Director - Application Development at Bright Horizons Children's Centers in Newton, Massachusetts

Job Description:

Bright Horizons is famous for childcare and education, but underneath beats the heart of a technology company. IT development and infrastructure is so important to our future, it's now the fastest growing department in our company - a team on the ground floor of building all new systems. Plus, at Bright Horizons IT, you'll be part of a creative group supporting some of the world's best brands, connecting their employees to care and education, and making a real difference for people who need it.

The Director, Application Development is responsible for providing management for applications support and development for application sets across emerging Lines of Business (LOB).

What you will be doing in this role:

• Deep understanding of the application development life cycle and ability to apply it to existing and future application development


• Management of technical support staff both in-house and external on a day to day basis and provide continuous improvement to support function


• Technical expertise to understand applications and develop plans to continuously improve application portfolio


• Exhibit excellent follow-up on the status and next steps of all application support


• Identify resources needed and assign individual responsibilities to cross-functional project team members


• Oversee application development of existing and future application according to Bright Horizons standards


• Technical knowledge of Microsoft applications tools and programs to effectively manage the development of software to support business needs


• Ensure documentation is complete, current, and stored appropriately


• Report on schedule and product progress on weekly basis (or more frequently as required by management)

Application Specific Project Management Skills

• Ensure that application projects are prepared (including all pre and post-development steps) in a timeframe, quantity and mix to achieve the best possible return from development and project resources to ensure both efficiency and effectiveness of the development process


• Ensure that software development schedule and timeline is in alignment with business and implementation goals and requirements and make adjustments to meet business goals when necessary


• Oversee the creation of pre-development materials to ensure that they are created in a format and level of depth that facilitates business team feedback and can be efficiently converted into functional specifications to be provided to developers


• Collaborate with business owners and other relevant parties to fully understand, define and document functional requirements for system and/or process changes to meet evolving business needs including oversight of process flow diagrams, user interface mock-ups and conceptual explanations


• Manage software developers to refine functional specifications and project phasing to strike an appropriate balance for each project between full complex functionality, speed to market and available development resources


• Review all functional and technical specifications prior to initial development to ensure that recommended solutions are consistent with related functionality within the appropriate application(s)


• Review test scripts as part of all functional specifications to ensure that testing occurs to meet all business requirements including all process components as well as client, center and program configurations


• Execute test scripts to ensure compliance of software changes with business requirements and manage a testing team of quality assurance or user acceptance testers


• Ensure that all changes to systems are tested according to change management policies and procedures to ensure compliance of software changes with business requirements and that audit documentation is complete and accurate

Communication

• Facilitate team and client meetings effectively


• Hold regular status meetings with development team


• Keep development team well informed of changes within the organization and general corporate news


• Effectively communicate relevant project information to superiors


• Deliver engaging, informative, well-organized presentations that are effectively tailored to the intended audience


• Adjust communication strategy and approach of team to match the needs of specific business groups, individuals and development partners and ensure that all materials created for communicating and facilitating discussion of intended approach are carefully tailored to the intended audience to ensure that business owners are able to give complete and accurate feedback


• Ensure that feedback from key business owners is fully acknowledged and incorporated into functional and technical specifications, process flow diagrams and project plans to give business leaders the confidence that they are being heard and that their needs will be met


• Serve as a communication bridge between business leaders and developers to facilitate understanding of initial requirements, questions and changes across these groups


• Resolve and/or escalate issues in a timely fashion


• Understand how to communicate difficult/sensitive information tactfully

What we hope you will bring to this role:

• Bachelor's Degree or higher in Engineering, Technology or related field


• Minimum 10+ years of application development and application development management


• Strong scheduling and budgeting experience


• Strong technical capabilities with knowledge of Microsoft technologies and development practices


• Ability to remain organized at all times and to elicit cooperation from a wide variety of sources including team members, other internal departments and external parties (such as 3rd party software development partners)


• Ability to lead, motivate and direct a cross-functional workgroup while being flexible in a changing environment


• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment and react to project adjustments and alterations promptly and efficiently


• Ability to exercise good judgment and discretion in confidential matters


• Excellent analytical skills required


• Experience managing all phases of the project life cycle, including running project prioritization meetings, post-installation project postmortem meetings and a proven track record of multi-tasking, meeting deadlines and delivering projects on budget


• Prior experience managing development staff, including BH staff and third party vendors


• Knowledge of different project management software, and be technically competent with various software programs including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Project and Visio


• Self-starter with the ability to work with minimal supervision, and have excellent verbal and written communication skills


• Travel as required

HAVING TECHNICAL ISSUES WITH YOUR APPLICATION?

Contact us at bhrecruit@brighthorizons.com or 855-877-6866

Bright Horizons is dedicated to creating a workforce that promotes and supports diversity and inclusion. We provide equal employment opportunities to all individuals without discrimination. Bright Horizons complies with the laws and regulations set forth in the following EEO is the Law Poster: EEO - English and EEO - Spanish along with information on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA).

Applicants requiring a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application and hiring process should contact the recruitment helpdesk at 855-877-6866 or bhrecruit@brighthorizons.com. Determinations on requests for reasonable accommodation will be made on a case-by-case basis.