Yaksa is now a part of Verndale!  https://www.yaksa.ca/en/ About the Technical Director position The Technical Director at Verndale is an expert, leader and manager. This role is responsible for every project and account assigned to his/her delivery team.  An important set of responsibilities is not just at a project level, but at a team level, working with the other team leaders, especially the Project Manager Director, on management of the delivery team. 

In some cases, the Technical Director may also play the Architect role on a project, big or small, at least for a period of time.  Because of the breadth of responsibilities and where the director can provide the most value, often a director does not get too into the code and may not be the best option to perform the code reviews, leaving that to the Architects and peer developers.  Ideally the director may be more heavily involved at the beginning stages of a new account/project on his/her team, especially during sales and discovery and will play less of a role as the project definition takes shape and an Architect takes over.  There will be times that the technical director should step into a more active role (consulting on major technical decisions, infrastructure, deployment planning). 

The Technical Director will be very client facing and needs to be comfortable talking to clients and confident in their decisions.  Their knowledge of at least one specific CMS (and/or Commerce) platform should be excellent, but he/she should have familiarity with the other key platforms that we work with, since any of our teams could be working on any of these platforms.  Additionally, he/she should have a long history of implementing various integrations, estimating ballpark/high level requirements, understanding security and performance requirements, and juggling priorities.  Acceptance that budget and timeline management is a shared responsibility with other team leaders is a must.

A Technical Director will have non-billable activities which include team management, manager of direct reports, and ownership of at least one major platform Responsibilities Team Responsibilities

• Collaboration with:

• Delivery Team Leadership

• Each project team within the delivery team

• Other Technical Directors and Technical Leadership (Liz, Nicole, Nate, Carlos)

• Sales team

• Weekly Responsibilities

• Check utilization and time reports on Friday and make sure their whole team has time in by Monday morning (be prepared to speak to it in Tuesdays utilization review)

• Review Project Reports and Project Health Reports weekly, understand budget and profit impacts

• Pay attention to project Slack channels for accounts within the delivery team

• Estimate & SOW reviews

• Office hours held so more approachable/accessible

• Resourcing/Staffing

• Determine which technical personnel should be assigned to which projects. Assign leads to each project.

• Ensure the team has the skills to deliver on the projects coming to the team. Includes self training as well as external training as needed.

• Make decisions to shift/change resources depending on project circumstances (blockages, trailing finishes, early starts, ramp up/down to hit a date, etc)

• Make the case for when a new hire is needed and be involved in interview and onboarding process, for hires potentially in US, LATAM, and Canada.

• Make decisions around when technical team members need to be put on a PIP and/or be a consideration for termination.

• Work with Team leaders to make a case for winning/assignment of new project work

• Thought leadership - internal (knowledge shares, documentation/process updates, contribution to training curriculum) and external (blogging, conference speaking)

• Budget requests (training, hardware, software, team building)

• Team activities/acknowledgement/celebrations: ensure successes are celebrated and acknowledged

• Be a key, vocal, ever-present figure in the Engineering department, working closely with CTO on department standards and decisions

• Direct manager of all Architects on the team and some or all Developers. This is decided in collaboration with the CTO on a case by case basis.

• some Architects may be direct managers of Developers instead, depending on if the capability and desire exist.

• As a manager, responsible for career and professional development, training plans, 1-1s, reviews and more

• Could have up to 8 direct reports, will need to assess feasibility of more than that

• Attend Q4 EOY reviews for all Developers on team, even if they aren't a direct report

• Identify areas of improvement in our training/enablement programs based on where the team is excelling or struggling

• May be a Platform Owner for at least one platform

• Attaining and maintaining relevant trainings/certifications

• Sales support

• Travel

• Pitch support, decks

• Estimation

• SOW/proposal reviews and contributions

  Account/Project Responsibilities

• Responsible for the success, quality and technical aspects of ALL accounts/projects assigned to delivery team, regardless of how close to each individual project they have to get.

• Responsible for all aspects of the technical solutions for accounts, including coordination with and the quality of work of all developers (back-end and front-end) and quality assurance.

• Will be Architect on some projects, although this may have limitations with time and will often required another Architect to take over or be the primary.

• Optionally attend technical discovery meetings

• Architectural review of all project technical plans

• Must sign off on the architectural plan for EVERY project assigned to team

• Optionally attend project meetings such as sprint planning, sprint reviews, demos

• Step in for consultation and escalationpoint of escalation for anything going on whether xop or project for accounts on their team

• Provide support to Architects with clients

• Mentor Architects

• Ensure that the vision, standards, process, and practices of project execution defined by corporate management are adhered to by all developers

• Receive weekly updates from all Architects on status of each project, including key metrics

• Responsible for sharing summarized project updates with CTO

• Proof of Concepts

• Jump in and help on projects, help troubleshoot, even build features or fix bugs when necessary

• Be available and help during project launches

  Responsibilities of the Tech Director by Project Phase:

• Strategic Planning (Discovery)

• infrastructure

• SEO

• integrations (CRM, ecomm, community, marketing, social, etc)

• Frequent client interactions

• Technical discovery calls/meetings about:

• research on key technical points that require decisions

• ballpark estimates

• logical ecosystem diagram

• infrastructure diagram

• Design

• collaboration with the client

• attend design/prototype meetings (internal and sometimes external)

• update design/prototype feedback documentation

• feature estimates

• work with the Business Analyst to identify risks

• review functional spec and begin tech breakdown

• technical documentation

• POCs

• infrastructure planning (servers, licenses, etc)

• Build

• collaboration with the client

• collaboration with Architect

• review project metrics: hours burned, estimate accuracy, budget

• mitigate risks

• attend health meetings with other project leaders

• deployment plan and execution

  Qualifications

• 10 + years of experience CMS experience and Back End Development

•  3 + years in a technical leadership role

• Strong understanding of the foundations and architectures of the Web in a .NET environment 

• Has very good communication skills in French and English

• Experience in Content and Technical Architecture Design

• Experience developing B2B and\or B2C websites

• Understanding eCommerce/eBusiness Concepts (Catalogs, inventory, pricing, transactions, order management, Membership)

• 6+ Enterprise solution experiences

• Experience in System Integrations, esp ERP, PIM, but also CRM, DAM, CDP

• Understanding of commerce related marketing and analytics practices

• In-depth understanding of web application security best practices

• An understanding of search engine friendly markup

• An understanding of site search techniques

• Knowledge of React, VueJS, TypeScript, is a plus.

• Experience with Azure DevOps technologies

• Autonomous: knows how to plan and organize their work by clearly setting priorities.

• Passionate: likes to solve technological puzzles – can be consulted in some ambiguous and complex situations.

• Embrace change: doesn’t accept the status quo

  Great Reasons to Work at Verndale

• We are a rapidly growing company that is just as entrepreneurial today as when we were founded in 1998. 

• We are relentlessly curious and enthusiastically solve our clients’ complex business problems through technology, data, and design. 

• We foster a culture that enables every person in the organization to do the best work of their career. 

• We offer regular training and professional development to move careers forward. 

• Client and employee satisfaction are our two most important business metrics. 

• We celebrate and champion diversity and inclusion. 

• We offer generous paid company holidays, vacation and paid sick time to every employee starting on day one. 

• We support a healthy work/life balance. 

• We are fully remote enabled and embrace the evolving definition of the workplace. 

  About Verndale Verndale is a digital experience agency. purpose-built to help marketing and technology leaders connect the dots of the consumer journey. From our offices in Boston, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Quito, we design and develop digital experiences and enable marketing technologies that bring brands and their customers together.

  We know that in order to do great work, you have to make work great. Verndale is committed to always being a company that celebrates diversity, equality and inclusion. We strive to recruit and retain people who are committed to creating the climate of respect that is essential for individual and company success. Verndale's services are built around a core methodology that encompasses Growth Strategy, Experience Design, Technology Enablement, and Experience Optimization.

  Learn more about Verndale at  http://www.verndale.com Compensation & Benefits Verndale is proud of the fun, diverse, and respectful company environment we enjoy daily. Competitive compensation is offered to full-time employees. Ample company paid holidays and personal time off make having a work-life balance possible.

  Verndale is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, citizenship status or any other basis as protected by federal, state, or local law.

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