ROAD SCHOLAR DIRECTOR, CUSTOMER SYSTEMS
Job Title:
Status:
Reports To:
Location:
Director, Customer Systems
Full-time professional position
Chief Information Office
Boston, MA (with occasional regional travel)
Road Scholar is the world’s largest nonprofit provider of educational travel programs to the mature travel market. With 9 offices and programs in over 100 countries, we are busy! Learn more at http://www.roadscholar.org.
The Director, Customer Systems is responsible for the coordination, delivery, and support of all application development activities for the Marketing, Customer Services, Air Travel Services, and Annual Giving divisions of Road Scholar. This person will partner with these groups to proactively define ways technology can be used to increase business, donations, and revenue.
As a senior member of the Road Scholar IT team this person will work with their business counterparts to drive business improvements through technology innovation. The ideal individual will be forward thinking, dynamic, and someone who is capable of presenting (and selling) ideas to Steering committees, IT senior staff, and corporate executives on topics such as new concepts, current status, strategic efforts, project updates, project cycle and expected results.
Road Scholar is embarking on a new cloud-based web architecture providing users the ability to create and manage their own internal and external websites. We are looking for an individual with strong leadership experience transforming the user-IT relationship from one of demand to one of empowerment. Working closely with the Enterprise Architecture team, this individual will lead the application and adoption of these new technologies.
Candidates for the job must provide IT subject matter expertise in areas including requirements gathering, project management, project scope definition, risk identification, resource management and allocation, facilitation, and other areas of expertise based on professional knowledge and background. This person will ensure projects are completed on time, in scope, and within budget.
Administrative functions of this position include managing the budget, staff management, planning the utilization of resources, and playing an active role in planning the technical direction of the IT development and database environment for the next 2 - 5 years. This individual must be able to identify gaps in methodologies to provide continuous improvement, efficiencies, and “Lessons Learned” within the team. The Director, Customer Systems must have experience and be comfortable directly managing a team of web developers.
Personal characteristics contribute to the incumbent’s ability to excel within this position are:
• Enjoys and is comfortable directing and delegating
• Enjoys and is comfortable presenting ideas to groups
• Prefers to work independently as a manager with little supervision
• Flexible; adjusts to changing conditions
• Shows self-discipline and conscientiousness needed to meet responsibilities
• Good at setting goals and providing direction
• Good at fostering cooperation amongst subordinates and peers
Specific Responsibilities:
- Accountable to the Marketing, Call Center, Air Travel Services, and Annual Giving business departments for the delivery of projects within agreed time-scales and budgets.
- Develop a deep understanding of business requirements and communicate project goals, risks, and technical and resource requirements.
- Develop project plans for all project activities and tracking those activities
- Manage technical staff in a matrix environment including creating and managing outsourced relationships, both domestic and global.
- Work with keys stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate the requirements into technical/functional specifications for the engineers.
- Take charge of ad hoc projects assigned
- Initiate and provide leadership, strategic/tactical direction and planning input on all information technology and business area issues and in the development of an IT environment which meets current and anticipated business requirements and objectives.
- Gain consensus on technical decisions and ensure that appropriate software engineering practices are employed to deliver high quality results
- Participate with IT management in the development of technology products, service standards and development efforts that impact the client/business area.
- Must be able to work for any US employer indefinitely without sponsorship.
- BA/BS degree and 10+ years of relevant professional work experience.
- Experience and knowledge of support Marketing, Call Center, or Travel departments in a retail/eCommerce web-oriented environment.
- Seasoned project manager with 4+ years of experience managing complex technology projects with aggressive schedules. Ability to manage projects from requirements to implementation and support.
- Proven experience leading IT and user transformations
- Excellent broad technical skills and knowledge of C#/.NET development. Knowledge of CRM systems (particularly Siebel) would be a plus.
- Experience working with centralized software architecture and infrastructure teams.
- Agile or Kanban project management methodologies desired
- A senior-level, mature individual who has strong interpersonal skills including:
- the ability to develop effective working relationships with others
- a demonstrated customer focus
- teamwork skills
- a willingness to share technical and business knowledge with team members
- a demonstrated ability to resolve conflict
- effective problem solving skills
- ability to make fact-based decisions
- effective oral and written communication skills