VP Software Engineering

The Opportunity

CoLab is a team of passionate, collaborative, and driven engineers, developers, designers, and innovators, working together to set the new standard for mechanical engineering design collaboration. Our product, CoLab, is the world’s first Design Engagement System (DES) - a category defining product that Engineering teams use to engage in meaningful, productive design conversations, catch preventable mistakes, and get to market faster. Our customers include large engineering organizations such as Johnson Controls, Komatsu, and Polaris in the industrial equipment, consumer products, automotive, aerospace & defense, and shipbuilding industries.

The ideal candidate for our first VP Software Engineering position is passionate about applying technology to build a world-class Product and Service in the right way. In this role you will be responsible for building and maintaining a strong engineering organization that spans multiple teams including Product Development, QA, Ops and Technical Support, in order to do just that. We’re looking for an empathetic, supportive, and hands-on leader that themselves would be capable of performing well within any position in the R&D org. As VP Software Engineering, you will also be responsible for attracting, recruiting, nurturing, and retaining top engineering talent as we grow our team and customer base. “Kindness & Respect” and “One Team, One Mission” are core values that you live by and demonstrate on a daily basis.

We believe that the mechanical engineering software space is long overdue for disruption, and that cloud technology will play a core part in this shift. For these teams, our cloud-first approach provides inherently valuable collaboration capabilities, a forward- facing deployment model, and “Security as a Solution”. Our application is hosted in Amazon Web Services and our technology stack includes React, Apollo, GraphQL, Python, Postgres, and K8s. In line with our values of “Ownership” and “Better every Day”, we’ve always taken a team-first vs top-down approach to technology decision making, enabling developers to propose solutions and explore technologies that they believe to be the best fit for the job. In this role you will level up our team by providing valuable guidance and mentorship, based on years of experience with our technology stack and a proven track record in engineering leadership.

In collaboration with our Product and Design teams, you will provide valuable input on our overall product strategy, including Product Roadmapping, resource allocation, and architecture and technology decisions. As a part of our leadership team, you will also help develop and drive a cohesive strategy that goes beyond engineering and product, including go-to-market strategy, sales, marketing and customer success. This role is for someone who is comfortable moving quickly between long term planning, such as setting yearly Product goals, and low level details, like getting that feature across the line.

What you’ll do:

Oversee Product Development at CoLab - own the application architecture and technical decision making. Set strategic technology direction for the team Guide our Product Ops team (DevOps, CI/CD, Enablement & DevEx). Work with Team Leads to identify and prioritize strategic initiatives that will enable our Product Development team to move faster and with more confidence Manage and provide mentorship for Development Team Leads and Ops Team Leads Work together with our Cloud Security & Operations team to ensure we are embedding application and cloud security in everything we do Own our Software Development Life Cycle and ensure we are meeting our compliance requirements (namely SOC 2) Set, measure, and manage Standard Operating Objectives/Metrics for Uptime, Application Performance, Development Velocity and Quality Plan and execute strategic Proof of Concepts (both product and tech) that inform our strategy and roadmaps Own hiring across our entire development org, and provide career pathing and performance coaching to the team Contribute to other areas of the business as a member of CoLab’s Senior Leadership team Support our Sales and Customer Success teams from a technology perspective. Participate in calls and demos with larger potential customers and existing customers

What you’ll need:

10+ years of software development experience, including cloud software development and operations, ideally with large-scale SaaS software products Familiarity with our technology stack, including React, Python, GraphQL, Postgres and AWS services such as EKS, ECS, RDS, etc 5+ years of experience in a technology executive role Proven ability to grow and lead engineering teams through start-up and scale-up phases of growth successfully A strong aptitude for Product Management and strategic planning Senior Leadership and ideally Executive Team experience

Who you are:

A passionate builder that is excited about creating a world-class Product. You are biased toward action, and balance risk and progress well A capable team member that would perform well in any position in the engineering org Detail oriented - has experience scaling software products to thousands of users and customers and is skilled at solving complex technical and team challenges A compassionate, collaborative, and inclusive leader that provides valuable guidance and mentorship to the team A visionary that can look beyond the current state and their own org/discipline, to other parts of the organization such as marketing, sales and operations A compassionate, collaborative, and inclusive leader that provides valuable guidance and mentorship to the team. You approach work with a positive, curious, and solution focused attitude.

Additional Details:

This is a full-time, permanent position with a competitive compensation package that includes stock options This role offers an extended health and benefits package that includes unlimited paid vacation and RRSP Our main office location is in St. John’s, NL where we offer hybrid and remote opportunities. As many of our developers reside in the province, we’d love to have this person in NL as well and are willing to cover relocation costs. However, we are open to this person working remotely from anywhere in Canada.

Please apply directly through our careers page: https://colabsoftware.applytojobs.ca/development/19173