- Chief Technology Officer
- Reporting to: President
- Location: Florida
BSG has commenced an executive search for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for our client, an e-commerce selling partner that strategically helps over 40 globally leading brands best position their web presence to sell more products in the online marketplace. The CTO key responsibilities include engineering and architectural team management and leadership, software development methodology evolution and adoption, as well as deep partnering with the product and editorial management teams to develop world-class products to specifications, on time, and within budget.
Opportunity Overview
Chief Technology Officer
THE COMPANY
Our client is an e-commerce selling partner that strategically helps over 40 globally leading brands best position their web presence to sell more products in the online marketplace. They have a team of over 200 experts consisting of designers, copywriters, data analysts, marketers, attorneys, and logistics specialists who focus on delivering extraordinary experiences and greatly improving their clients’ growth. Our client offers a variety of services, including developing web content, advertising and marketing, data analytics, services to protect brand, distribution and fulfillment. Shipping over 50,000 orders, our client is private equity backed by a partner with over $1.5 B in assets.
THE POSITION
The Chief Technology Officer (CTO) will oversee the IT department and develop the suite of software and technology services offered to brand partners. Reporting to the President, the CTO will be a strong leader who will form solid working partnerships with senior stakeholders, product, and delivery teams. The key objective would be to drive and define a strategic future-state working model that can be leveraged to modernize their products and services. This framework will help rationalize and accelerate their onboarding of new and existing partners to their platform. The candidate will also drive strategic delivery roadmap with close stakeholder partnership for multi-year and multi-phase transformation projects. The CTO will become the trusted solution architecture advisor to technology and business leaders.
Key to the position’s responsibilities include engineering and architectural team management and leadership, software development methodology evolution and adoption, as well as deep partnering with the product and editorial management teams to develop world-class products to specifications, on time, and within budget. Candidate should have deep architecture and engineering background with industry knowledge and expertise to help drive innovation that can shape the future of global digital commerce.
Success in this role will lean on 3 pillars of skills and experience:
- Prior software development leader of teams of 10+.
- Has had strong career experience in delivering B2C services.
- Experience in development of Ecommerce Martech platforms.
- Has worked in fast-growth, privately-held and/or investor-backed culture.
The CTO will be an integral part of the senior leadership team with the following responsibilities:
- Hiring, developing, and managing IT team.
- Strategic thinking and passion for business strategy and business processes.
- Create and maintain business capability, data, process and technology inventories and roadmap.
- Work with multiple capability and functional teams to gather and document the structure of the business and technology landscape
- Partner in the strategic planning process by providing input to the scope definition of strategic initiatives leveraging capabilities.
- Decompose business roadmaps and strategies into well-defined architecture guidance for software development and infrastructure teams.
- Expertise in application, data and infrastructure architecture disciplines.
- Experience in risk and risk control compliance.
- Expertise in microservices and event-driven architecture style for building scalable and resilient applications.
- Ability to work collaboratively in teams and develop meaningful relationships to achieve common goals.
- Creation of architecture artifacts including conceptual, logical, security, and physical architectures and data flow diagrams.
- Work with IT and business units to create investable and executable technical roadmaps.
- Work with business stakeholders and gain support for critical technology investment decisions.
- Scope and size technology investments.
- Evaluate technologies, vendor solutions and applications.
- Manage the application portfolio lifecycle, and champion IT assets that can be leveraged across lines of business.
IDEAL CANDIDATE PROFILE
A summary of key competencies required to be successful in this role include the following:
FUNCTIONAL skills/experience needed:- Experienced e-commerce leader with multiple successful endeavors in digital retail covering marketplaces, performance marketing, and technology solutions.
- Strong operations and marketing background with a focus on technology and analytics to create profitable and lasting online businesses.
- Services-oriented architectural leadership.
- Continuous-release (Agile) software development methodology with velocity metrics.
- Web-to-mobile platform development.
- Content Management Systems software.
- Consumer focused UX/UI design leadership.
- Experience managing global teams.
- Fluent in Spanish highly desired.
INDUSTRY Experience:
- B2C services.
- eCommerce software development expertise, growth hacking, SEO/SEM.
- Specialties: Top e-commerce leader, brand strategy and management, technology solutions, advertising, online marketplaces, e-commerce technology, digital marketing, operations management, social media, organizational management, and retail operations.
- Performance marketing for premium brands, CPG.
- Prior experience at intersection of consumer product management and engineering/software development.
- Agile product development/management experience.
STAGE of Company Experience:
- Building processes and best practices without suffocating speed, innovation, and customer satisfaction.
- Private company experience in senior role in last 10 years of career.
- Managed a team of 10+ in career.
- $50M-$100M company revenue experience.
MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
- Driving creation and buy-in to KPIs, goals, metrics within own team and cross-functionally where appropriate/necessary.
- Ability to communicate goals to technology organization.
- At least 10 years in an IT leadership role.
MARKET & CUSTOMERS
- Top e-commerce -focused marketing agencies that brands/seller hire to improve their rankings/sales/reviews, etc.
- Large sellers from top e-commerce leader.
- Consumer brands.
GENERAL COMPETENCIES:
Finally, this individual should have as many as possible of the traits required to succeed in this leadership position:
- High levels of intelligence, analytical strength, and conceptual ability.
- Strong presentation and team management skills.
- The ability, and willingness, to set and communicate demanding standards for professional staff and to hold people accountable for their performance; at the same time, sensitivity to, and insight into individuals’ capabilities and development needs, and the combination of firmness and likability that all good leaders possess.
- Decisiveness, when necessary, coupled with a willingness to seek input and build consensus as much as possible.
- Unquestioned honesty and integrity; also, loyalty to colleagues and to the organization, and the ability to inspire loyalty. This person should have the ability to identify and focus on the Company’s best interests, rather than the agenda of any individual or group within the firm.
- A very high level of energy and commitment, combined with enthusiasm and a positive attitude.
- Excellent writing and speaking skills; this individual must be able to communicate complex ideas and information clearly and concisely.
- Outstanding planning and organization skills.
- Good strategic instincts and long-term vision; the ability to address both big-picture issues and detailed, day-to-day management concerns.
- In general, the business and personal skills, and the absolute commitment required to make a major contribution to The Company during the coming years.
- Attention to detail required to deliver consistently accurate data, information, and reporting on time and on budget.
- A sense of ownership, not just of his or her own work, or that of their department, but a sense of ownership for the company.
- Work ethic required to do what it takes to get the job done, and invest the time required to deliver on key responsibilities in a timely fashion.
Financial Backing
Backed/control owned by PE Firm and acquired our client in 2020.
Compensation
Compensation is competitive with the position’s requirements. In a performance-based environment, this will include base salary, bonus structure based on corporate qualitative and quantitative strategic KPIs, and a stakeholder position in the company.
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