Our client is a not-for-profit global company that provides smart content and rights management solutions that integrate seamlessly into content users workflow. It manages 950+ million individual rights to works in all formats for companies with employees in over 180 countries, and has distributed over $1.7B to rights holders in the past 10 years. For over a half dozen years, the company has been named to Content Magazine ’92s Top 100 list of Companies That Matter Most in the digital content industry. It was named by the Boston Globe as one of the Top 100 Women-led businesses in Massachusetts.

With a history of innovation and growth in a dynamic market, a passionate and dedicated team, and a deep commitment to building next-generation content and licensing solutions using the very best technology and talent available, this company offers the stability of an ongoing business, but in an entrepreneurial culture.

Overview of the Role

The VP of Engineering and Professional Services will oversee a large and important division of the Engineering organization, which consists of 100+ people in engineering and professional technical services based in Romania, Spain and the UK. He or she will ensure the adoption of Best Practices across teams in development processes and organizational structure. This person will supervise, mentor and support four direct reports; two of whom will be responsible for the delivery of custom solutions (professional services), and two of whom will be development center leaders (one of them in Romania and the other in Spain). The mix of custom solutions to product engineering varies between locations, and will evolve to meet a target of a 50/50 mix within a year as the teams grow, and as new functionality developed for individual customers migrates into the company’s product features.

Responsibilities

• Manage and mentor a group of leaders responsible for the planning, analysis, design, development and testing of new and existing software applications; with a heavy initial emphasis on bespoke software developed through the company’s software professional services team.
• Effectively lead and mentor a geographically-dispersed engineering and professional services teams with over 100 people. Recruit and retain software engineers, project managers and business analysts.
• Foster a performance-driven culture and set the tone through strategic planning and clear, effective communication of initiatives, objectives, issues and performance, including developing and implementing organizational metrics to drive results.
• In collaboration with product management and data scientists, deliver innovation and value-add to customers.
• Support and further develop the SDLC practices currently in place, with the goal of alignment of practices enterprise-wide, by providing the engineering team guidance and motivation to accomplish the desired goals and outcomes of the business.
• Partner with the other business units to deliver our software solutions while embracing agility, prioritizing value, and resolving risk early.
• Demonstrate the value placed on software engineering fundamentals through the implementation of best practices across the engineering team.
• Collaborate and build trusted relationships within Engineering and across the organization.
• Drive a strong voice-of-the-customer mindset within Engineering, demonstrating strong service leadership.
• Contribute and help evolve the company’s state-of-the-art, scalable and flexible commercial grade SaaS product platform and applications to ensure long-term competitive advantage.
• Perform and assume other duties and responsibilities as required by the CTO.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of a combination of software engineering and professional services experience; 3+ years in a senior leadership role with proven experience in software planning, organization, development and custom solution delivery
• A history of building and leading best-in-class development and professional services teams by creating loyalty, trust and commitment to organizational goals
• Strong consulting skills; proven ability to partner with senior business leaders to understand needs, negotiate SOWs, etc., and deliver custom solutions that meet expectations
• Experience having overseen remote development/professional services teams in the European Union, preferably in Romania and/or Spain
• Experience managing, coaching and developing direct reports, while inspiring every individual in the team
• Ability to exercise sound judgment, discretion and timeliness in decision making
• Ability to function in a strategic capacity while enforcing team performance at a tactical level
• Enterprise architecture mindset and experience
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
• Bachelor ’92s degree in computer science, engineering, applied mathematics or related fields; advanced degrees preferred but not required
• Ability to travel to a significant degree

Programming/Infrastructure Qualifications

• Experience with Java and the Spring Framework with good understanding of C# and .NET
• Experience with AWS — good knowledge of EC2, EFS, S3, Route 53, VPCs, etc.
• Experience with any of the following would be a plus:
• Prefer experience with Modern JS frameworks: EmberJS, Redux, AngularJS, or…
• HTML5 and CSS3, or…
• Gradle, or…
• PostgreSQL, or…
• Oracle eBusiness, or…
• Apache projects (e.g. Camel, Commons, Flink), or…
• Machine learning and data analysis

Other Preferred Qualifications

Fluency in languages other than English; especially, in Spanish or Romanian

Interested in this position? Get in touch.