Software Development Manager

Looking for a technical, Software Development Manager who will lead a team of Software Developers to deliver SaaS solutions in the Retail industry.

Job description displayed in the job posting

The Development Manager enables the development team in delivering features which are meaningful to the customer, technically sound, operationally maintainable, and consistent with the product vision through the management of a team of Software Engineers. Development Manager reports to the Director of Engineering.  

Development Manager typically has extensive experience as a Software Engineer, System Architect, or Technical Lead in his/her previous engagements.  Development Manger must be able to work with the code and technologies in use by the development team. Development Manager must be capable of being hands-on.

Equally this individual is recognized and respected as a leader within their sphere of influence; within their own team they must be a natural leader.  They must be able to prioritize amongst competing demands. They can lead or more often facilitate technical and feature related decisions. They serve as a resource for other team members, often mentoring less experienced engineers as a way to transfer knowledge and build competency. They work closely with Product Managers/Analysts within their own team and across other teams to help create, prioritize, and organize backlogs for feature delivery. They work with System Architects, Product Managers/Analysts, Quality Assurance Specialists, and operational engineers to solve problems and guide the overall progress of product development. 

System Architects and Development Manager set the technical direction for the organization when it comes to maintainability, scalability, and testability.  Development Manager ensures that the standards and technical directions are followed and/or used as the guiding principles by the team. Development Manager defines, tracks, and reports on metrics that show the state of the software development activities and the systems that are supported by the feature team. 

In addition to the project execution leadership, the Development Manager has full managerial responsibility and oversight for a team of Software Engineers, including performance and career management. Finally, the Development Manager must foster an environment, which retains employees, and also actively attract new talent. 

Career Level - M2

Responsibilities displayed in the job posting

Leadership

• Earn and sustain the respect of team members, peers and partners based on demonstrated leadership capabilities, e.g. collaboration, flexibility, accountability, and delivery.
• Model positive and customer-focused behaviors in all actions. Engage with customers directly and work through building strong and trusting relationships.
• Demonstrate developing expertise for the business capabilities supported by the department.
• Work closely with Strategy and Sales organization to understand the market space and product direction and attention to sales enablement to promote product success.
• Lead by example in building collaborative relationships with other teams.
• Represent teams interests in technical forums within the organization.
• Be an expert and lead the team in maturing the SCRUM in a hybrid environment. Attention to details and focus on delivering on time and on scope.

Management

• Manage a team of 8 to 12 software engineers.
• Responsible for guiding, mentoring, and developing direct reports.
• Provide verbal and written feedback for the direct reports.
• Write and deliver detailed performance evaluations.
• Responsible for supporting direct reports to create individual development plans.
• Responsible for recruiting, hiring, and promotion processes.
• Approve time-off requests, time sheets, and other administrative tasks.

Influence

• Is able to pragmatically work through barriers with minimal oversight driving towards win-win solutions, calling upon additional resources as necessary.
• Collaborates within department with other peers towards common goals and across department boundaries to represent the product and team interests. 
• Trusted as an accurate and approachable source of information and advice.
• Identifies when things are headed in an inappropriate direction; identifies and proposes alternatives in a constructive manner.

Technical Depth

• Drives for excellence in architectural, technical, functional, performance, and operational aspects of the team's areas of responsibility.
• Well versed in relevant open source and/or licensed software technology.
• Demonstrated by contributions, participation, and speaking engagements and hard-earned production experience.
• Shows broad-scale systems-level thinking and drives the team towards appropriate technical architectures that enhance the fundamental architecture of the systems supported by the team in collaboration with the System Architects.
• Drives the team towards designing for testability, performance, and scalability.
• Good understanding of SaaS products and cloud technologies and development tools and processes.
• Pragmatically define and refine standards.
• Good understanding of security requirements and consideration for a SaaS application.
• Good understanding of PCI and PADSS processes and certifications. 
• Breadth and depth with Java technologies and tools.

Learning & Development

• Identifies training and industry material, which should be consumed by the Software Engineering team.
• Demonstrates verbal, written, and behavioral self-awareness of strengths and areas for improvement and documents this in support of the annualized performance evaluation process.
• Engages with the team to share ideas and stimulate thought provoking dialogue.
• Evaluates and lands new technology trends within the team through research, collaboration, and experimentation.
• Continuously learning about retail space and market trends as well as the products and user behaviors.
• Lead engineers with the appropriate ability and motivation.

Qualification

• BS in Computer Science or related field.
• 10+ years of experience developing and delivering large scale, highly available distributed systems with recent experience in delivering SaaS solutions in public and/or private cloud.
• 5+ years of experience in managing development teams.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Excellent collaboration skills and managing multiple stakeholders.
• Excellent project management skills, ability to define detailed execution plans.
• In depth understanding of Scrum and ability to set and track metrics.
• Expertise with full software development life cycle.
• Expertise and knowledge of Java stack and toolset.
• Expertise and understanding of databases, storage, and distributed persistence technologies.
• Expertise and knowledge of data structures, algorithms, operating systems, and distributed and cloud systems.
• Able to work across multiple time zones with globally distributed teams.