Job Detail

2089 - Director of IT - Iowa

Senior Leader of Technology  

Position is open due to growth, no one in it previously.  No internal candidates being considered. This associate would be AVP level, (higher than Director) and should have prior experience at this level.

 Industry: Financial Services - Investment Management

Summary of Job Responsibilities: Senior leadership role in software development, systems integration and solution delivery. Cultivates and inspires a highly functional agile software organization in alignment with company’s core values and strategic goals. Provides vision and deep experience in relevant software technologies to provide strategic direction and guide tactical decisions. Builds strong collaborative relationships with other business and technology leaders in the firm, customers and partners.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Leadership
• Actively participates as a servant leader in agile software organization.
• Provides direction and technology management in broad areas: systems analysis, architecture, system integration, software design, software development, quality assurance, performance engineering and release engineering.
• Uses an understanding of the independent broker-dealer industry and regulatory environment to guide company’s technology plans and make informed decisions about implementations.
• Helps champion our corporate commitment to Continuous Improvement by supporting Lean/Agile principles throughout the firm and by delivering technology solutions for Continuous Improvement efforts.
Organization
• Delivers strong people leadership; promotes a positive, motivated work culture; forms effective teams; develops people; coaches and mentors key staff.
• Effectively manages a matrix organization that combines skills-based supervision with cross-discipline Scrum teams for agile delivery and support.
• Ensures service level standards are met by each team and the department overall
• Management responsibility for department budget, staffing and reporting.
Technical Expertise
• Fosters and champions innovative technology solutions to solve complex business problems.
• Gains a comprehensive knowledge of existing systems and dependencies to effectively plan refactoring efforts and legacy system modernizations.
• Effectively documents and communicates software architectures and high-level designs.
• Oversees technology buy vs. build analyses, vendor selection, contract management, outsourcing strategy, staff augmentation resources.
• Participates in design reviews to ensure technical goals and requirements are met.
• Ensures integrity of system and application security through proper design and verification of security components.
• Detects and solves technology delivery and support issues and root causes; provides hands-on accountability for resolution of escalated problems.
• Maintains up-to-date knowledge of technology standards, industry trends, emerging technologies, and software development best practices.
Relationships
• Partners with other senior technology leadership in the vision and execution of our product portfolio (Director of Product Portfolio), enterprise architecture (Director of Enterprise Architecture) and technology infrastructure (Director of IT)
• Creates and manages the overall technical roadmap and the technical backlog priorities for each team to support the product roadmap and product backlog priorities.
• Demonstrates and cultivates passion for great customer service and user experience.

Non-Essential Duties and Responsibilities:
• Be available at the direction of management for other duties and responsibilities.

Qualifications: To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Professional Experience:
The following experience is required:
• Strong experience managing software development and system integration organizations.
• Strong experience with agile development practices including Scrum, test-driven development and continuous integration.
• Strong experience in .NET and Microsoft technologies.
• Strong experience with relational databases and programming, preferably SQL Server.
• Strong experience in delivering and maintaining mission critical production applications.
• Experience with legacy system modernization
• Must have excellent verbal and written communication skills, and team building skills.
• Demonstrated motivation and aptitude for learning new technologies. Must be able to learn new development methodologies and tools on the fly.
The following experience and qualifications are desired but not required:
• Experience in securities broker-dealer and/or RIA industry
• Experience with SEC/FINRA regulatory compliance

Education/Experience: 15+ years’ work experience in software engineering with 5+ years managing a multi-team organization. BS in computer science or related field from a four-year college or university; Microsoft Certified Professional Developer desired.

Travel: Position requires traveling approximately one week each month.