VP Director, Technology

Location: New York, NY (2 Day Hybrid)

Salary: $150K - $200K

Reporting: SVP, Engagement and AI Strategy

ABOUT US

We are The Bloc. We believe great brands aren’t born – they’re built. Our singular mission is “Cementing Healthy Change” and everything we do to affect that change is centered around our proprietary behavior change platform, BECOMMS.

ROLE

The primary objective of the VP Director, Technology is to manage the overall excellence of the technology departments of The Bloc NY, Value Builders and The Bloc Manila. Responsibility includes managing all aspects of the technology department's workflow, operations, and staffing and liaising with office leadership on a regular basis to ensure satisfactory service and outputs and quality of work. The VP Director, Technology proactively guides our clients and internal teams in ways to take advantage of the latest in emerging technology including but not limited to AI. Displays a thirst for experimenting with and learning the latest in technology, sharing this excitement and deep knowledge with their colleagues and clients, and pushing all stakeholders in the service of excellence in all digital product work.

The VP Director, Technology is responsible for success of all development work leaving the agency, eliminating process inefficiencies and mitigating security risks, driving excellence in execution, being hands on with troubleshooting and enforcing development best practice. They lead high profile projects, ensuring proper handoffs between dev and QA teams. The VP Director, Technology is responsible for a team of developers and QA analysts, prioritizing relationships and teamwork to inspire and lead the teams to deliver their best work.

EXPECTATIONS AND DELIVERABLES

• Drives best in class work from the development teams: Creates a collaborative work environment that fosters autonomy, transparency, mastery, innovation and learning. Ensure teams understand goals and manage delivery through all phases of development. Manages and motivates a team of technical leads, developers, and QA to deliver best in class, error free work. Works closely with team members to ensure they are continually learning, upskilling, andgrowing in their roles and improving their output. Ensures we are properly staffed to support the work and maintains a strong freelance pool to tap when needed.
• Manages all digital product launches, updates, and maintenance effectively: Ensures each task/delivery meets all technical standard(s), best practices and long-term technical objectives. Collects business and system architectural requirements from multiple stakeholders, writes specifications, and manages all aspects of production launches. Understands client databases and infrastructural frameworks, including system security, and designs and maintains system documentation. Troubleshoots all potential issues during the development process. Spearheads root cause analysis with internal stakeholders and helps with mitigation of risk.
• Participates in new business and seeks out organic growth opportunities: Participates in new business initiatives, including developing process and capability slides, case studies, and presenting to clients with passion, displaying their deep expertise. Continually seeks out organic growth opportunities in digital / tech.
• Proactive Thought Leadership: Identifies opportunities for process improvement or definition across the agency; leads the optimization and documentation of processes as needed, driving a standard approach; prioritizes and tracks process improvement initiatives. Provides technical support and consultation as well as training on technology and updates on the latest news in tech to internal teams. Works closely with our client services lead(s) to help drive a better relationship with marketing and internal technology partners.
• Drives the discovery process for digital workstreams: Leads the definition and alignment of technology initiatives and projects with key stakeholders. In collaboration with the UX team, develops strong business requirements documentation. Gains a strong understanding of all client data architecture and documents the gaps between current system functionality and business requirements to ensure consistency. Collaborates with a Insights and Analytics lead to ensure that all digital products are measured effectively.

DAY TO DAY RESPONSIBILITIES

Technology Strategy; Innovation Leadership

• Collaborates with multi-disciplinary teams across the organization to ensure timely high-quality delivery of digital products including but not limited to websites, IVAs, emails (including modular emails), and banners ads.
• Identify risks in advance and drives the team towards successful resolution.
• Leads the exploration and implementation of new technologies and platforms and training and educational opportunities for the agency on emerging technology trends and best practices.
• Manages a distributed team in NY and Manila effectively, including performance reviews, effective 1:1 guidance and career coaching, coaching in the moment of development project work, and effective department motivation and communication.
• In accordance with established processes for integration with our Manila office, the VP, Director Technology will ensure that our Manlia Development team is weaved into the day to day digital project workstreams for all client deliverables including live kickoffs on Teams, proper UAT and QA processes for quality control, regular department meetings, and collaboration with counterparts in PM, Account, UX / UI, and Engagement Strategy
• Ensures we are properly staffed to support the work, proactively and collaboratively working with our resource managers and PMs to mitigate over- or -under allocation and come up with solutions.
• Continually monitors team’s performance and provide guidance and real time feedback.
• Proactively identify risks then create and spearhead resolution plans.
• Identifies opportunities for process improvement or definition across the agency; leads the optimization and documentation of processes as needed, driving a standard approach; prioritizes and tracks process improvement initiatives.
• Participates in new business and identifies organic growth opportunities.
• Champions the efforts of the development team throughout the organization, evangelizing case studies and wins and encouraging the greater utilization of the development team.

KPIs (Internal Use Only)

- Growth: Participates in organic and new business efforts and demonstrates through expanded digital capabilities.

- Digital Product Excellence: Delivers high-quality, secure, bug-free scalable digital products delivered consistently on time and within scope.

- Team Performance & Retention: Builds a strong, stable team with high engagement scores (based on team retention, turnover rates, performance reviews, etc.)

- Leadership: Guides our clients as well as internal team members in Technology best practices and possibilities, on a routine basis actively displaying this leadership in both client and internal meetings.

QUALIFICATIONS

• 10+ years of experience as a technical lead, with a strong background in front and back-end development
• Experience leading distributed developers and QA teams as scale, ensuring a high level of quality control and executional excellence
• Proven ability to plan, create and maintain a highly effective production schedule for multiple disciplines in all phases of development, from concept to completion.
• Experience with consumer-facing, front end technologies (web, mobile web, mobile apps) including CSS, HTML5, JavaScript and front-end frameworks.
• Experience in back end technologies (.NET, Java, PHP, Ruby, Python)
• Understanding of agile methodologies
• Knowledge of application architecture, hosting and dev ops for high volume, large scale content sites
• Proven ability to plan, create and maintain a highly effective production schedule across multiple disciplines in all phases of development
• Proven leadership capabilities, including presentation and persuasion, the ability to motivate and drive distributed teams, and the ability to collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders externally and internally.
• Skilled in software development lifecycle, problem-solving, teamwork, learning-on-the-fly, and a desire to succeed.
• Must be able to handle multiple projects at one time and be very results-oriented.
• Must possess excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, and be a master at conflict resolution.
• Self-motivated, flexible, results driven with a passion to continually upskill, staying on top of the latest advancements in technology.
• Capable of balancing a project’s production requirements within budget and staff limitations while ensuring high production values are never compromised.