VP Technology (expected path to CTO)

Description
VP Technology will be responsible for the company’s strategic technical vision and leads all aspects of the company’s technological development by fostering innovation, prioritizing technology initiatives, and coordinating the evaluation, deployment, and management of current and future technology systems across the organization. The expected career path for VP Technology would grow into CTO role.

This role requires the ability to think strategically and operate tactically to drive and deliver on the technical vision. Must be entrepreneurial, comfortable with customers and experienced acting in multiple roles.

Primary Role and Responsibilities

• Establish and direct the company’s technical vision, product direction and leads all aspects of the company’s technological development, roadmap and growth.
• Partnering with Operations and Sales to drive product roadmap with business leadership to achieve sustainable growth for the business.
• Translating new concepts in software methodology into design guidance, developing long term strategy, and driving change and continuous improvement in design practices.
• Provide thought leadership in the evaluation and upgrade of existing and contemplated technology platforms to support the business.
• Experience in project managing, leading and development initiatives with a proven track record of delivering on time, meeting requirements and on budget
• Timely delivery of product releases, client deployments, platform upgrades and infrastructure implementations.
• Create an environment which fosters a high level of customer service. Define ways to increase internal and external client satisfaction and to deepen relationships.
• Hiring and retaining exceptional talent; guiding and developing the technical community including training, coaching, mentoring and evaluation.
• Acts as a good steward of resources and ensures control of the company’s technology budgets.
• Avid communicator, ensuring all stakeholders are acutely attuned to the status of plans and schedules
• Develop and implement IT policies and procedures, including those for architecture, security and disaster recovery and back-up procedure.
• Oversee negotiation and administration of vendor, outsourced and consultant contracts and service agreements

Skills and Knowledge

• Exceptional engineering and software architecture experience.
• Experience working with executive management, employing the ability to communicate technical concepts to a non-technical audience, towards developing and deploying effective strategic direction
• Disciplined with effective execution – Demonstrates a disciplined approach; deployment, and follow-through to ensure achievement of results. Capable of working with a high degree of discretion, employing effective customer service and communication methods
• Proven ability to manage change – Manage, lead and enable the process of change and its impact on people process and technology
• Style that fosters teamwork – working collaboratively with others to achieve common goals and positive results
• Focused with a constancy of purpose – align culture, vision and strategic direction to optimize future results for all stakeholders
• Ability to set and manage priorities judiciously.
• Hands-on approach, with high energy and a strong attention to detail.
• Strong conceptual and analytical skills, including ability to quickly evaluate data to identify key insights and apply them to the business
• Ability to clearly define a problem and synthesize data to develop clear and thoughtful recommendations and drive actionable results in an entrepreneurial environment
• Excellent communications skills, both written and verbal, for audiences at all levels of the company, with the ability to articulate technical changes to development teams and external partners. Must have the proven ability to interface with business as well as technical teams and interpersonally engage at all levels so as to build rapport throughout the organization
• Proven ability to collaborate and oversee projects through to completion
• Ability to multitask, prioritize work, and adapt, with a significant comfort level for rapidly changing priorities
• Ability to act as a pragmatic change agent with strong influencing skills and the courage to confidently express an independent point of view
• Ability to make independent decisions and successfully manage conflicting priorities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Proven communication, coaching, and interpersonal skills at all levels of an organization.
• Influential leader able to partner, energize, and inspire.
• Executive level demonstrated oral presentation and written communication skills.

Education and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, MIS; preferably with Masters’ Degree in Computer Science/Engineering or related field
• Minimum of ten (10) years’ experience in a leadership role in technology-related businesses.
• Data-related access methods, in particular database administration and management, business intelligence, analytics, link analysis, visualization, event processing, indexing, query processing and parallelization.
• Knowledgeable in Cybersecurity, Enterprise and cloud-based architectures, Architecting/building a Software-as-a-service (SAS) platform.
• Background in cross-platform development (Windows/Linux, etc.) and multiple languages (C++/Java/Web)
• Global experience and strong business acumen.
• Ability to meet aggressive reliability, performance, cost, service, and delivery targets.
• Responsive and willing to take ownership of challenging and potentially unpopular issues and outcomes.
• Excellent multi-generation segment technology planning and rationalization experience with an excellent understanding of product system architecture(s), platforms and core technologies.
• Excellent program management, organizational design, execution planning and control competency.
• Embrace and demonstrate leadership beyond ownership.
• Ability to make independent decisions and successfully manage conflicting priorities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Proven communication, coaching, and interpersonal skills at all levels of an organization.
• Influential leader able to partner, energize, and inspire.
• Executive level demonstrated oral presentation and written communication skills.