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About the company

Our client, a Toronto, ON based venture backed fintech company, develops innovative analytics and cloud based financial solutions for publicly traded companies. Companies around the world leverage our client’s leading web and intelligence solutions to make more insightful and timely financial decisions.

With an impressive roster of global clients and a significant Series B financing, our client is well positioned to continue its impressive growth.

Position Scope

Reporting to the CEO, the CTO shall have broad oversight and responsibility for developing the firm’s strategic product roadmap, aligning teams to realize the vision, and transition new products from vision to commercialization.

As well, the successful candidate will provide leadership in all activities related to the development, engineering and delivery of the company’s products and services from definition and specification through design, release, enhancement, quality assurance, implementation and support.

As a senior leader with portfolio level responsibility for the product strategy, product management and the market success of the firm’s product offerings, the CTO is a key contributor to achieving our client’s near-term and long-term objectives.

The successful candidate will lead a team of approximately 30 experienced and highly capable individuals who are characterized by their loyalty, creativity and commitment to company’s innovative products and the satisfaction of their customers.

Functional Tasks

• Lead the development of the company’s product vision and strategy as a key member of the executive leadership team.
• Perform market research, market validation and whitespace analysis to identify new opportunities for existing and new products to support their clients.
• Foster close relationships with all key market constituents (customers, non-customers, analyst and competitors) to validate product strategy and roadmap.
• Direct the product engineering, development and technology teams to develop reliable innovative product platforms on-time, within cost targets, using accepted state-of-the-art Agile methodologies balancing the demands of release content, quality and desired release dates.
• Maintain keen awareness of the trends and conditions in capital markets, technology, products and development tools relative to the needs of the company’s customers and businesses.
• Establish new scalable product platforms and processes which meet current organizational requirements while anticipating future growth and complexity.
• Establish key indicators for competitive performance in completion of development projects and for rapid, realistic decisions on strategies, plans and projects.
• Ensure the optimal application of technology and engineering resources to meet the product development and/or customer requirements and deadlines.
• Hire and manage direct reports, along with their goal setting, performance measurement and development feedback.
• Foster an environment that enables highly technical staff to consistently perform with excellence.
• Align the engineering 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.

Key Performance Deliverables

In light of the identified responsibilities, the following are specific deliverables that the position is designed to achieve.

• Development of a strategic product vision
• Transitioning innovative product concepts through to successful commercialization through the leadership of a highly skilled team
• Deliver product strategies and roadmaps to key stakeholders within and external to the firm
• Development of a highly innovative and ‘best of breed’ development team
• Continuous innovation and quality control within the existing suite of products

Competency Profile

The following competencies listed below define the role of CTO.

Drive
Adopts an energetic approach. Works towards goals and willingly tackles demanding tasks. Demonstrates capacity for sustained effort and hard work over long periods of time, even in the face of adversity.

Communication
Expresses ideas in a clear, fluent and concise manner; written and oral arguments are compelling and responsive to the needs of the audience; comprehends communications from others and responds appropriately.

Developing and Coaching others
Accurately assesses the strength and development needs of employees, challenges others to improve their abilities and actively supports their development; Continually provides timely and constructive feedback, coaching and challenging learning opportunities; Adjusts coaching style based on each employee’s ability and motivation level.

Quality Orientation
Strives for excellence in products, processes and/or services through continued evaluation, enhancement and redefinition of quality standards.

Innovation
Generates new ideas. Challenges existing assumptions. Goes beyond the status quo. Recognizes the need for new or modified approaches. Brings various perspectives and approaches together, combining them in a creative fashion to implement effective improvements.

Results Orientation
Focuses strongly on achieving agreed upon outcomes and ensures that key objectives are met. Conveys a sense of urgency and drives issues to closure. Aims to improve upon past performance. Establishes aggressive personal targets and strives to achieve them.

Preferred Experience / Education

The following indicates specific industry, academic and functional experience/qualifications that are important to the successful achievement of the identified responsibilities and performance deliverables. The successful candidate will:

• Have superior communication and people management skills with a proven ability to motivate and mentor teams, instill accountability and achieve agreed upon outcomes.
• Bring a proven track record of leading and scaling cloud-based, SaaS product development teams from 30 to 100 engineers.
• Have experience working in highly dynamic, entrepreneurial, fast-paced and innovative environments.
• Bring a leadership style that ensures projects are driven by a unified purpose, a development process suitable to the project at hand, a team culture of understanding the problem, and a flow of ideas such that the best ideas rise to the surface.
• Have at least 15 years of prior work experience with at least 5 to 7 years leading product development teams of 30+.
• Possess a University degree in engineering or computer science with preference given to individuals with an MBA.
• Ideally have experience leading teams with developing capital markets software solutions.

Remuneration & Benefits

• Highly competitive base, variable and equity for the successful candidate.