, competing priorities, capacity, and delivery risk at any time
• Develop a realistic, evidence-based sense of how much the team can take on, and hold the line: limit work in progress, defer lower-value initiatives deliberately, and ensure the team meets its commitments 
• Treat documentation and knowledge sharing as portfolio work; ensure no product area depends on a single person’s knowledge, and sequence documentation debt alongside technical debt

Product Strategy & Roadmaps

• Own product roadmaps across CSP's product suite, with BoardLead, the flagship platform, as the center of gravity
• Own HubSpot as an internal platform: its roadmap, configuration changes, integrations, and technical debt, with changes prioritized through the portfolio alongside product work. Partner with the Lead, Strategic Initiatives, who stewards data standards and processes
• Lead discovery and validation for new product ideas, ensuring significant investments are grounded in user needs and a business case before development begins
• Partner with the Lead, Strategic initiatives on new initiatives: early research and program feasibility sit with that role, and ownership of discovery and validation transfers to this role once an idea requires a business case or significant engineering investment
• Ground roadmap and prioritization decisions in direct exposure to end users and to CSP’s client facing teams, who carry deep customer knowledge
• Apply CSP's build-versus-buy discipline so the team builds what is core to our advantage and buys what is not
• Group related enhancements into cohesive, well-communicated releases that deliver meaningful customer outcomes rather than a continuous stream of individual changes

Business Analysis & Requirements

• Lead requirements definition, backlog refinement, and sprint readiness across products, raising the quality and consistency of what enters development
• Establish and uphold a lightweight Definition of Ready so work arrives with clear acceptance criteria, business rules, documentation expectations, and edge cases identified
• Use AI tools to strengthen requirements, surface gaps and dependencies, and improve sprint readiness while reducing downstream rework
• Translate business needs into clear direction for engineering, and translate technical tradeoffs into plain language for business leaders

Release Planning & Adoption

• Coordinate release planning across engineering, programs, and client-facing teams, including customer communications, documentation, training readiness, and adoption
• Partner with the Director of Technology to separate deployment from release, using feature flags and coordinated launches so customers experience organized, well-supported change
• Ensure every significant release has an owner for validation, communication, and post-release support before it ships, and ships with current documentation

Continuous Improvement

• Embed continuous improvement in how CSP plans and delivers work: measure delivery capacity, track what finishes versus what starts, and refine the operating process based on evidence
• Reduce context switching and rework by improving the quality of work entering the pipeline and protecting the team's focus
• Champion pragmatic use of AI across planning, requirements, documentation, and analysis

Collaboration & Leadership

• Serve as the connective tissue between business leadership, program teams, engineering, and vendors
• Partner closely with the Director of Technology to keep engineering focused on the highest-value work
• Represent the product and portfolio function in leadership meetings and decision-making processes
• Communicate priorities, tradeoffs, and progress clearly to stakeholders at every level of the organization
• Ensure portfolio and delivery metrics are visible to leadership through self-serve dashboards rather than ad-hoc reporting requests

DESIRED SKILLS & QUALIFICATIONS

The individual selected to fill this position will report into senior leadership and will be expected to perform their work in accord with the values of Cause Strategy Partners. They must be adept at a number of core competencies, including: 

1. Proven product and portfolio leadership: Significant experience (typically five or more years) in product management, program or portfolio management, or a comparable role where they owned prioritization across competing initiatives and were accountable for outcomes, not just plans. Experience owning a platform or CRM as a product, including its roadmap, backlog, technical debt, and adoption, is a strong fit for this role.
2. Strong business analysis skills: Comfortable leading discovery, writing clear requirements and acceptance criteria, refining backlogs, and working directly with engineers in an agile process.
3. Disciplined prioritizer: Proven ability to balance agility with organizational discipline by evaluating capacity and tradeoffs. Skilled in helping teams navigate shifting priorities, assess the impact of new opportunities, and stay focused on delivering shared goals without losing momentum.
4. Exceptional communicator: Equally effective explaining a technical tradeoff to a non-technical executive and a business priority to a developer. Clear, effective, and professional in writing and in person.
5. Fluent with modern tools, including AI: Hands-on with agile tooling (e.g., Jira), CRM platforms (e.g., HubSpot), and AI assistants applied to requirements, analysis, and documentation. Curious and current on how AI is changing product work.
6. Hands-on operator: Thrives in a small organization where directors do the work as well as direct it. Highly organized, self-directed, and effective working with a distributed team in a remote-first environment.
7. Social sector experience: Nonprofit governance is our passion; familiarity with the social good sector, corporate social responsibility, or nonprofit organizations is strongly desired.
8. Creative and open team player: Embodies positivity, enthusiasm, and openness, embracing creativity and the sharing of ideas across teams.
9. Knowledge sharing as a leadership behavior: Documents decisions and processes as a matter of course and models the knowledge sharing the organization expects of every team
10.  Working familiarity with the modern data and automation stack, including BI tools such as Power BI or Tableau and workflow tools such as Zapier, with enough understanding of database structures to engage credibly with engineers on data questions
11.  Hands-on SQL is a plus, not a requirement

Please​ ​note​ ​the​ ​following​ ​expectations​ ​for​ this role:

• Remote- First Work Schedule: Cause Strategy Partners’ regular business hours are from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm Eastern Time (ET), Monday through Friday. 
• Travel: All employees are expected to travel to rotating locations for at least three multi-day team convenings per year. 
• Equipment and technology: All remote personnel are expected to have a computer which can support remote work applications and meetings–including a reliable, stable internet connection.
• Employment Eligibility Verification: In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire.

COMPENSATION

Salary: $95,000 to $105,000, commensurate with experience, plus eligibility for a performance-based bonus.

Benefits: As an employee, Causies have access to a phenomenal set of benefits, including:

• Health, dental & vision insurance
• Unlimited paid time off & generous company-wide vacation days
• Generous paid family leave
• 6% match to your 401K Plan after one year of service
• Employee Matching Gift Policy for Board Service & Charitable Donations
• Budget for external professional development as well as opportunities for growth provided through internal trainings
• Annual technology stipend

HIRING PROCESS

To apply:

1. Submit your application in two steps: 
   1. First, complete this online application, where you will be asked to respond to a few questions. The application should take no more than 1 hour to complete.
   2. Second, send an email with your resume or CV attached to apply@causestrategypartners.com. The subject line should be: “Application for Product & Portfolio Director role” 
   3. Application Deadline: Monday, October 19, 2026
2. We review your application based on skills and experience and pay particular attention to how you connect your experience to the responsibilities of this role.
3. If applicable, you will be invited to move through our interview and screening process. In total, this process entails:
   1. A 20-minute phone interview 
   2. One 55-minute video interview with a technical assessment which should take 30 minutes to complete
   3. A final one-hour in-person interview in New York City, which will include company leadership and a simulation 
4. If applicable, references request.
5. If applicable, offer & onboarding. Start date targeted for Tuesday, December 1.

Cause Strategy Partners is committed to equal treatment and opportunity in its hiring and relationships with its employees and contractors, without regard to race, gender and/or gender identity or expression, color, creed, religion, age, national origin, ethnicity, disability, unemployment status, veteran or military status, sex, sexual orientation, marital or parental status, citizenship status, or any other legally- protected basis. We believe CSP is stronger as a company when its workforce is a diverse group of highly-qualified professionals.