The BigFuture team is committed to empowering all students to take the right first step post high school. BigFuture reaches over 7M students each year and is the leading free resource for College, Scholarship, and Career Exploration. BigFuture allows students to demystify the college going process, unlock options to afford college, and explore careers that connect to their skills and interests. In addition to the student facing platform, the team manages a service that fosters rich interactions between students and the over 1,500 Higher Education institutions. These institutions look across the 25,000 high schools to round out their classes and reach a broad student population. BigFuture Tech. has a 35-person core team and collaborates deeply with other divisions including Sales, Marketing, Finance, Technology, Legal, and Strategic Higher Education.
About the Opportunity
As the Director of Software Engineering you will manage product focused technology teams for the BigFuture suite of applications. You will be responsible for managing, planning, scheduling, communicating, facilitating, monitoring, controlling, and reporting technical product management related tasks to ensure timely implementation for College Board applications and services. In this role, you will manage cross-functional teams (or Integrated Product Teams), and deliver approved systems on time and with quality results. You will have an overall understanding of current and upcoming AWS cloud, and large-scale transactional development experience, including working with all levels of executive leadership on the business and technology sides of the organization.
In this role, you will:
Manage engaged and high performing teams (40%)
Manage poly-skilled Agile team(s) - often comprised of a mix of College Board employees, outsourced consultant teams, and contractors - to successfully deliver the systems and continue to improve on the existing processes and culture of the organization. Define goals and objectives, provide and allow for open communications, effectively evaluate staff performance, and assist with compensation reviews and recommendations.
Mentor, coach, and provide feedback to teams throughout the product delivery lifecycle, to include contribution to performance reviews of team members.
Provide technical leadership (40%)
Provide thought leadership and direction throughout the development lifecycle including the evaluation of various implementations and tools at the early stages of initiative while strategically supporting the technology direction and advancement of the group.
Grow College Board institutional knowledge and education domain knowledge over time in order to drive a business-oriented perspective for BigFuture Student teams being led
Develop and drive incremental quality and agility into the organization as it relates to assigned product deliverables.
Own and drive all product delivery details, issues, etc.
Manage the schedule, quality, cost, and resources.
Monitor industry trends and evolving standards related to project, teams and portfolio best practices. Ensures that deliverables adhere and utilizing best practices applicable and aligned with BigFuture's product directions.
Act as a change agent for acceptance of IT divisional directives and facilitates process ownership for specific life-cycle improvement initiatives.
Interface with business partners (20%)
Provide regular updates to technology and business executives.
Raise key decision points and risks to the executive steering committee for resolution,
Evaluate and manage vendor relationships as it relates to services being provided as well as software/hardware vendors supporting our organization
Develop and track detailed delivery plans and provide detailed reports of progress against plan to include quality metrics.
Evaluate and manage vendor relationships as it relates to services being provided as well as software/hardware vendors supporting our organization.
About You
You have:
Bachelor's degree is required (MS or MBA preferred).
Minimum of 5 - 7 years of experience in large scale technical delivery environments and apply knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to a broad range of life-cycle activities in order to meet the requirements for student facing initiatives.
Familiarity with Technology stacks including Single Page Applications with serverless Microservices architecture development; functional and performance testing; and software configuration hosted in AWS Cloud.
Experience in leading cross-functional, technology-oriented planning or lean ux product delivery - including working with all levels of executive leadership on the business and technology sides of organizations.
Must be highly effective at working with all levels of executive leadership. Strong communication skills, customer relationship management skills, and team leadership skills are paramount to the success of this role.
Must have experience managing medium size teams (5 to 10) - both directly and indirectly in support of technology implementations.
Nice to have demonstrated experience and appreciation for transactional data management methodologies and all aspects of the data lifecycle, including preparing an organization for ongoing operational support.
Successful experience presenting to senior level executives.
The ideal candidate is a strategic and consultative leader who has had success leading technology initiatives, demonstrates strong creativity and innovative thinking, is knowledgeable about the education industry, and has the ability to lead and manage product development initiatives.
Knowledge of crossover/interdependencies between infrastructure tasks and development activities.
About Our Benefits and Compensation
College Board offers a strong compensation and benefits package that attracts top talent looking to make a difference in education.
Our robust benefits package includes health, dental, and vision insurance, tuition assistance, paid time off, paid parental leave, retirement benefits with a generous matching program, and more.
We reward performance through annual bonuses and provide opportunities for salary growth over time through base compensation increases, merit raises and promotions.
We believe in compensating staff members fairly in relation to each other, their qualifications, and their impact. The salary range for a new employee in this position is $140,000 to $170,000. The salary offer of an individual candidate within this range is specific to their location and qualifications.
Each salary offer is determined carefully using internal and external benchmarking and adjusting for the candidate's location. You will have an opportunity to discuss salary in more detail after you begin the application process.
As a self-sustaining non-profit organization with global impact, College Board offers a job that matters, a team that cares, and a place to learn, innovate and thrive!
About Our Culture
We strive to practice and improve our culture daily. Here are some headlines:
We are motivated to positively impact the educational and career trajectories of millions of students a year.
We prioritize building a diverse and inclusive team where every employee can thrive, and every voice is heard.
We welcome staff to join any or all six of our affinity groups: ARISE (Alliance for Asian Retention, Inclusion, Success, and Engagement; DIASPORA (Alliance for Pan-African Success and Achievement); Pride (alliance for LGBTQ+ staff and allies); Resilience (alliance for Native staff and advocates); SALSA (Staff Alliance for Latinx Success and Achievement); and WIN (Women's Impact Network).
We value learning and growth; we offer formal and informal ways to lead through your superpowers, sharpen your strengths, and meet your development goals.
Our high-performing engineers work with the latest technologies, so you will be constantly learning and sharpening your skills.
We have a lot of fun bringing wild ideas to life at Hack Day!
