Roles / Team

"The team you build is the company you build." - Vinod Khosla

HTW has proven demand, grown in size, and made a measurable impact on Hawaii's tech ecosystem. We're building a small core volunteer team of passionate, high-agency people to scale HTW into something incredible — and to create a real platform for ambitious professionals to do meaningful work.

About HTW

Hawaii Tech Week is an annual week of events where the local and global tech community connect to build relationships, level up, and create opportunity. Events are independently hosted by companies and leaders and include panels, mixers, product launches, workshops, and more. Our mission is to accelerate tech talent, capital, and adoption — to elevate our people, grow Hawaii's economy, and impact the world.

When HTW wins, the ecosystem wins. HTW 2025 featured 60+ events across 25 venues and 3,000+ attendees, drawing from a network of 4,500+ people across Hawaii and 50 cities globally, from San Francisco to Singapore. HTW fosters new relationships, hires, investments, and partnerships, and showcases Hawaii's growing role in the global tech economy.

Examples of outcomes that HTW has been a meeting point or catalyst for:

• A Hawaii startup launches and raises their first angel check
• Dozens of hires and internships across startups and industry
• Millions of dollars in venture and LP investments
• Hundreds of thousands in new revenue for Hawaii's economy
• Kamaʻāina abroad plugging back into the local ecosystem
• New mentors for Native Hawaiian STEM scholars
• A tech nonprofit recruits its founding Board of Directors
• Hundreds of thousands of positive impressions for Hawaii tech

HTW's role is to be a platform that amplifies the ecosystem while hosting a few anchor events during the week. We grow audience and media reach year-round, market the week and coordinate the calendar, and channel demand to the calendar and website to benefit event hosts and sponsors.

Why We're Building This Team

Since founding and seeding HTW, I've led strategy and execution across all functions of the platform — from coding the website to coordinating events and crafting social posts. Over the next three years we'll scale HTW to millions of impressions and views, a 20,000+ person network, 10,000+ annual attendees, and enable hundreds of organizations to participate. In 2026, I'm building a Core Volunteer Team to make that a reality.

• To ensure HTW runs better every year without relying on a single person to carry both strategy and execution.
• To turn HTW from "a big week of events" into a year-round digital engine for Hawaii's tech ecosystem that unites annually in-person.
• To combine people-led craft with tech, AI, and automation to deliver a great experience for the community.
• To give passionate professionals and emerging talent a real platform to leverage their skills on something with meaningful impact.
• To create a path toward future paid roles, nonprofit board opportunities, and other opportunities as HTW grows.

If you want to help build the thing everyone else attends and talks about, this is for you.

What You'll Get

• Real ownership over a visible part of Hawaii's largest week of tech.
• A chance to build your track record — "I ran X for Hawaii Tech Week" is a real bullet point.
• Immediate impact on thousands of attendees, hundreds of event hosts, tens of thousands of website visitors, and hundreds of thousands who will see our content.
• Front-row access to founders, investors, operators, and community leaders shaping Hawaii's tech future.
• Recognition on the HTW website, decks, and marketing materials where appropriate.
• VIP access across key HTW events and select private experiences.
• Priority consideration for future part-time paid roles as we reach profitability, or nonprofit board opportunities if and when those open up.

This is about impact, leverage, and community first — with the upside of much more following HTW 2026.

Who This Is For

• You care about Hawaii's tech ecosystem and want to help it grow.
• You want to work on something with massive impact that augments, not takes away from, your primary work and focus.
• You're a high-agency builder who moves things forward without being chased.
• You're comfortable owning a lane — even if you're still learning — and going beyond just "helping out" or "advising."
• You're obsessed with great quality paired with simple, scalable processes built for automation and AI augmentation.
• You want to contribute to HTW throughout 2026 and beyond, so our work compounds year over year.
• You can commit roughly 5–10 hours per month most of the year, with additional bandwidth during peak periods.
• You're Hawaii-based or have strong ties to Hawaii. While the role is remote, you should plan on being in Honolulu for HTW 2026.

You don't need to have done the exact role before, but you should be able to show you've shipped real things in adjacent domains — events ops, content, media, growth, product, etc. If you're already stretched across multiple commitments or primarily interested in a title or advisory status, this likely isn't the right fit.

Roles

GM

• Set the vision and strategy for HTW
• Code the necessary MVPs to test strategy and new ideas
• Recruit the most talented people into the roles below
• Raise → Raise sufficient sponsorship and partner capital to run
• Comms → Drive founder-led communications to the public, key sponsors, and partners

Ecosystem & Events

As the Ecosystem Events Coordinator, you'll help unlock the power of Hawaii's broader tech ecosystem and our amazing community. You'll develop scalable content and systems while providing 1:1 guidance to ensure event quality is excellent, and the line-up meets the needs of our community. You don't throw 50+ events during the week, you help craft the platform and calendar that empowers ecosystem leaders to have massive success at HTW.

What You'll Do

• Serve as the point of contact and lead review of ecosystem events: host submissions and feedback → approval → host support. Then build a streamlined process.

• Maintain and improve the Event Host Playbook and SOPs (checklists, timelines, resources).

• Launch new content, e.g. webinars, videos, and tools to empower event hosts and improve event quality.

• Update and maintain the master calendar for the week of HTW.

• Encourage and source new event hosts, potential venues, and other event partners.

What We're Looking For

• Ecosystem oriented. You love Hawaii's tech ecosystem and events, and you're passionate about building relationships that manifest as high-quality events during HTW.

• People driven with product chops. You're great with people while also being able to translate high-volume activities (like event submissions) into content, workflows, and systems.

• Highly organized and communicative. You stay on top of multiple threads and communicate clearly across email and other channels.

• Bonus: Experience as a PM or similar role building out workflows e.g. onboarding.

Web & Integrations Developer

As a Web & Integrations Developer volunteer, you will help maintain and build the digital backbone that underpins HTW. You'll work across the stack to make our systems seamless and scalable, touching everything from front-end development to API calls between systems. You'll create fast, reliable, and delightful tools that help deliver an awesome experience across stakeholders.

What You'll Do

• Work with me to launch integrations and embeds across systems (event registration, forms, email, basic analytics) while implementing new ones including the master DB.

• Maintain and evolve the HTW website including content updates, schedule, speakers, sponsors, FAQs, etc, and ensure it's optimized for LLMs and SEO.

• Ensure various systems and monitoring are working and ideally automated, e.g. production checklists, performance monitoring, etc, and redundancy is in place.

• Drive implementation of new AI tools and other systems across the stack.

• Collaborate across the team on new projects and automation initiatives to improve the experience of key stakeholders.

What We're Looking For

• Frontend / backend experience. Experience building and maintaining websites, databases, and applications with Next.js, Vercel, Supabase, etc.

• Performance-driven, yet simple. You care about the intersection of performance, usability, and maintainability, and design systems that are simple, scalable, and resilient.

• Bias towards automation. You have a strong desire to rapidly test and improve the experience with automation, AI, and other tools.

• Bonus: Experience building or integrating AI pipelines for functions like data enrichment, voice chat, and matching.

Content & Social Marketer

As a Content & Social Marketer volunteer, you'll help lead content creation and social marketing that shape how the world understands HTW. What it is, our mission, and the experience of the week. You'll craft narratives that highlight the role of HTW and the events put on by ecosystem leaders, drive media engagement, and ensure our voice is clear and compelling across channels.

What You'll Do

• Work with me to craft and maintain a content strategy and marketing calendar across social and email that amplifies HTW's brand, mission, and key announcements.

• Create, edit, and publish compelling content weekly across social media including posts, videos, and visuals, using existing assets and new ones.

• Build and nurture HTW's online community by fostering dialogue, responding to inquiries, and deepening audience relationships.

• Track performance metrics, analyze impact, and adapt strategies to maximize reach, engagement, and brand equity.

• Turn the week into a content engine: coordinate post-event clips, highlight reels, and ongoing posts from panels, talks, and other content.

What We're Looking For

• Social track record. Experience managing social media for tech, community, or your own brand, with a track record of growing reach and engagement.

• Strong writer and creator. Skilled at distilling complex ideas into engaging formats that resonate across audiences.

• Data-driven and creative. You are comfortable analyzing metrics and experimenting with bold content ideas from narratives to content distribution campaigns.

• Bonus: Video editing skills with Premier Pro and the ability to create 🔥 memes.

Brand Designer

As a Brand Designer, you'll spearhead and evolve how HTW looks and feels. You'll help shape how we present ourselves to our network of attendees and event hosts, the broader ecosystem, and the world. Your design work will show up across our main digital properties and key assets that demonstrate the growing movement of tech across Hawaii.

What You'll Do

• Work with me to build out and improve the Figma design system: logos, colors, typography, layout, grids. Translate rough ideas into clean, reusable components.

• Improve and refresh the HTW website including the homepage, annual report, key pages, and other web assets.

• Create and refine editable templates for decks, signage, one-pagers, social posts, badges, and sponsor branding layouts across Figma, Canva, or tools.

• Design new workflows for elements of HTW operations including Event Host Submissions, HTW registration, etc.

• Ensure images and logos for new speakers and sponsors are updated, while design is kept visually consistent across the HTW brand and properties.

What We're Looking For

• Strong fundamentals. You understand what makes great design from typography to hierarchy to imagery.

• Bold and high-impact: You love design that gets people excited and makes them feel the energy of what we're building.

• Scalable approach. You think in terms of systems and scalability, both for the efficiency of HTW operations and for brand consistency across our audience.

• Bonus: Experience in copywriting and advertising to help shape and craft brand narratives.

Operations & Partnerships

As an Operations & Partnerships volunteer, you'll help stitch together the various parts of HTW across operations and sponsor/partner relationships. You'll work closely with me on both the internal machinery (processes, tools, tracking) and the external relationships (sponsors, partners) that make HTW viable and sustainable, as well as special projects and initiatives.

What You'll Do

• Work with me on maintaining the operational backbone of HTW across people, process, and systems.

• Evaluate sponsor pricing, positioning, and strategic partner decisions, and help manage the partner and sponsor pipeline (from outreach to onboarding) in collaboration with me.

• Ensure sponsor deliverables show up where they should: website, decks, signage, shoutouts, content, and other agreed benefits.

• Help connect operational dots across HTW (e.g. making sure Partnerships, Content, Events, and Digital are aligned to goal and consistent).

• Support special initiatives such as operational automations, growth experiments, new partnership concepts, and more.

What We're Looking For

• High-agency operator. You're comfortable owning follow-ups, keeping projects and pipeline moving, and nudging things across the finish line.

• People and systems proficient. You enjoy talking to sponsors and stakeholders while keeping the underlying systems, tools, and operations organized.

• Detail-oriented. You notice the small things – logo placement, missing shoutouts, misaligned benefits – and care about delivering a great partner experience.

• Bonus: Experience with referral and revenue sharing programs, campaigns, and platforms.

Video Editor

As a Video Editor volunteer, you will help cut and create content that tells the story of HTW and the broader movement we're driving. You'll work across past and upcoming content to create videos with a focus on short and midform that highlight the most important themes of HTW and our community. You'll produce the fundamentals while experimenting with new forms of AI generated content to deliver engaging and exciting content to tens of thousands of people.

What You'll Do

• Work with me to prioritize video clips and projects.

• Maintain and evolve the HTW website including content updates, schedule, speakers, sponsors, FAQs, etc, and ensure it's optimized for LLMs and SEO.

• Ensure various systems and monitoring are working and ideally automated, e.g. production checklists, performance monitoring, etc, and redundancy is in place.

• Incorporate new tools

• Collaborate across the team on new projects and automation initiatives to improve the experience of key stakeholders.

What We're Looking For

• Frontend / backend experience. Experience building and maintaining websites, databases, and applications with Next.js, Vercel, Supabase, etc.

• Performance-driven, yet simple. You care about the intersection of performance, usability, and maintainability, and design systems that are simple, scalable, and resilient.

• Bias towards automation. You have a strong desire to rapidly test and improve the experience with automation, AI, and other tools.

• Bonus: (Coming soon)

Other Skills We're Seeking

• Writer / editor for newsletters, blog posts, other written content across HTW
• Product / project manager with coding / vibe-coding ability, focused on workflows