Financial Services – Vice-president, Digital Development And Engineering

Our client, a global leader in the property and casualty insurance industry with corporate headquarters located in the UK, is committed to being an industry leader in providing its customers with a superior customer service and experience. With this commitment in mind, our client is undergoing a digital transformation which will challenge the status quo while establishing new standards for organizational as well as industry wide excellence.

Driving this transformation agenda for the Canadian business will be the task of the Vice President, Digital Development and Engineering. Leveraging a well-established global brand and global resources this is a unique opportunity to build a digital team with a mandate to work across the organization to help change the way the company competes. The successful candidate will need the creativity and pragmatism to challenge existing mind-sets to effect change for both the Canadian and global organizations.

This role will appeal to digital leaders with the drive, confidence and sophistication to be the catalyst for change our client and the industry now requires. Individual’s comfortable working in slow paced, bureaucratic organizations need not apply!

Broadly, the objective of the role of the VP, Digital Development and Engineering is to cultivate an environment that attracts, deploys and retains the human and other resources required to effectively develop, deliver and support a digital solution offering that will provide value to the company’s customers, while meeting the business strategy and goals for profitable growth.

Reporting to the Canadian CIO and collaborating with the global CIO team, the VP, Digital Development and Engineering is responsible for providing leadership in all activities related to the development and delivery of the Canadian subsidiary’s web and mobile offering from definition and specification through design, release, enhancement, quality assurance, implementation and support.

The successful candidate will hire, develop and lead a team of approximately 30 experienced and highly capable individuals who are characterized by their loyalty, creativity and commitment to delivering a ‘best in class’, consumer facing suite of innovative web and mobile solutions.

• Hire and manage direct reports, along with their goal setting, performance measurement and development feedback.
• Work with the senior management team to develop, deliver and support the digital roadmap consistent with and reflecting the company’s overall strategic plans for corporate growth
• Develop software engineering roadmap and provide leadership on tool and process adoption to driving a higher level of engineering maturity in support of agile development.
• Develop reliable, robust software on-time, within cost targets, using accepted, state of the art methodologies balancing the demands of release content, quality and desired release dates.
• Establish new scalable development platforms and processes which meet current organizational requirements, anticipates future growth and complexity and balance the need for predictability and creative license
• Maintain keen awareness of the trends and conditions in technology, products and development tools relative to the needs of the company’s customers and business
• Establish key indicators for competitive performance in completion of development projects and for rapid, realistic decisions on strategies, plans and projects
• Align the application development and maintenance organization’s activities with the company goals and strategic direction, as well as with the company’s corporate values in areas such as people, integrity, passion and innovation
• Build and facilitate the development of strong relationships and synergy with all other areas of the business, with key suppliers and with the company’s technical partners in order to achieve the corporate goals and objectives while executing technology development plans
• Foster an environment that enables highly technical staff to consistently perform with excellence, to set and meet personal and team goals, and to develop and be recognized for best in class competence in…