This customer experience studio is powered by one of the world’s leading technology companies. Here, customer experiences drive us, game-changing marketing is conceived, awards are won, and technology is at the very heart of bringing our creative ideas to life.

Clients aren’t just customers, they’re partners. Integrity and a team-driven environment serve as incubators for entrepreneurial minds. We provide an environment where business stakeholders and end-users engage directly with the design team to create engaging and usable mobile and desktop financial interfaces.

This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced practitioner to work at the forefront of financial application innovation in a co-innovation environment with one of the world’s leading financial services companies. Our clients set high standards for engagement, business understanding, and quality of process and output, as well as innovative methods and interactions. In the studio, the work culture supports innovation through personal ownership of team outcomes, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and design thinking.

The successful candidate is a mature development professional who is keen to work in a delivery-led organization focused on innovating processes and practices to improve client business impact.

job description

We are looking for an experienced Head of Innovation and Operations (“Captain”) to join the team and work as part of our multi-disciplinary web and mobile development teams for our client in financial services.

The Captain will oversee the multiple scrum teams in a fast-paced agile environment, maximizing the potential of individuals and the teams as a whole.

The Captain ensures that deadlines are met in a timely and efficient fashion and that quality and satisfaction levels are the highest possible.

The Captain provides management with status reports, solutions for complex problems and mitigates risks for the studio.

Overall the Captain is focused on enabling the function of the studio and aligning delivery and support per quality process.

The Captain is in charge of overall planning, monitoring of the associated budget, allocate resources and motivate scrum masters and other team members. As Captain you will actively participate in initiatives to evaluate and improve current ways of working (Agile) and delivering digital experience innovation for high-profile clients, achieving the targeted business outcomes and helping our customers transform their businesses.

The captain will have the following specific responsibilities
  • Source and manage a dynamic team of 20 to 30 developers, 2-5 project managers / scrum masters (employees and contractors) and other multidisciplinary experts as required. This includes recruitment, induction, project assignment and contract renewal/termination.
  • Ideate technology and processes to solve business problems
  • Scan the market for the new disruptive technology and formulate the adaption scenario
  • Define strategic direction for the studio to embrace new services and technologies to adapt to the changing digital domain
  • Build customer relationship to engage and deliver the solutions to customer
  • Work together with project managers, product owners and customers to deliver shippable products
  • Ensure that teams have appropriate product and technical specifications, direction, and resources to deliver effectively by establishing realistic estimates for timelines while ensuring that projects remain on target to meet deadlines
  • Coordinate release and sprint planning, and if necessary daily scrum meetings, to ensure studio projects run smoothly and address any risks or issues in a proactive and timely manner
  • Provide leadership and guidance to coach, motivate and lead team members to deliver excellent client outcomes and continuous improvement of studio processes and methods
  • Establish and grow a development culture that celebrates good craft, great estimates and innovative, collaborative approaches to problem-solving
  • Maintain strong relationships with the client’s IT Director and Online Marketing Director, and report to the steering committee
  • Communicate with senior management in or outside clients’ organizations to promote and grow its business
qualifications
  • Bachelor’s degree, preferably in Computer Science or related field
  • 15+ years’ experience in software development including 5+ years of delivery manager experience in a digital agency working through end-to-end (UX) design and development cycles, delivering software products into production using Agile / Iterative disciplines
  • 10+ years of leadership experience in a highly fluid organization showing the ability to work as a change agent for the organization
  • Ability to lead and communicate effectively with diverse teams of business/marketing professionals, technical architects, creative directors/visual designers, information architects, and developers
  • Strong program management skills
  • Experience managing the development of software for web and mobile platforms
  • Experience with financial services systems
  • Experience with Scrum methodology and Agile practices
  • Experience managing co-located, remote and (Indian) offshore teams
interpersonal skills
  • Self-motivated, decisive, team player, and results oriented
  • Well-organized, good communication and reporting skills
  • Ability to successfully work under tight project deadlines
  • Excellent spoken and written English