Networking Architect

For a startup run by a serial founder:

Job Description :

- Architect and develop our B2B platform, focusing on delivering an exceptional user experience.

- Recruit and mentor an engineering team to build scalable and reliable technology solutions.

- Work in tandem with co-founders to ensure technology strategies are well-aligned with business objectives.

- Manage technical architecture to guarantee performance, scalability, and adaptability for future needs.

- Drive innovation by adopting advanced technologies into our product development cycle.

- Promote a culture of technical excellence and collaborative spirit within the engineering team.

Qualifications :

- Over 8 years of experience in technology team management roles, with a proven track record in software development and system architecture + Dev Ops

- Entrepreneurial mindset with a strong interest in building and scaling innovative products.

- Exceptional leadership abilities with experience in team building and mentorship.

- Strategic thinker with a history of delivering effective technology solutions.

Skills :

- Expertise in modern programming languages and application frameworks.

- Deep knowledge of cloud platforms, databases, and system design principles.

- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.

- Strong communication skills with the ability to lead cross-functional teams effectively.

About Company:

Our client is a Delhi NCR, India headquartered 7+-year-old social/development sector-focused advisory and consulting firm. With a robust team of 100+ ICT4D professionals,they develop IT applications for NGOs, Government functionaries, CSRs, International Funding Organizations, etc. to manage theirprojects and programs in India and abroad. We are a team of young dynamic, development-conscious tech -enablers and problem solvers consisting of a diverse mix of development professionals, technology enthusiasts, software

engineers, and analysts. Our solutions enable organizations to monitor and evaluate their programs for maximum impact and operate seamlessly across everyday operations.

Job Overview:

Dhwani Rural information systems Pvt. Ltd. is looking to hire a Chief Technical Officer, to provide sound technical leadership in all aspects of the business. The CTO would be responsible for all technology systems, processes, software design and development within the company. Our ideal candidate needs to have more than 15 years of

experience building technology solutions to improve business process, increase productivity and efficiency and reduce cost for its customers, vendors, and internal employees. The candidate should have experience in social sector consulting/IT consulting/Government advisory and working with CSRs, Philanthropies or Large NGOs. The CTO must have in depth knowledge of and experience in driving technological innovation and leading product development

projects.

Responsibilities

The CTO will work with a team in the following activities -

• Lead the strategy for technology platforms, partnerships and external relationships

• Formulate a vision for how technology will be utilized within the company

• Streamline the IT Project requirements through a technological approach

• Outline company goals and timelines for research and development

• Develop technical aspects of the company’s strategy for alignment with its business goals

• Help departments use technology profitably and act as a mentor to middle management of the company

• Make executive decisions on behalf of the company’s technological requirements.

• Keep abreast of new trends and best practices in the technology landscape

• Work closely with Dhwani’s senior leadership to define and deliver new products and enhancements

Essential Tech Requirements:

• Broad knowledge of software engineering: languages, frameworks, techniques, and industry trends.

• Experience in designing and managing an effective IT governance framework across the spectrum of IT

service delivery.

• Good understanding of agile methodologies

• In-depth knowledge of web systems architecture, design and development

• Knowledge of software development life cycle. Preferable from CS/IT

• Basic understanding of how a software works (Frontend, Backend, API, Database Schema etc)

• Exposure to different off the shelf solutions (ZOHO, QuickBooks, Greythr, Google Suite, Microsoft Suite,

Zapier, Survey Monkey, IVR, SMS)

• Requirement gathering for software

• Get involved in the entire SDLC (Design, Develop, UAT, Rollout)

Essential Non-Tech Requirements:

• Accountable and ownership taking attitude

• Strong sense of purpose to work in this space (Tech4Good, ICT4D, Social Impact)

• Exceptional team management skills.

• Excellent verbal and written communication.

• Ability to multi-task and juggle various deadlines and domians

• Extensive industry knowledge with an eye towards the future.

• Prior experience of handling multiple projects in different domains at the same time

• Prior experience of managing large tech teams (50-200 engineers) including developers, designers, QAs, Das

and other teams

Qualification

Bachelor’s degree in software, computer science, engineering or any related STEM field. Have worked as a senior

engineering head or CTO in NGOs, Social Impact Consulting Firms CSR, Think Tanks, Research Organizations.

1. Key Accountabilities

1. Skills Required for the role

Role will determine the process and strategy to be used in software design at a project level (Agile, top-down, bottom up, stepwise refinement, use of patterns and pattern languages, iterative and incremental processes etc.) and has a deep Understanding of the software development lifecycle and has knowledge of the overall application development space combined with understanding of the business and domain. Role will Identify risks across the project life-cycle and conceive mitigation strategies, will drive AGILE practices and frameworks within the organization and creating visibility for the same and guide the teams in application of AGILE frameworks, will resolve problems and identify opportunities for improvements within AGILE.  Will design and fine-tune DB solutions and will oversee performance tuning. Role will work with Configuration Management tools to enforce CM practices and processes. Role is required to help define and adhere to the QA standards and will work with a deep understanding of performance bottlenecks, production infrastructure, interfaces and dependencies of the product and Measure program performance against target and publish dashboards to leadership. Role is also responsible for Analyzing scope change requests to make informed decision on resourcing, cost and time estimation and effectively managing all escalations in-line with organization norms.

Director-Software Operations is also responsible for attracting and retaining top talent in the organization. Will use the “People first” approach in the decision making and helps the organization in the people engagement journey. Role is responsible for aligning the organizational objectives to the team objective, derive goals for individuals and ensure a fair, transparent, inclusive workplace culture. Will nurture teams through different situations, be responsible for the individual development plans and performance metrics.

Competencies:

• Anticipates stakeholder’s stated / unstated needs; suggests specific changes in processes to improve the company’s responsiveness and deliver superior stakeholder experience
• Builds and nurtures long-term, mutually profitable stakeholder partnerships. Builds a say in stakeholder decisions by establishing strong credibility and offering a superior end-to-end experience
• Builds and promotes systems / practices for effective capture, dissemination and management of knowledge at a Business Unit level
• Understands competitive global business environment and builds comfort with VUCA conditions, provides clarity to the team to act quickly and with precision on implicit and explicit stakeholder needs
• Focuses on continuous improvement through constant assessment of existing procedures, Selects and cross-fertilizes ideas across teams within the Business Units
• Drives collective accountability through appropriate actions (involving employees in goal-setting and ongoing communication
• Adapts management style to different situations and provides calmness and consistency to the team during stressful situations, serves as an advisor, providing guidance to multiple teams on contribution to key organizational decisions such that employee concerns are addressed.
• Drives synergy and cooperation across different stakeholders, to catalyze critical decision making, to work towards common organizational goal. Continuously owns and exceeds challenging targets; Drives team to consistently exceed past performance
• Encourages people to work outside of their comfort zone and creates the right conditions for them to demonstrate new competencies, Provides regular feedback in a constructive manner
• Develops and uses systems to organize and keep track of performance across the function, identifies areas to refocus team efforts and improve performance and quality while managing
• Shows respect for differences and draws upon different ideas in the business unit to enhance business performance, takes effort to create an open environment for team to voice views and capitalizes by leveraging synergies across teams.

Technical Skills:

• Should have prior experience in design, develop and maintaining .Net based web applications within all phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)
• Should have worked on complex, multi-tiered architectural applications
• Strong experience in business understanding, requirement gathering and project scoping.
• Should have Experience of Object Oriented programming practices (SOLID principles, Design pattern)
• Should have prior experience in handling a large team of developers, testers, database developers and architects
• Should have experience in Feasibility Analysis - Technical feasibility (Study of proposed application, performance expected, application function, benefits), Financial feasibility (costs incurred, milestone timelines), Operational feasibility (does the application meet the need or solve the problem, will users be able to adapt to the application)
• Should have experience with the process of choosing from the design patterns and platforms and should be able to convey the merits and demerits of these to the team
• Should be well versed with the security frameworks, assessing vulnerabilities, Secured Code, SSL/Non SSL, Vulnerability tests amongst the areas being proficient at.
• Should have prior experience working with agile teams and alternative programming approaches like either of ADM/Scrum or Xtreme programming, KanBan or Re-factoring
• Experience in creating project charter for the project to clearly list out project objectives, duration, milestones, etc.
• Should have lead a team of Application and database developers and is competent to train/assist them on all their Technical requirements that come up as part of their day to day assignments
• Experience in developing web application with C#, MVC 5, ASP.Net, Web API
• Sound working experience in any one of the JS frameworks including advanced JS frameworks for web comprising of Angular, React, Backbone.
• Hands on HTML/5, CSS, Advance jQuery & JavaScript and advance knowledge of designing HTML pages with JQuery.
• Prior experience of bootstrap for managing highly dynamic & scalable browser-based UI.
• Hands on experience in writing high performance SQL queries, in SQL Server 2014/ 2016 or MYSQL will be preferred.
• Should be proficient at Cloud concepts & guiding principles - Various cloud solution like AWS, AZURE, OPENSHIFT, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Google etc. and their key features, advantages and disadvantages
• Should be proficient at T-SQL programming and development
• Identify production and non-production application issues and assist team with optimal solution.
• Supporting creation of thought leadership (POVs, research papers) in the field of programming
• Identify opportunities to fine-tune and optimize applications of .Net developed projects, including periodic code review.
• Should have worked with Gantt charts or similar planning tools and should have prior experience in reporting/MIS
• Should Contribute to the development of new techniques and plans within area of expertise.

Educational Qualification and Experience:

• Minimum of 15 years of formal education - Graduate / Post Graduate in Computer Science / Information Technology.
• Professional work experience of 15 to 20 years including 5 to 7 years in a leadership role.

• Develop and execute engineering strategy (including technology architecture, development stack, scalability, security etc.) of all our SaaS solutions while keeping in mind needs of business as usual and evolving product feature requirements
• Lead the engineering team and ensure good delivery management to deliver the product roadmap with high speed and quality
• Innovation – explore available technologies that may be useful to our context and run experiments and POCs to evaluate before adoption
• Bring automation and best practices to code management, testing and build & deployment processes
• Solve the most complex issues/initiatives through hands-on development
• Help the team members in resolving difficult technical issues
• Be a champion of engineering excellence: establish team metrics for measurement of engineering and operational excellence. Implement a consistent, regular process for assessment and improvement
• Provide thought-leadership to fellow team members by working as a guide and mentor to the rest of the team members

• Best in Industry Remuneration
• Attractive ESOP opportunity with huge potential upside
• Cutting edge technologies with always something new happening
• Start-up culture with full ownership and freedom
• Fully flexible hours and work from anywhere
• Super-fun work environment and colleague

• Microservices, Spring Boot, Core Java, Struts 2.0, JPA & Hibernate
• Hands-On experience in relational databases (MySQL Preferred)
• Experience in Data warehousing & Analytics
• Hands-on exposure in mobile application developmen

Qualifications

• B.E. / B.Tech from Tier 1 Institute

• Experience in defining new architectures, design all layers of the solution, create architectural blueprints that can be used for final code development.
• Interface with client business/technical teams to understand complex requirements.
• Anticipate on technological evolutions(example use MySQL Lite not MS SQL, use C# not ASP, don't use JSF use Angular).
• Resolve technical issues.
• Bridge between Developers, Project Managers/Leads, and Client, ensuring smooth communication channel.
• Ensure quality of project implementation deployed.
• Provide technical guidance to projects/programs for complex components of a multiple technology suites.
• Ensuring documentation of the complete project architecture.
• Lead actions to determine root cause of problems and drive resolution.
• Participate in cross-functional work groups to assess business needs, develop a systems architecture strategy, and implementation plans.
• Leads work groups that are responsible for software development.
• Ensure that all components of the technical architecture are properly integrated and implemented by the development team.
• Coach the technical team in the development of the technical architecture and help them solve challenging technical problems
• Provide technical support and technical quality control throughout all stages of the project.
• Spearheads the development, implementation and communications of architecture roadmap strategies to ensure that systems are scalable, reliable, secure, supportable, and achieve.
• Identify existing architecture weaknesses and find opportunities for process reengineering and perform cost benefit analysis

• Time Management- Organizes own workload to achieve maximum productivity and completes work in a timely and professional manner. Handles multiple short and long term modules by proper planning while anticipating potential problems and planning for contingencies.
• Identify high-potential team members for next level positions and creating learning and development plans for them.
• Enable strong process in place and reducing dependencies on individual.

Technical Skills and Qualification

• Excellent knowledge of Web technologies, Java, Javascript, Contact center environment.
• Experience of current technologies including Open Source, J2EE (JSP, Servlet, JSP, etc.), web application development, web services (REST/SOAP/XML), Rich Internet Applications, messaging infrastructures and databases.
• Adaptability and willingness to learn new tools and applications.
• Should be comfortable for 40%-60% coding.
• Able to convert requirements into executable code
• 9 to 12 yrs experience
• Qualification: BE/B-Tech /MCA or any equivalent degree

Desirables

• Excellent written and verbal communication skill
• Ability to lead discussions with all levels of the organization and provide balanced information of an idea or communication of an issue regardless of written or verbal
• Demonstrated ability to work collaboratively across project teams.
• Having Analytical and problem-solving
• Ability to translate complex requirements into functional and Technical architecture
• Experience managing the technology aspect of multiple complex projects
• Ability to think ahead and anticipate problems, issues and solutions and Assist team members in complex task
• Willing to take ownership and being accountable.
• Openness, communicates honestly, openly, and consistently.
• Positive Attitude encourages a positive rather than negative viewpoint.
• Integrity maintains the highest standard of personal conduct in performing all duties.
• Should be a good listener.
• Dependable, can be relied upon to get the job done.
• Able to avoid mistakes that could/should be anticipated.
• Should be able sense and grab the opportunities to innovate and improvise.
• Very high competence in presentation skills.
• Negotiator: Excellent negotiation skills which comes handy in hard selling new ideas/ new technical implementations etc.
• Risk Management: Should be able to take calculated risks in trying out new technical implementation avenues
• Able to communicate the org level vision to the team effectively