Director of R&D

R&D Director- R.O Writer

Canada & US (Remote)

Join our team at R.O Writer, an industry-leading Auto Shop Management Software company and enjoy the benefit of working in an entrepreneurial environment while being part of a large, publicly traded organization (Constellation Software Inc).

Job Overview:

Operational

• Provide technical and architectural vision for all software products
• Establish the software development processes, protocols, and practices the team uses to manage the software development life cycle (SDLC).
• Ensure that development projects and software deployments meet business requirements and goals, fulfill end-user requirements, and meet a high-quality bar.
• Build and maintain a high-performance development team that values technical excellence, cross-functional collaboration, and great customer experiences
• Manage, mentor and guide the development team to optimize its capabilities in developing and delivering high-quality products in timeframes that meet business needs. Identify and promote employee career growth.
• Work effectively with the other functional groups (Sales, Marketing, Professional Services, Support) and the leadership team to allocate engineering resources appropriately across various projects, juggling current internal and external customer needs with the longer-term product roadmap (weighing, balancing, & communicating the tradeoffs as necessary)
• Manage expectations, set realistic goals, and achieve them

Leadership

• Provide technical vision and guidance to current and future development efforts. Establish, maintain, and execute on both technical and functional product roadmaps
• Be an active member of the senior management team, providing the management team strategic direction and guidance
• Evaluate the potential and practicality of new products, relying on extensive experience and judgment to plan and accomplish goals
• Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, speed, innovation, excellence and a fun work environment while continuously elevating the quality and caliber of our product development organization
• Create a productive and healthy work/life balance. Effectively manage stress, foster a flexible work environment, and keep the development team focused, engaged, productive, and fulfilled.

Customer Engagement

• Continually develop a diverse and deep knowledge of the automotive service industry
• Ability to meet face to face with customers to listen and understand their needs and clearly communicate how we can help them solve their business problems. 
• Ability to effectively communicate and present detailed technical information, both internally and externally

Experience/Requirements

• BS in Computer Science or related degree
• 10+ years leading software development teams in an Agile development environment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead a distributed development team (team members located both on shore and off)
• Demonstrated track record of successfully hiring, motivating, retaining and effectively deploying talented software developers and consultants to perform against aggressive delivery goals
• Deep understanding of Agile software development engineering practices, including but not limited to Test-Driven Development, evolutionary design, shared code ownership, and continuous integration
• Knowledge of release management and deployment workflow processes, from development release through staging and production deployment
• Ability to evangelize and sell stakeholders across the company on key engineering priorities and how they connect with larger company initiatives
• Significant experience contributing to a senior management team. This assumes participation in strategic and business planning, product strategy, operations, sales, marketing, and overall business direction
• Experience making major investment decisions for third party tools or technologies, build vs. buy, and fund or not fund decisions
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Proven ability to build productive relationships and motivate team members. Must have a positive, can-do attitude