Emerging Tech Senior Manager - Software Architecture

Job Description:

This position is responsible for managing architects and teams to make good technology decisions that are innovative, fiscally responsible, and aligned with the overall Technology Strategy at Vertex, evolving our offerings toward a cloud-native, SaaS-centric Platform. Manages architects, offering guidance, patterns, and technical solutions. Utilize extensive expertise in defining technical solutions, assumptions, constraints, and a quality plan for each opportunity or body of work being proposed (features/initiatives) for a given line of business. Accountable for realizing the business and technology strategies through architecture; enabling the architecture organization to develop, educate and engage other parts of the organization in the implementation and operation of the architecture.

Essential Job Functions And Responsibilities

• Understand and anticipate the technological needs of the Vertex products and customers both in the present and in the mid- to long-term
• Remain well versed in new technologies and architecture patterns so as to provide them as potential solutions to business opportunities
• Communicate effectively both within immediate team and leadership ensuring the team receives consistent messages and has clear understanding of business direction, strategy and results
• Translate business opportunities and unknowns into clearly defined architecture solutions that development teams can implement
• Work with product management and engineering to develop multi-generation software technology plans.
• Work consultatively with architects to help them take ownership of a solution architecture while serving as a resource for guidance and mentoring
• Lead in managing a landscape of perspectives, positions, skills, and personalities in order to lead/mentor people toward optimal solutions
• Provide leadership for the migration and implementation of new Vertex product architectures
• Provide in-depth documentation, instructions and learning materials of all works being rolled out to the larger organization or teams - i.e., software/architecture designs and patterns that can be absorbed by development teams
• Promote acceptance of and conformance to technology strategy; solutions should utilize a common services platform-centric approach whenever possible
• Promote a culture of innovation and mutual advancement within the development community
• Continuously improve the software development process
• Participate in other projects or duties.

Supervisory Responsibilities

• Determine appropriate resourcing of staff in order to achieve goals and objectives.
• Build an effective leadership team through mentoring and formal education that focuses on management and project management principles.
• Define annual Key Performance Indicators aligned with corporate goals.
• Manage and mentor employees and/or managers on performance gaps, career development opportunities, and strategies.
• Manage and coach employees and/or managers on all human resource related processes including onboarding, performance management, succession planning, employee relations, selection, terminations, compensation and rewards.
• Recognize others’ contributions and share credit for success.
• Own attainment of high employee satisfaction and retention; lead development of program and initiatives within group to attain high employee satisfaction.
• Prepare and manage budget as assigned; analyzes variances and initiates corrective actions to maximize operational performance.
• Strong leadership, with the ability to lead large projects and oversee ongoing processes within the Finance area
• Recruiting, leading, coaching and supporting the work of others in the Finance and IT areas, including those that are directly on the finance team, as well as other BI analysts who support other areas.

Knowledge, Skills And Abilities

• Self-motivated / Creative / Innovative
• Strong architecture and engineering skills
• Strong understanding of distributed systems design and patterns
• an understanding of performance consideration in a distributed architecture
• an understanding of infrastructure as code - CICD, etc.
• Strong understanding of Cloud services and how to leverage them
• Experience with containers and orchestration is a plus
• Ability to visually communicate complex architectures
• Strong customer focus and ability to interact with and create relationships with Vertex partners and customers in order to understand the needs being defined and proposed by the Business and Product
• Ability to deliver technical expertise, excellence and guidance through a consultative approach.
• Ability to learn, implement, code against, and evaluate new technologies and approaches at an extremely fast pace
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with all levels of an organization
• Ability to quickly assimilate, analyze, abstract, synthesize and act on large amounts of information
• Ability to provide guidance toward fast-paced, incrementally delivered, quality software
• Ability to apply broad expertise or unique knowledge and professional concepts to develop resolutions to critical issues
• Ability to manage multiple complex, high visibility or high impact projects simultaneously

Education And Training

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science
• Ten (10) years of experience in software architecture with four (4) plus years of leadership experience
• Strong experience developing architectures which are understandable, robust, extensible, and scalable by utilizing:
• hierarchical partitioning (to manage system complexity)
• modular / component-based designs (to increase reuse and speed development)
• middleware (to promote platform independence)
• documented design patterns (to utilize best practices)
• Experience implementing n-tiered, distributed systems across different HW/OS platforms
• Experience with iterative, incremental software development processes
• Master’s degree preferred but not mandatory
• Or equivalent combination of education and/or experience

Other Qualifications
The Winning Way behaviors that all Vertex employees need in order to meet the expectations of each other, our customers, and our partners.

• Communicate with Clarity - Be clear, concise and actionable. Be relentlessly constructive. Seek and provide meaningful feedback.
• Act with Urgency - Adopt an agile mentality - frequent iterations, improved speed, resilience. 80/20 rule – better is the enemy of done. Don’t spend hours when minutes are enough.
• Work with Purpose - Exhibit a “We Can” mindset. Results outweigh effort. Everyone understands how their role contributes. Set aside personal objectives for team results.
• Drive to Decision - Cut the swirl with defined deadlines and decision points. Be clear on individual accountability and decision authority. Guided by a commitment to and accountability for customer outcomes.
• Own the Outcome - Defined milestones, commitments and intended results. Assess your work in context, if you’re unsure, ask. Demonstrate unwavering support for decisions.

Comments
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals in this position. Other functions may be assigned, and management retains the right to add or change the duties at any time.