Title: VP of Technology & AI Infrastructure
Department: Information Technology
Reports to: President
Location: Remote
About the Organization
Upwardly Global is a national workforce development organization that connects work-authorized, college-educated immigrants to skill-aligned professional employment across the United States. We address one of the country’s most significant economic inefficiencies: more than 2 million highly educated, work-authorized immigrants are underemployed, representing over $40 billion in annual forgone wages and untapped productivity for the American economy.
Our model works. Jobseekers enter our programs earning an average of $9,000 per year and are placed in roles averaging $67,000 per year. To date, we have supported an estimated 35,000 job placements, contributing billions in earnings to the U.S. economy.
Upwardly Global is data-driven, economically accountable, and built for scale. We are committed to leveraging AI to its fullest potential, driving operational efficiency, jobseeker readiness, and national economic impact. We operate nationally, partnering with leading employers, workforce agencies, and policymakers to ensure that global talent becomes American advantage.
About the Role
The VP of Technology is responsible for building and leading Upwardly Global’s technology strategy and infrastructure to support both internal operations and externally facing digital products. This includes staff-facing technology as well as the technical infrastructure that enables jobseeker and partner experiences.
This leader partners closely with the CEO, President and executive leadership to ensure technology is a strategic enabler of UpGlo’s mission, helping the organization transition towards an AI and product-first model while maintaining strong operational excellence, security, reliability, and scalable delivery practices. Upwardly Global will integrate AI into all aspects of the organization to drive operational excellence, improve jobseeker opportunities and outcomes, and this role will help lead these efforts.
The VP of Technology is expected to be both strategic and execution-oriented: setting direction, making tradeoffs clear, and delivering consistently across teams.
Key Responsibilities:
1. Technology Strategy & AI Infrastructure:
• Own UpGlo’s technology strategy across staff infrastructure and jobseeker/partner-facing products, ensuring both are secure, scalable, cost-effective, and aligned to mission outcomes.
• Build and maintain a multi-year technology roadmap covering staff infrastructure and IT operations, data systems and reporting, Salesforce/platform evolution, core digital products (jobseeker portal, online learning, partner tools), and integrations/interoperability across systems.
• Translate organizational strategy into a sequenced plan with clear timelines, dependencies, resource needs, and success measures.
• Provide clear tradeoffs and recommendations to Executive Leadership Team on what to prioritize, defer, or stop based on capacity and impact.
• Support sprint planning, release planning, and other Agile ceremonies.
2. Product & Engineering Partnership (Jobseeker + Partner Products):

Partner deeply with Product leadership to deliver a reliable, scalable technology foundation for UpGlo’s jobseeker and partner ecosystem.
Ensure strong cross-functional delivery across product/tech/programs, including planning, prioritization, technical feasibility, timelines, and adoption/change management.
Partnering with the Product Director, guide the technical approach to product delivery (architecture, build vs. buy, integration strategy, platform choices) and ensure consistent execution quality.

3. AI Enablement and Responsible Technology Innovation:

Partner with the Executive team, Product and Program leadership to identify and deliver AI-enabled capabilities that improve jobseeker outcomes and staff productivity.
With a cross-department steering committee, establish technical standards and governance for responsible AI use, including data privacy and consent, security controls and vendor risk assessment, quality assurance and bias considerations, and human oversight/escalation paths.
Build the technical foundation required for AI-readiness: data quality, integration, and scalable infrastructure to support AI features and experimentation.

4. IT Operations, Service Delivery and Training (Staff & Product Infrastructure):

VP of Technology & AI Infrastructure at Upwardly Global