Country Head - Captive Offshore Setup - Insurance/Financial Services

The person should have done Relationship Management with Buyers as well as done Delivery Management.

Exposure to Finacial Services/Insurance Sector is desirable.

Application Development - Global Workforce Solutions :

- The Application Development Site lead is responsible for improving productivity, quality and speed to market through expedient decision making and issue resolution for our offshore partners.

- The development teams of strategic partners are comprised of over 2000 resources. The position is responsible for leading an offshore India based team of approximately 20-25 employees in the near term and expected to grow multi-fold in future years.

- The team will comprise technical leadership positions such as solution architects, system analysts, QA analysts and global delivery managers.

- Team members will report directly to this leader and will have a matrix relationship to various Technology Solutions Groups / Application Solutions Groups in the US.

- The goal of the team will be to facilitate productivity improvements, accelerate the velocity and improve the quality of deliverables of our partners by providing real time guidance and issue resolution to our strategic partners.

- This position requires strong leadership discipline to effectively manage in a highly matrixed environment.

- Strong knowledge of the application development life cycle and vendor management will also be required.

Duties, Scope and Dimensions :

This position will manage approximately 15-25 employees near term and expected to grow multi-fold in future years

- Accountable for hiring and building the India based team

- Develops annual goals and delivers performance evaluations with input from matrixed organizations

- Creates a sense of team and linkage to parent and our strategic partners.

- Ensures proper training and on-boarding is delivered for the India based team

- Implements best practices to ensure motivation, retention, growth and high levels of performance of employees

- Responsible for management of resource capacity and capability to ensure best outcome

Partners with vendor side senior leadership to improve productivity, maximize the velocity and strengthen the quality of the work being performed by our strategic partners.

- Develop an ongoing relationship with vendor side senior management.

- Ensure India based staff has been integrated into the workflow in a manner that improves productivity and maximizes the velocity and throughput of offshore vendors.

- Monitor quality and experience of vendor's offshore resources to ensure suitable level of talent is allocated to Company's projects. Escalate identified issues thru appropriate process for remediation.

- Highlight, counsel and influence vendors on areas of needed improvement

- Listen to vendors for opportunities for Company to change processes to increase productivity, improve velocity, quality and help implement agreed changes.

Establish relations and work closely with leadership to ensure there is full alignment of the offshore team's activities and the objectives, goals and deliverables.

- Ensure complete alignment of work the offshore team is doing. Communicate and present areas of opportunities to improve productivity, velocity and quality

- Identifies and proposes recommendations to improve offshore project delivery process.

- Frequently interacts with US leadership to ensure needed changes are clearly understood and the path to resolution is well defined and tracked to successful implementation.

- Resource capacity and capability management - This role will work closely with direct reports and US teams to assess the adequate level of partner side offshore delivery team resource capacity and capabilities. Communicate and influence partners to change as necessary.

- Serves as a Subject Matter Expert in routinely briefing key stakeholders on different aspects of the offshore organization.

- Enable an environment to retain distinct roles (intellectual property) in house with offshore employees.

Qualifications / Skills :

Leadership :

- Ability to quickly earn the trust of sponsors and key stakeholders

- Ability to mobilize and motivate teams towards a common vision and common set of objectives

- Ability to set direction and approach

- Ability to resolve conflict (striving for win-win outcomes)

- Ability to deliver tough messages with grace

- Ability to execute with limited information and ambiguity

- Ability to deal with politics

- Ability to articulate and influence change

- Extensive experience in managing application development with offshore vendors.

- Extensive experience in overseeing both support and new development efforts with an eye towards integrated delivery of IT solutions.

- Broad, applied experience with management of development and support initiatives including common computing platforms, legacy and modern development tools and languages, and functional expertise.

- Ability to effectively navigate in a highly matrixed organization.

- Advanced influencing skills.

- Sound business and technical acumen.

- Experience with stakeholder management.

- Focused and versatile team player that is comfortable under pressure.

- Advanced ability to communicate at all levels with clarity and precision both written and verbally.

- Strong presentation skills.

- Technical knowledge of healthcare/finance systems or associated technologies.

- Ability to remove barriers and enable teams to complete their objectives.

- Demonstrated, applied experience establishing and delivering complex application portfolio solutions.

- Extensive knowledge in the use of project management and SDLC methodologies and tools.

- Advanced problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.

- Qualified candidates will typically have a minimum of 10+ years of professional IT work experience, with 5+ years of experience in a leadership role.

Other important information :

- Suitable candidates will come from successful technology (software development) environments. Application development captives or vendor delivery management environments .

What is the ideal profile of the person :

- Insurance application development preferred but not required. Must have good exposure to outsourced development, vendor relationship with focus on talent and delivery process management. Good understanding of SDLC, software development project management, testing process etc.

What are the immediate challenges for the incumbent :

- Understand the scope of development in progress (large teams, many technologies inconsistent processes), build strong relationship with Sr. leaders of partner's delivery teams, build strong relationship with internal leadership.

- Identify and seek agreement of changes required, drive changes towards desired outcomes. Will be a very visible role. Needs to mentor his/her team from a position knowledge, experience and leadership skills.

- Enable, support and steward the team towards desired outcomes.

What's in it for me :

- What should motivate a good performer elsewhere to apply for this vacancy

- The Company brand, internal / international visiblity of the role, opportunity to build, manage and grow a high performance team, opportunity to influence significant change towards effective globalization of IT workforce.