Vice President of Engineering

Who We Are

We are the most trusted provider of data collection and management, marketing program management, and analytical solutions for our Crop and Animal Health industry clients.  

With data services at the core—surrounded by an extensible array of streamlined software solutions—our unified platform represents over three decades of innovation and expertise in the agriculture, crop protection, specialty chemical and animal health industries.

Backed by an entrepreneurial, creative and energetic work force, teammates at AGDATA are pushing the boundaries of technology to enhance our relationships with our clients.  

We are a growing team, focused on adding creative, knowledgeable individuals who are ready to jump right in and make an immediate impact.

• 30+ years of experience in the Crop and Animal Health industry
• More than 20 billion USD sales processed annually
  
  

Visit us on www.agdata.com

More about us here: https://vimeo.com/347063684

Position Summary

We are recruiting and hiring for the VP of Engineering role at AGDATA, which will be part of the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) reporting into the CEO.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS ROLE IS NOT OPEN TO OUTSIDE AGENCIES

Executive Summary / Situational Context

• We are looking for someone with proven experience in a similar business environment, managing a mature business through transformation.
• Someone that can come in and take the plan we have in place today and run with it. We are also conscious that ours is not yet a mature engineering organization. The right leader will need to bring calm and perspective amongst what is often a chaotic environment as we establish new routines, protocols, and processes.
• This is not a stretch assignment where someone will have time to grow into the opportunity given, we are still in transformation execution mode, and we need to keep moving forward at a rapid pace.
• We want someone who can focus on execution of the current plan, leveraging the management and resources we already have in place for our core business, as opposed to creating a new strategy and vision.
• The right leader will be prepared to invest in the growth of the current leadership group, along with helping them to grow their own teams.
• The individual needs to be someone who can come in and work with the existing team and the existing plan but is also strong enough to push the team to continue to develop and grow.
• The role includes strategy and vision work as we think about Horizon 3, Innovation, and growth from new offerings outside the core business.
  
  

Key Elements That Define Role and Scope of Responsibilities

• Leadership Attributes
• Someone who understands that Engineering is a critical enabler of customer acquisition, customer satisfaction and customer retention.
• Someone who can focus on driving continuous improvement and development of our Engineering organization as part of our overall Service Delivery mindset.
• Someone who will help drive a culture in our management teams and in our front-line associates that is externally focused vs internally driven.
• Someone who will work with Engineering leaders to free them up to engage in working cross functionally with other functional leaders, solving for end-to-end customer outcomes, and developing their own managers to manage the work and people to achieve the customer outcomes we are looking for.
• Someone who is not ego driven and solving for themselves and their career, but instead solving for AGDATA and our customers, and our associates.
• Oversight of Engineering teams and completing the transformation of AGDATA engineering – focus will be the continued evolution of the Engineering organization as captured by the CMMI Maturity Map (see below) we have been using to monitor and manage our organization’s forward progress. We are currently operating somewhere between Level 2 and Level 3 and the new leader will assume responsibility for our continued progress. We need to continue our efforts to increase the capacity and velocity of our engineering teams, improve quality through the ongoing development of automated testing, continue to implement CI/CD as well as other Dev Ops practices that have been identified.
  
  

Our ability to deliver quality outcomes, in a timely manner for our customers, is dependent on this continued evolution. As is our ability to innovate and build new offerings (in the core or beyond the core) to help drive “next level” growth in our business. The new leader will also assume responsibility for our offshore development practices that we currently employ and the successful integration of offshore resources into our overall capacity and release planning.

• Partner with Architecture and Infrastructure – we have a solid architecture and infrastructure vision and roadmap in place. The new leader will partner with the Chief Architect to ensure that the execution of the infrastructure roadmap remains a priority in the face of competing initiatives. It is understood that some of our current thinking may ultimately change as we move closer to implementing different aspects of our current plan.
• Enterprise Client Engagement – one of the roles that the Engineering leader must play is to engage with technology / business leadership at a small number of Global clients where AGDATA needs to engage in complex technology transformation plans that support the growth strategies of these companies.
  
  

This is a key aspect of both revenue preservation / retention as well as growth. With the industry having completed a major consolidation event, all of the global enterprise companies are having to deal with a common set of strategic challenges: (a) they must drive growth in line with the expectations that drove consolidation in the first place, (b) which means establishing entirely new core data sets to define products and customers so they can deliver a new experience to their customers, (c) which requires them to completely transform their foundational systems and improving the operational flow of all supporting and enabling technologies. The bottom line is that these are massive technology transformations that AGDATA can be a part of, which means we have to be able to contribute to the discussions at an executive level. We also need to manage distributed teams with competing priorities, while understanding and reflecting the sense of urgency that our clients feel.

• Partnering with Product Management to Drive AGDATA Growth – The Engineering leader must work closely with the Product Management leader to produce sales and solution outcomes that serve both the Enterprise clients and prospects as well as mid-market commercial solutions that allow us to achieve growth in those segments as well. The right candidate will understand the nuances / balancing act of having to serve Enterprise “custom” client needs through the delivery of solution components “as a service”, while also producing end to end commercial solutions we can sell in the mid-market.
  
  

Our ideal candidate will have…

AGDATA Engineering: Tech Stack, Development Languages and Tools

Summary

A big piece of our overall business transformation has been the transformation of our technology stack and the overall skill levels of our Engineering teams. We are currently converting legacy engineers to / and recruiting new engineers with full stack development capabilities. Below is a summary of our platform technology stack and SDLC. This list is reflective of the transformation technology environment the VP of Engineering will be leading:

• Agile SDLC, Scaled Agile, Atlassian JIRA
• DevOps, DevSecOps, CI / CD, Git
• Microservice and Event-Driven Architectures
• Hybrid Private / Public Cloud (Azure) Hosting and PaaS and Container Orchestration
• Microsoft Technology Stack
• C#, .NET, ASP.NET, NoSQL, SQL Server
• Angular, React
• Data Warehousing, MicroStrategy
• Visual Studio, VS Code, Azure DevOps
  
  

How AGDATA Will Support You

Supporting your health & well-being:

• You have the option to choose from four medical, two dental and two vision plans to ensure your elections are the best fit for you and your family including your domestic partner and their child(ren).
• Helping you save: you’ll have access to a Health Savings Account with employer contributions as well as Health and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts.
• Planning for the future: you can plan for the near and long term with AGDATA’s 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching company contributions and our tuition reimbursement program.
• Ensuring all around well-being: you’ll also get to enjoy access to ancillary benefits, Employee Assistance Programs including virtual counseling sessions, Pet Insurance, Ergonomic Assessments, and other discount programs that will help you and your family stay on track physically, socially, emotionally, and financially.
  
  

Emphasizing Work Life Balance

• Paid time off is available to you and we also have competitive holiday options available including the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The special perk here is that the entire organization is off at the same time.
• Offering flexibility: we understand, life happens. You can work from home and partner with your manager to flex your hours.
  
  

Being Comfortable In The Office

• Need or want to come into our brand-new office space? Free snacks and different types of drinks will be available for you to choose from.
• Offering a best-in-class onboarding experience: AGDATA invests heavily in our associates' training and development. Our Training team is fully dedicated to ensuring your onboarding will be successful and also focuses on the continued development of your soft and hard skills.
  
  

Living An Open-door Environment

• You’ll have unparalleled visibility and communication with senior leadership across the organization. Each of our executive team members meets with our new hires during their first quarter!
• Supporting atmosphere encouraging positive feedback: Our Shout Out Program gives our associates the opportunity to give feedback at any time which will be shared and celebrated company-wide and may even be topped off with an award.
• Ensuring clear communication: Our monthly in-person and virtual town halls led by our CEO and other Leaders guarantee everyone stays up-to-date. We make sure to provide lunch so you can socialize and collaborate.