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About the Company
Our client is a successful Canadian B to C internet pioneer whose family of internet brands enjoy a global market and strong prospects of continued growth.
Our client’s mission is to deliver the highest value to its customers with unparalleled industry solutions built on creative, reliable technologies, deep technical knowledge and feature-rich applications.
Our client is profitable, privately owned and headquartered in the Toronto area.
Scope of Position
Broadly, the objective of the role of the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is to cultivate an environment that attracts, deploys and retains the human and other resources required to effectively develop, deliver and support our client’s platform providing value to their customers, while meeting the business strategy and goals for profitable growth.
Reporting to the President and CEO, the CTO is responsible for providing leadership in all activities related to the technical dimensions of the company’s offerings from definition and specification through design, release, reliability, enhancement, quality assurance, security, implementation and support.
The successful candidate will assume responsibility for leading the technological environment while managing a team of highly capable individuals who are characterized by their loyalty, creativity and commitment to the company and its customers.
This role will require an individual that has both the technical knowledge for scaling and enhancing our client’s technical environment and the ability to guide and lead others to perform at their best.
Functional Tasks
- Contribute to overall company vision and strategies. Work with senior team to deliver and support the company’s platform roadmap consistent with and reflecting the company’s overall strategic plans for corporate growth.
- Develop and document corporate plans and systems for new application development.
- Develop reliable, robust applications/updates on-time, within cost targets, using accepted state-of-the-art methodologies balancing the demands of release content, quality and desired release dates.
- Manage the overall engineering budget
- Audit and enhance existing platform and where appropriate recommend and implement new scalable development platforms and processes which meet current organizational requirements anticipating future growth and complexity and balancing the need for predictability, reliability and costs.
- Maintain keen awareness of the trends and conditions in technology, platform and development tools relative to the needs of the company’s customers and businesses
- Establish key indicators for competitive performance in completion of development projects and for rapid, realistic decisions on strategies, plans and projects
- Build and facilitate the development of strong relationships and synergy with all other areas of the company, with key suppliers and with the company’s technical partners in order to achieve the corporate goals and objectives while executing product and technology development plans
- Foster an environment that enables highly technical staff to consistently perform with excellence, to set and meet personal and team goals, and to develop and be recognized for world-class competence in their field(s) within the context of the company’s technology programs
- Establish and maintain succession plans and programs for all positions within the engineering organization to ensure the smooth transition and minimize vacancies for critical roles
- Evaluate third party technologies and participate in due diligence process to help accelerate the speed of adding quality, breadth and depth in the company’s product portfolio.
- Provide ongoing direction, performance management and developmental support to the team. Continue to build world-class capabilities. Focus the team to accelerate and drive the growth of the business, new market development, sector leadership and profitability.
- Ensure operational milestones are met on time, with high quality, and that they meet the cost objectives that are established; report on a monthly as well as a quarterly basis.
- Report regularly and proactively to the board of directors on results and plans going forward.
- Adapt business model to capitalize on evolving customer needs and new competitive offerings.
- Implement and continually refine a product roadmap that incorporates customer feedback and ensures competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Key Performance Indicators
In light of the identified responsibilities, the following are specific deliverables that the position is designed to achieve:
Specific measures of performance relating to growth, profitability, customer satisfaction, efficiencies, etc. will be discussed and agreed upon with the successful candidate. They will likely include measures of:
- Development of staff eg. Goals completed, performance reviews completed etc
- Quality of Service and customer satisfaction
- Retention and recruiting
- Functionality and performance
- Budget management as well as product cost
- Defects per design
- Product reliability
- Innovation as measured by benchmarking against competitive products.
- Productivity eg. Developers/revenue ratio
- Responsiveness eg. to market changes, customers
Achievement of overall corporate goals
Competency Profile
The following competencies listed below define the role of CTO
Role Expertise
Demonstrates critical technical or professional knowledge/skills related to the role. Has thorough knowledge of relevant products, services and methods. Expands technical knowledge/skills and keeps up-to-date in own area of expertise.
Quality Orientation
Strives for excellence in products, processes and/or services through continued evaluation, enhancement and redefinition of quality standards.
Planning & Objective Setting
Systematic in approach to work. Produces action plans in which objectives are defined and steps for achieving them are clearly specified. Plans by breaking down large task into subtasks. Develops plans that anticipate obstacles. Is realistic about time-scales and builds in appropriate checkpoints, milestones and controls in order to ensure that desired results are realized.
People Management
Establishes and communicates clear priorities and sense of direction. Clarifies roles and responsibilities. Adapts management style to achieve optimum results.
Developing & Coaching Others
Accurately assesses strengths and development needs of employees. Challenges others to improve their abilities and actively supports their development. Continually provides timely and constructive feedback, coaching and challenging learning opportunities. Adjusts coaching style based on each employee’s ability and motivation level.
Leading Change
Recognizes when change is necessary. Challenges the status quo and champions new initiatives. Acts as a catalyst to change and stimulates others to change. Develops an effective action plan to implement change and monitors results.
Results Orientation
Focuses strongly on achieving agreed upon outcomes and ensures that key objectives are met. Conveys a sense of urgency and drives issues to closure. Aims to improve upon past performance. Establishes aggressive personal targets and strives to achieve them.
Commercial Acumen
Applies appropriate commercial and financial principles. Understands situations in terms of costs, profits, added-value and return on investment. Appreciates the commercial impact of own work on the organization’s total expenses and revenues.
Team Skills
Helps to create a sense of team spirit and harmonious relations through cooperation and support. Balances personal goals with those of the team. Fosters collaboration among team members.
Preferred Experience / Education
The following indicates specific industry, academic and functional experience/qualifications that are important to the successful achievement of the identified responsibilities and performance deliverables.
- The successful candidate will be a leader and a team player with excellent management, technical and communication skills.
- The successful candidate will have a technical degree with at least 15 years of commercial software/internet development experience, as a developer, a first line manager and then as leader of a development organization
- Enterprise software experience required while experience in platform development is preferred.
- The successful candidate will have worked outside of large, bureaucratic, process-heavy organizations.
- The successful candidate will have been successful scaling development organizations.
- The successful candidate will be hands-in, detail oriented and be able to anticipate problems and head off projects that are headed astray and have the ability to get products back on track.
- The successful will be straight-forward, highly ethical, and self-effacing.
Remuneration & Benefits
- Highly competitive base, variable and equity compensation package to the successful candidate