The window closes soon to apply to be Director of Digital Practice here at the Canadian Digital Service (CDS). If you speak fluent French and English, here's a short thread on why you — yes, you — should apply. https://digital.canada.ca/join-our-team/ 

CDS is a team of about 85 people -- soon to grow almost twice that size -- inside Canada's federal government. Our mandate is to change how digital services are delivered for 37 million people. We wrote some thoughts about how to approach that task: https://digital.canada.ca/roadmap-2025 

We do two kinds of work that reflect that roadmap's thinking: (1) we work with government partners to help them deliver great services, and (2) we're designing and delivering digital platform services to enable government to do more, better. https://github.com/cds-snc/ 

As Director of Digital Practice, you'll lead a growing set of communities — of developers, product managers, designers, and design researchers — who work on tight, multidisciplinary product teams alongside policy experts, service owners, subject matter experts, and others.

This year, most of the team has been focused on helping government respond to the pandemic. You may be one of the six million who have already downloaded COVID Alert. (If you haven't: please do!) https://twitter.com/CDS_GC/status/1348982686115917826

We also worked with Service Canada to help people figure out which pandemic-related financial benefits are available for them. https://covid-benefits.alpha.canada.ca/ 

Our first platform-as-a-service, Notify, was picked up by more than 80 government services in its first year, including dozens of pandemic-related services. Next up: a service to replace government's thousands of paper and PDF forms. https://notification.canada.ca/ 

In the past we've partnered with nearly every large government department, and many smaller ones too, to help veterans find their benefits, help immigrants schedule their citizenship exams, help low-income taxpayers file for refunds, help victims report cybercrimes, and more.

Every time we work with a department, we're not just helping deliver a service -- we're helping government adopt and embed important practices like user-centred design and iterative, continuous delivery. https://digital.canada.ca/2018/05/16/reducing-risk-through-continuous-deployment/

We're a matrix-ed org, not unlike many consultancies and agencies. Right now, our three business lines are Platforms, Partnerships, and COVID Alert. The practice teams (or "communities") supply the experts to deliver on those business lines' priorities.

So what's a Director of Digital Practice? That's who's responsible for all those practice teams -- the developers, product managers, designers and researchers. That's about 45 people today, but by this time next year it'll be closer to 80.

So this is a "manager of managers" role, responsible for about 60% of CDS. The team is growing fast, so managing that growth in a healthy way will be a big part of the job. So is hiring great people onto those teams, and making sure they're aligned and executing at a high level.

And there's nothing we take more seriously than the health and well-being of our team. One of your top jobs is to champion that. You can read more about the role here: https://digital.canada.ca/join-our-team/ 

The team is fully distributed all across Canada, and for this job you can be anywhere in-country.

Canada's public service pay scales are published openly here. This is a "EX-03" job; you can find the current base pay range here: https://www.canada.ca/en/treasury-board-secretariat/services/pay/rates-pay/rates-pay-unrepresented-senior-excluded-employees.html#Toc476385558 (But it's complicated, so talk to us for more)

For this job, you must be fully bilingual in French and English. (But if you're not, please reach out anyway -- we have other, very important roles that don't have that requirement!)

We work hard to build a team that reflects all of the best of Canada: inclusive, welcoming, and respectful of the differences that make us all, and all of the work we do to serve the public, better. I want to especially encourage folks to apply who don't look and sound like me.

The application is short and easy to complete: just your name, email, CV, a few words about why you'd want to work with us, and optional work samples. It's a minimum viable job application. https://digital.canada.ca/join-our-team/ 

Come join us!