Director of Software Engineering

About Pavelka

Our ambition is to be sought after globally as the expert in creating workplace wellbeing embedded in culture, embodied by leaders, and practiced daily. Our clients and end-users, we call them members, are ‘believers in better’ who are pioneers courageously and proactively seeking out ways to change themselves and the workplace cultures they steward. Our enemy is the modern workplace culture that robs us of our life force energy, leaving us depleted and creating a workforce of unwell beings. Pavelka is a visionary guide, illuminating the path towards a workforce lit up with wellbeing.

Role Overview

In supporting the development of our technology, you will align the goals of Pavelka, along with the required outcomes of our clients and the needs of the end-user to develop, in partnership with our agency partners, The Pavelka App. Overseeing software development end-to-end, you will guide the structure in which we plan, develop, and provide feedback on what we are developing and why. You will ensure that our work is thoroughly documented and compliant with all contractual and statutory regulations in the jurisdictions in which our app is available. Overseeing our contracted development agency, you will ensure quality, speed, and efficiency so that Pavelka and our clients are assured good value for money. Like us, you are excited by the art of the possible, and you will undertake research and development, creating options for how Pavelka can utilize new technologies and approaches to share with key stakeholders and investors. With experience working in businesses that are approaching investors, you can craft pitch decks confidently, outline business cases, and build trust and rapport with non-technical stakeholders so that they can see the value in what we are trying to develop, as it lights up the world with wellbeing.

Role Description

In this role, you will play a critical role in helping us achieve the following:

• Strategy Development: Develop and execute a software development/product strategy aligned with our goals and objectives and our end-users needs. Analyze and review every element of our existing platform to identify critical areas of concern, risks and potential mitigations, and opportunities for improvement. Review our development framework and practices to identify areas for improvement and opportunities to increase efficiencies and productivity. Understand the goals and objectives of various stakeholder levels; Co-founders and investors, Pavelka as an organization, our client-facing teams, our clients, and our end-users. A full review of our tech stack and costs with the view to streamlining and making the process and cost-saving efficiencies. Support in deciding on whether to continue to develop our existing platform, or outline a new technical solution to help us achieve our tech vision.
• Infrastructure: Drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for our infrastructure.
• Development practices: Make continuous improvements in engineering processes, tools and methodologies.
• Data: Understand and design a data structure that will allow us to measure, analyse and report on outcomes and impact of the work that we do for all levels of stakeholder. Our application and the underlying collection, processing and use of data needs to comply with relevant regulations, standards and best practices, including data privacy laws, data security standards, client-led requirements, and other industry-specific regulations.
• Security: Offer practical oversight of our security frameworks, ensuring that our application and infrastructure meets the strict compliance requirements of our client’s and the jurisdictions in which Pavelka operates. This may require the procurement of a vendor to help support with day to day security operations and infrastructure improvements that help meet our security objectives.
• Research and Development: Stay on top of emerging trends, companies, and practices ensuring that Pavelka is able to understand use cases and make data-driven decisions on further embedding something new into the application, or development practices e.g. AI.
• Team Collaboration: Collaborate with cross-functional teams, and external vendors to align development efforts with other organizational goals, build trust in our application and ensure that everybody feels heard.
• Integration Management: Act as the main point of contact for the integrations we have within our application, staying up to date with what they are doing to update so that the service does not cause any impact on the user experience.
• Vendor Management: Negotiate and manage the relationship with our development agency, ensuring the quality of the team and their work and that the appropriate resources are available to us in time to meet our deadlines. Review our roster of vendors that support our software development, and build breadth and depth where required.
• Roadmap, Sprint, and Task Management: Our roadmap should be up to date and built on solid research and development, requirements gathering, and user feedback, in partnership with our Product Manager. Each sprint should be clearly aligned with achieving the desired feature outcome, and you will be required to set priorities and unblock or escalate tasks as needed.
• Quality & Assurance: Ensure our application is thoroughly tested and performing as expected.
• Deployment and Release Schedule: Responsible for setting up the automations and safely deploying new features and updates to our production and client-facing applications according to the agreed-upon release schedule maintained by our product manager.
• Performance Monitoring and Reporting: This role will establish key performance metrics for our application and monitor the systems supporting it to ensure its optimal performance.

Experience & Skill Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• Proven experience (10+ years) in software engineering and infrastructure roles, with at least three years in a senior management capacity.
• Experience with a health, wellbeing or behavior change application or platform.
• Strong background in designing, building and maintaining infrastructure systems.
• Expert in operating AWS
• Expertise in networking, security, and system performance optimization
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across teams.
• A track record of developing and retaining top engineering talent, even within vendors.
• Experience of delivering tangible outcomes, with little guidance or oversight.
• Able to easily transition between high-level strategy and day-to-day implementation.
• Ability to translate needs into clear technical requirements.
• Can assess disparate data streams and distill them into meaningful and ultimately actionable recommendations.
• Demonstrated ability to articulate complex technical themes to C-level executives and investors.
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities simultaneously, ensuring timeline delivery of high-quality results.