Chief Technology Officer

We are looking for a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to provide sound technical leadership in all aspects of our business. You will communicate with employees, stakeholders and customers to ensure our company’s technologies are used appropriately.

Strategic thinking and strong business acumen are essential in this role. We expect you to be well-versed in current technological trends and familiar with a variety of business concepts. If you are also an excellent communicator and public speaker, we’d like to meet you.

Functions & Responsibilities:

As CTO, it will be your responsibility to architect and oversee the building of the entire technology platform for all aspects of process, product implementation, customer onboarding, automated underwriting, policy issuance, policy servicing, claims 3rd party financial data source integration, loan lifecycle management, data-driven learning algorithms, among others.

The CTO will also be responsible for:

Strategy & Planning:

• In partnership with the company's founders, identify opportunities and risks for delivering the company's services as a web-based business, including identification of competitive services, opportunities for innovation, and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles to the business success.
• Evaluate and identify appropriate technology platforms (including web application frameworks and the deployment stack) for delivering the company's services.
• Lead strategic planning to achieve business goals by identifying and prioritizing development initiatives and setting timetables for the evaluation, development, and deployment of all web-based services.
• Participate as a member of the senior management team in establishing governance processes of direction and control to ensure that objectives are achieved, risks are managed appropriately, and the organization's resources are used responsibly, particularly in the areas of software development, office networks and computers, and telecommunications.
• Collaborate with other departments to assess and recommend technologies that support company organizational needs.
• Direct development and execution of an enterprise-wide information security plan that protects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the company's data and servers.

Implementation & Deployment:

• Collaborate with the founders and potential customers to develop use cases (or user stories) and specifications that describe the implementation of the company's services.
• Collaborate with a User Experience Designer and Operation Department to implement customer onboarding processes.
• Select or define the company's software development methodology.
• Review current best practices for the selected web framework and establish the initial architecture for the application.
• Select and manage company staff or outsourced vendors who will implement the application.
• Establish and supervise the software development process, setting short-term objectives and assessing progress as defined by the selected software development methodology.
• Establish and supervise a quality assurance process, including integration and system testing.
• Select, deploy, and monitor performance profiling tools and procedures.
• Establish an application deployment process and supervise deployment to staging and production servers.
• Monitor application performance and review any application failures in staging or production.
• As a member of the senior management team, establish a customer service and support process, with responsibility for digital services that implement the support function.
• Establish a process to integrate customer service and support with the software engineering process to support resolution of customer issues and improve application usability.

Operational Management:

• Maintain up-to-date knowledge of technology standards, industry trends, emerging technologies, and software development best practices by attending relevant conferences and reading widely (including reading your peers- blogs!).
• Ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across the organization.
• Share knowledge, mentor, and educate the organization's investors, management, staff, partners, customers, and stakeholders regarding the company's technological vision, opportunities, and challenges.
• Supervise recruitment, training, retention, and organization of all development staff related to the technology department.

Knowledge & Experience:

• Demonstrated ability to envision digital services that meet consumer needs
• Familiar with more than one software development methodology
• Ability to discern user requirements, develop specifications & negotiation skills
• Understanding of the product life cycle
• Knowledge of Data Security and Regulatory Compliance
• Knowledge of technological trends to build strategy
• Strategic thinking
• Problem-solving aptitude
• Advanced technological skillset and a demonstrated history with technology
• Exceptional team management skills
• Excellent verbal and written communication
• Ability to delegate efficiently
• Extensive industry knowledge with an eye towards the future 
• Has worked as a CTO for at least 10 years
• Degree in Information Technology /Computer science

Performance Measurement:

The performance of the candidate shall be evaluated in terms of achievement of overall business systems development, team training/development and alliances/partnerships established and overall regulatory framework implementation both for software/hardware and cybersecurity topics.