Director Software Engineering

Role: Director Software Engineering

Reporting to: Chief Digital Health Officer

Location: Multiple Locations

The opportunity

mHealth is the biggest health transformation of our lifetime. All around the globe, mobile phones are making a difference between life and death. They allow families to call for medical help in emergencies, help rural pharmacists locate lifesaving drugs during stockouts, and enable health workers to track potential pandemics. In developing countries, mobile phones have also transformed community health at the grassroots level.

Living Goods is rapidly transforming into a digitally-led business in order to better serve our communities and other stakeholders. Our belief in the power of technology, mobile phones, and phone apps is not unique. We have created tools, fine-tuned them, and used them to equip over 9000 Community Health Workers and hundreds of supervisors to deliver high-impact, low-cost community health services. We truly believe using data for decision-making is transformative.

We now want to take it a notch higher by strengthening our Digital Health team to enable us to customize and build high-performance and scalable mHealth systems. As such, this is an excellent opportunity for a driven candidate to take on a leadership role where you would be committed to building and maintaining a highly productive software engineering team instilled with the ethos of delivering quality solutions. In return, you will enjoy an exciting, innovative environment that supports flexible and agile working. You will lead the engineering team and work closely with operational managers and high-level staff in multiple countries. You will report directly to the Chief Digital Health Officer (CDHO) and support in developing and delivering the overarching technology strategy and setting the direction for the software engineering and operational teams within the organization. Since technology is central to what Living Goods does, you will contribute to the global organizational strategy and contribute to the technology team transformation strategy and future direction.

We are looking for someone who can:

• Be a part of the Core Digital Health Leadership Group and work closely with the Chief Digital Health Officer (CDHO) to implement and realize the digital priorities and roadmap of the organization.
• Provide technology leadership and strategic direction to the in-house Global Software Engineering (GSE) team and third-party technology partners.
• Participate and contribute to organizational strategic conversations and accordingly refine and implement the technology roadmap for LG.
• Develop an understanding of organizational goals, requirements, and framework and /or Workplan to translate those requirements into software / technical end-products.
• Work in alignment with internal and external stakeholders to deliver projects on time, with high quality, and that meet client needs.
• Be the team’s representative among senior and project leadership, effectively managing upwards and downwards.
• Develop and deliver regular communication including software delivery status and risks to senior management.
• Lead and manage the GSE team in terms of development, work planning/resourcing, mentorship, and team upskilling in alignment with their career goals and organizational future needs.
• Lead and manage the GSE team in terms of development, workload/resourcing, mentorship, and upskilling in alignment with their career goals and organizational future needs.
• Lead the GSE team to assess, recommend/decide on what needs to be stopped, and what needs to be built as in-house skillsets from the technology landscape to support the stakeholder requirements.
• Be a leader who has built effective teams that deliver results, technical experts, managers, and future leaders.
• Plan and lead the diversification of technology skillsets within the team to realize the organizational strategic objectives and targets.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and own the software design, development, and delivery component in LG’s Digital Health Department to provide high-quality, reliable, scalable, available, and secure software / digital systems.
• Collaborate with software engineering staff to define and implement reliable, robust, scalable, efficient, and secure architectures operating preferably in a cloud environment.
• Create and execute key strategies to meet business outcomes and manage strategic relationships.
• The ability to engage and constructively influence the C-level stakeholders for technical discussions and decisions.
• Define and manage the entire software development lifecycle in an agile delivery environment focusing on continuous deployment at pace while maintaining the quality and performance of software systems including supporting systems in production, responding to production incidents, and managing unplanned work.
• Develop/refine and implement the ‘Build, Borrow, Buy’ framework to develop and support decision-making for when we deliver value on technology by building solutions in-house and when we partner with other providers. The long-term objective is to strengthen and diversify the in-house skillsets of the GSE team to master a suite of proven technology platforms including the emerging technology horizon.
• Grow, mentor, manage and inspire a growing team of software engineers, providing clear and constructive feedback and creating opportunities for learning and growth. This would include the assessment and development of a balanced technology skillset portfolio across both in-vogue and emerging technologies landscapes.
• Strategic collaboration with senior management and stakeholders (e.g. Health, Operations, Innovation, Business Development, etc.) to define and build new features and products.
• Implementation of effective project management capabilities in the GSE team in order to manage technology deliverables and commitments to teams.
• Provide regular and periodic reports, updates, and insights to CDHO for necessary decision-making and owning the risk register on the software engineering and development front.

Qualifications:

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years across software engineering with a focus on high-performing, innovative/creative, and consumer-facing applications and platforms.
• 6+ years of leadership experience of which 4+ should be direct management experience of a medium-size team (15+).
• Previous hands-on experience developing web / mobile applications, and transactional platforms from requirements gathering to delivery and support.
• Proven ability to efficiently manage all aspects of the software development lifecycle in an Agile environment particularly multi-tier data-driven applications.
• Has a strong Software Engineering background (knowledge in Java, Android, etc.) and deep knowledge of agile development practices, automated builds, continuous integration, and Cloud and container infrastructure including micro-services.
• Comfortable with integration, extension, and modification of open-source tools.