Ecosystem Strategist, OpenSSF

  • Full-time

Company Description

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world's top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history.

Today, the Linux Foundation has over 2,000 corporate members from over 41 countries, including every single one the Fortune 100. The Linux Foundation has proudly created over $54B in shared technology value since inception.

The mission of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), hosted within the Linux Foundation, is to advance open source security for all by working collaboratively with upstream and existing communities. Our projects and initiatives are focused on securing the open source supply chain and promoting secure development best practices for everyone. We use our Technical Vision and our Values to guide discussion, decision making, and delivery for all our programs. This job is specific to the OpenSSF, but your employer will be the Linux Foundation.

Job Description

We are seeking an Ecosystem Strategist to liaise and coordinate with the many other open source foundations, technical consortia, universities, and other organizations that we wish to collaborate with to improve the state of security across the software supply chain. The OpenSSF will not achieve its mission unless its products, services, and other activities become embedded and widely deployed by developers everywhere - our hope is that more software development is secure by default. This means working with these other organizations as peers on a shared vision, and manifesting that through “running code”. This means having lightweight touch points with many such organizations, but managing deep and material relationships with a few key partners.

 

This role will work alongside the OpenSSF Technical Advisory Council, OpenSSF and LF Staff, and other supporting individuals.

Job Role And Responsibilities

 

Key responsibilities include:

  • Understanding the many different facets of the OpenSSF community, and its core technologies, well enough to be able to articulate to third party organizations where the best opportunities for collaboration might lay;. Then develop the strategy for engagement; and measure and report regularly on the results of that engagement.
  • Participating in the core Technical Advisory Council meetings to have an understanding of emerging trends within the community, so as to identify potential ways to engage the partner ecosystem in new opportunities.
  • Research and propose new organizations to partner with, based on identified needs or gaps in the OpenSSF community.
  • Monitor the security-related activities of our partners, or other partner-centered activities and events, and look for new opportunities for OpenSSF to engage.
  • Interact with leaders in several important ecosystems to understand their needs and constraints, and help them improve their processes to improve security by default where practical.
  • Identify gaps in our own onboarding processes, instructions for getting involved in our community, and other barriers to collaboration with partners; then work with the other OpenSSF staff and stakeholders to bring those barriers down.
  • Organizing OpenSSF community events to raise awareness among open source developers and handling logistics for participation in external high-impact events (e.g. project events like Kubecon, language conferences like PyCon, hacker events like DEFCON, and broader technology or security events like Open Source Summit or FOSDEM)
  • Develop and execute on a plan to better connect the OpenSSF with the Open Source Program Offices of large end-user organizations, using them as a key lever for improving the security of the open source packages enterprises consume and produce.
  • Ensuring that Linux Foundation and OpenSSF policies are adhered to, and best practices are adopted.

Qualifications

Required Skills

  • Oral and written communication skills: you write down action items, follow up with meeting notes, and have a penchant for documenting process and goals
  • Cooperative leadership skills: you understand the nuances required when working with volunteers, and that our mandate is to serve
  • Problem solving skills: you aren’t afraid of a little ambiguity, a hard problem, or a sticky situation and work productively to resolve issues
  • Demonstrated ability to understand, operate, and clearly communicate in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment.
  • Experience working with open source communities: you understand the open source ecosystem and the challenges and opportunities it faces
  • Comfort with frequent travel (~2x per month) including travel to Asia and/or Europe 4-6 times a year.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

The Linux Foundation is creating the greatest shared technology investment in history by enabling open source collaboration across companies, developers, and users. We are the organization of choice to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption.

The Linux Foundation is an all-remote workforce that hires world-class talent.  We are as passionate about providing a flexible and supportive work culture as we are about open-source software. Collaboration is in our DNA, and we pride ourselves on being able to work closely together while not being tied to an office. We offer exceptional benefits - e.g., top of the line healthcare plans, unlimited PTO, and 100% 401k match up to the IRS-defined limit per year.

The Linux Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer.