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BSG From the Boardroom

A curated selection of executive opportunities, industry highlights, and unique insights in executive search.

    [Closed Search] EVP for Software & Technology industry leader pioneering energy efficiency

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    Conservation Services Group is the oldest and largest energy efficiency services company in the US, focused on the residential home market. The company engages in the design, development, and delivery of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. It offers various services, such as appliance recycling, commercial building performance, renewable energy, clean energy market development and generator representation, solar electric power design/installation and service, and other residential energy efficiency services.

    Based in Westboro, Massachusetts, CSG was founded in 1984 by current CEO Stephen Cowell and 4 others to change the way utilities perceived of and operated their power generation facilties on behalf of rate payers across the country.

    Today, CSG is in 22 states with 6 regional divisions, and has grown from the original five founders to more than 800 employees and $100M in revenues.  Given the initial pioneering economics of CSG’s value proposition, it was founded as a not-for-profit, and remains one today.  However, the entrepreneurial spirit runs deep, and CSG has benefited from this, growing particularly rapidly in the last 5 years.

    With clients across the country like NStar, National Grid, Con Edison, Alliant Energy, Nicor Gas, San Diego Gas & Electric, and NYSEG/RG&E, Conservation Services Group has firmly established itself as the market leader in residential efficiency services.

    Reporting directly to CSG President Tina Bennett, the Executive Vice President of Software & Technology will play a senior leadership role as part of the senior executive committee, overseeing all software development and technology infrastructure across the enterprise, holding leadership responsibility for a team of 70+ technologists building and maintaining internal and external software, data, and systems that interconnect CSG, their residential field auditing teams, the utilities and their rate-paying residential customers.

    The Position

    The EVP Software & Technology’s role is to oversee day to day activities of the software product development and enterprise architecture integration teams for all CSG’s Software offerings. The EVP will directly supervise a team of software developers, quality assurance, and business analysts; identify risk and opportunity areas; and coordinate all software development activities.

    This role will also work closely with Product Strategy on the business side and manage the Lead Technical Architect to envision and define features in the product roadmap and be accountable for the features development, deployment and support.  In addition to the technical leadership of the team, this role has full management responsibility and oversight for a cross-functional group of engineering and quality assurance personnel.

    Reporting directly to President, the CSG EVP Software & Technology shall:

    • Manage software architecture, design, development, procurement, and integration. Also manage tier-2 and             higher support once software has been placed into operations.

    • Achieve cost, schedule, technical and quality performance for delivered software. Compile, maintain, schedule,       resource, execute prioritized lists of development projects, including planning and managing the budget and           scheduling personnel and vendor contracts to meet project needs. Collect metrics on development performance     and report on them.

    • Collaborate with other functional managers (customer facing business units, systems engineering, QA, and             operations) to ensure architectural integrity, effective integration and test, and ongoing system stability.

    • Direct technical subcontractor management including contract negotiation, technical support, budgetary                   management and program management of various contracts and associated budgets. Coordinate vendor c             contracts, deliveries and schedule with affected company parties. Contract with vendors for services to support       engineering while addressing Intellectual Property, Non-Disclosures and Statements of Work.

    • Manage short- and long-term staff planning, recruitment, performance management, work assignments, training,   mentoring, career development, and recognition or disciplinary action.

    • Be responsible for business planning and proposals, operating budgets and financial terms / conditions of               contracts for both internal and external customers.

    • Manage platform integration opportunities between the various CSG software products, including migration to         unified code base and establishment of configurability approach vs. customization

    The successful candidate must also have the ability and experience to lead a multi-disciplined organization in a multi-location environment.

    Qualifications

    • Minimum of 10 years overall software development experience, with no less than 5 years in a combination of         client-server & SaaS environments as well as at least 5 years of management experience.

    • 2-3 years of senior-level or leadership experience in a software environment with 7 or more direct reports.

    • Experience working with product managers and other business stakeholders to set timelines, budget resources,     and manage expectations and quality of the development process

    • Advanced understanding of SaaS web application programming architectures, including standards for security,       scalability and configurability

    • Expertise and experience in implementing and overseeing measures for data security, business continuity,             disaster recovery

    • Deep understanding of load balancing and performance optimization principals for high volume/transaction web     applications

    • Strong skills in .NET or similar software development framework.

    • Experience with refactoring and eliminating legacy dependencies

    • Demonstrated substantial leadership in both technical and management areas

    • Experience leading development efforts using a variety of different SDLC approaches (waterfall, agile, etc.)

    • Knowledge of multi-threaded programming

    • Outstanding collaboration skills, excellent communication skills, an ability to look at the big picture

    Essential Job Functions/Responsibilities

    • Lead software and front-end engineers in the specification, design and development and support of all our             applications, including websites/products, our core services and our internal and external tools

    • Provide hands-on technical management leadership and support to software development team of 25 engineers,   architects and QA team

    • Identify skill and performance gaps in current organization and provide improvement plans

    • Improve existing processes and establish new processes for efficient development and high quality output

    • Evaluate and enhance overall development environment, release practices and Quality Assurance methodology

    • In state and maintain development standards, code reviews, unit testing and integration testing frameworks

    • Maintain overall ownership / accountability for data security, business continuity, disaster recovery

    • Work in tandem with technical architect and development team to identify and implement new measures for           system performance optimization under high load

    • Lead, recruit, develop and supervise the development team members

    • Evaluate and take accountability for decisions on key technologies adopted

    • Ensure proper development of technical specifications and documentation.

    • Estimate resource usage and timelines for development team

    • Review team members' detailed design of components/modules/code

    • Provide a good balance of experience and skills in several front-end and/or back-end technologies

    • Strong relational database skills, preferably SQL and Oracle

    • Knowledge of latest SOA web technologies and ability to build a service layer over the top of existing software       stacks

    • Ability to translate technology choices into business implications

    • Knowledge of cloud-based storage solutions for part or all of CSG’s current and future data needs

    Skills & Personal Characteristics

    • Defined by others as smart, capable, hands-on, energetic, and someone who possess a strong entrepreneurial       spirit

    • A proven communicator both within the technology function, but as importantly cross-functionally throughout the     organization, throughout the country, and up and down the organizational hierarchy.

    • A strong, assertive personality, able to make a creative contribution and build buy-in for ideas, as well as                 integrating with the ideas of others.

     

    To apply and submit your resume for this position, click here

    Links To Leadership July 2017 Issue

    -by Clark Waterfall on Aug 8, 2012 1:00:19 PM

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