Vice President of Technology at Prodigy Finance

What will you do in the role?

• The VP of Technology will work closely with the CEO, CPO and COO to ensure full alignment between engineering, operational, and business goals. You will be responsible for setting the vision and direction for technology, leading a team of software engineers and providing sound technical leadership in all aspects of our business. The role reports directly to the Chief Product Officer, and sits on our Senior Leadership Team.

Roles & Responsibilities:

Provide technical leadership and direction.

• Work with managers, team leaders and individuals to set the vision, direction and OKRs to develop our technical systems and people in line with achieving business objectives.
• Promote a culture of high-performance, agile software engineering, continuous improvement and obsession with customer satisfaction, consistently leading and empowering the team to sustain an ambitious yet achievable pace.
• Help formulate and drive the overall architecture of our systems. Ensuring that our domain architecture remains coherent, scalable and best in class as technical requirements evolve and change.
• Optimise, manage, oversee and promote a culture of bias to action through all technical execution processes from development to testing to release.
• Monitor and report on team progress, ensuring any risks or issues are properly communicated and managed.
• Take ownership of ensuring the implementation of a robust and scalable information, cyber, cloud and network security strategy equipped with the best possible systems, processes and tools to ensure no security breaches occur.

Manage, mentor and grow the engineering team.

• Support the team through coaching, mentoring and empowering; cultivating shared ownership and leadership capability throughout the organisation.
• Grow and support our learning culture, which includes thought leadership, a culture of knowledge sharing, hackathons, code katas, multiple guilds and temporary working groups.
• Partner with the Talent Acquisition team to ensure we attract the best talent as we grow the technology team over time and bring in personal network of talent over time.

Design and deliver the technology roadmap

• Own, design and deliver the technology roadmap, resulting in a robust, scalable platform that enhances the company’s service delivery.

Translate operational challenges into technical solutions.

• Collaborate with Product and Operations Teams to enforce architecture, development standards and best practice.
• Ensure an excellent level of commercial and business awareness amongst the technology team to ensure alignment with company goals.
• Understand end-to-end operations and ensure greater efficiency through better use of technology.
• Improve user experience through the adoption of technology best practices and service enhancements.
• Drive a data-driven culture to inform decision-making based on facts and commercial / market outcomes.
• Own the data quality process resulting from the technical implementations of your team.

Qualifications and experience:

• 15+ years experience working on software engineering, with at least 5 years of senior leadership, ideally in high-growth, respected product-led companies (Fintech a bonus)
• Experienced in managing large teams of 40+ Software Engineers
• Ability to manage multiple work streams, deliver on commitments, and work effectively through effective prioritisation and resource allocation
• Strong experience in designing and executing technical processes
• Proven technical background with a strong understanding of architecture
• Strong operations experience: truly understands operational challenges in a product-led business, and converts that into technology solutions
• Highly analytical, strong on data and extracting valuable insights from multiple data sources
• Ability to take on and assimilate new ideas, assess the technology landscape and identify useful solutions and opportunities for innovation
• Experience developing cloud-enabled platforms at scale
• Strong team management, communication, organisational, and follow-up skills
• Passion for growing, mentoring and empowering Software Engineers and Line Managers
• High emotional intelligence and ability to work collaboratively to achieve results in high-pressure situations

What would the ideal candidate be great at?

Passionate:

• about technology and how it delivers an amazing, convenient customer journey with commercial return.
• Technical competence; have built production software, and believe that great software practices help build great teams and understand them. Ability to make complex technical choices that help drive customer value in the short term with consideration for long term
• Biased to focused action: Getting the right things done at the right time with an absolutely proven ability to do so

People leadership:

• A proven manager and an experienced leader with phenomenal communication and interpersonal skills who can challenge and motivate the team to achieve outstanding results.
• Coach and mentor who enjoys developing individuals to reach their own potential as managers and equips them with the best possible technical competences
• A people leader who enjoys creating a motivated, high-performing and engaged workforce.
• A manager with broad experience in leading a function and pulling teams together to achieve collective goals.
• A manager who will create a culture of learning, ownership and accountability within the function and the organization.
• Strong project management and organization skills
• Demonstrated ability to build consensus among many stakeholders