Vice President Product Engineering

Bright Horizons is an organization that offers child-care, back-up child care, elder care, and help for education and careers. Around the globe, parents and organizations have selected Bright Horizons to provide high-quality education and care, operate with integrity, and empower them to thrive. For more than 30 years, Bright Horizons has created measured success one client, one family, and one child at a time.

In 1986, Bright Horizons’ founders saw that child care was an enormous obstacle for working parents. Providing on-site centers became just one way we responded to help whole organizations work better. Today Bright Horizons services are used by more than 1,000 of the world’s top employers and power many of the world's best brands.

Diversity & Inclusion-

Bright Horizons is fully committed to a workplace where all employees feel welcomed and comfortable. The organization has been recognized as one of Fortune's Best Workplaces for Diversity; and is proud to have received a perfect score of 100 percent on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s 2018 Corporate Equality Index -- a national benchmarking survey and report on corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ workplace equality. Bright Horizons has been recognized 19 times by Fortune as one of the Top 100 Companies to work for in the United States. Bright Horizons has been honored as Forbes 2021 one of The Best Employers for Diversity and 2021 People Companies that Care.

The VP, Product Engineering, Full Service Applications will be located at Bright Horizon’s headquarters in Newton, MA with opportunities to work in a hybrid remote and office environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Establish and maintain strong partnership with Full Service line of business leaders and teams to ensure a defined IT applications plan for each business line. Ensure alignment of all application solutions to overall Bright Horizons Applications Strategic Plan and Architecture.
• Ensure delivery of strategic applications solutions/programs to business lines and functional groups assigned.
• Manage the evolution of Bright Horizons Product Engineering, Full Service function. Evolve Bright Horizons project methodology, following a standard project life cycle, standardizing development processes for all applications.
• Develop Bright Horizons Full Services Applications roadmap, including short-term and long-term solutions to meet business line needs and scale, and opportunities to integrate business line applications and development of overall architecture. Identify major strategic investment trade-offs with respect to plan goals, technology trends and product delivery capabilities.
• Implement standards for requirements documentation, development and test environments, change control, code management and bug tracking.
• Meet financial objectives by forecasting requirements; preparing program budgets; scheduling expenditures; analyzing variances; initiating corrective actions.
• Support development of strong project management approach, including project plan development, performance tracking, identification of risks, and mitigation strategies.
• Develop and lead internal full service product engineerint team to ensure optimized level of resources and skills to meet applications development needs.
• Establish technical standards and ensure adherence to them for product development and operations.
• Support sourcing, engagement and management of delivery of application solutions from on/offshore development partners. Determine opportunities for components of application work that may be best-served (based on increased service levels, optimized costs, risk mitigation or other parameters) by developing internal functions and talent in combination with leveraging external development sources.
• Manage ongoing development partners to ensure high performance service delivery and optimized cost basis.
• Drive to “One BH” through architecture simplification, application rationalization, and reduced cost to achieve synergies and overall business value.
• Set up innovative technological and cultural approach to quickly introduce new products and capabilities that provide Bright Horizon's with a competitive edge.

Decision Making Authority:

• This role work under the direction of the GVP, Head of Product Engineering, and in partnership with others in IT. Leads management of all internal and external application resources in the US and internationally.

Skills, Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Business or related field required. Master's Degree or MBA preferred.
• Strong experience in IT applications development and delivery.
• 15 years of experience in leading architecture, design, development, testing, implementation and support of complex, enterprise-class IT solutions.
• Experience developing engaging and user centric mobile applications in iOS and Android.
• Experience working in technical environments including but not limited to – Custom Development using .Net, Angular and React technologies, Google/Azure Cloud, Identity & Access Management, Python, NoSQL DB, MongoDB or similar technologies.
• Experience leading, architecting, and building products in Azure, GCP, AWS or any other cloud platforms, including but not limited to native custom development in the cloud, migrating on prem loads into the cloud, and establishing a working enterprise strategy around it.
• Expertise in the smooth introduction and rollout of new IT solutions, retirement and migration of prior solutions and platforms; demonstrates a solutions-oriented approach to business and operational teams.
• Expertise in designing, building and supporting application interfaces and integration.
• Expertise in project lifecycle development and prevailing methodologies (example: Agile, Waterfall, Hybrid, etc.)
• Expertise in enterprise architecture standards, conceptual architectures, industry.
• Proven experience managing virtual teams, on/near/offshore development, client implementations.
• Demonstrated ability to identify and manage outside development partners to meet project requires within performance and financial goals.
• Experience in budget development and proven history of managing applications projects within financial parameters.
• Critical thinker; analytical; challenging and constant focus on continuous improvement.
• Excellent collaboration skills; must be a team-player and support the broader enterprise while delivering upon specific project/line of business requirements.

The successful candidate will enjoy the opportunity to:

• Play a critical leadership role in a growing company that is a leader in its field.
• Introduce innovative solutions that will have a transformational impact on the company.
• Serve a world-class client base of the leading employers across all industries.
• Be a member of a successful and forward-looking IT leadership team.
• Join a culture of collegiality, transparency and respect.
• Make a difference in the lives of the people we serve.