Director, Application Development

For over 75 years, Medavie Blue Cross has been a leading health and wellness partner for individuals, employers and governments across Canada.

As a not-for-profit organization, we proudly invest in communities to help address some of Canada’s most pressing health care challenges.

We are one of Canada's Most Admired Corporate Cultures, one of Canada’s Top 100 Employers, Canada’s Life & Health Insurer of the Year for 2021 and an Imagine Canada Caring Company.

Our 2,400 professionals work across six provinces, united by our shared values of being caring, accountable, responsible, innovative and community-minded.

We’re committed to ensuring our employees thrive in our award-winning, collaborative culture focused on ensuring health, wellness, and personal and professional growth through a variety of programs and support across our organization.

Together with Medavie Health Services, we are part of Medavie a national health solutions partner with over 7,700 employees.

Our mission is to improve the wellbeing of Canadians.

Job Title :

Director, Application Development

Department :

Information Services Technology

Competition : 87055

87055

Internal / External :

Both

Employment Type : Full Time Permanent

Full Time Permanent

Location :

Atlantic Canada, ON or QC (Hybrid)

Salary :

Comprehensive Compensation

Reports To :

Chief Technology Officer

The Opportunity

As Director, Application Development you will be a member of the Information Technology Services Senior Leadership Team and report to the Chief Technology Officer.

You will play a critical role in ensuring the effectiveness of the Application Development and Support group by planning, organizing, and managing all technology aspects of the team in alignment with departmental goals and objectives, policies, standards, and procedures.

Your hands-on and thoughtful leadership will be instrumental in driving operational excellence, improvements, and an integrated approach in the delivery of best-in-class technology solutions while supporting the organization's overall goals.

You will manage the development life cycle for large-scale to medium / small projects spanning multiple platforms or solutions, consisting of complex conversions, integration, and new developments.

You will motivate and lead support teams in the development of software solutions and the development of detailed functional, technical and operational specifications.

Key responsibilities :

• Operational Efficiency : Work closely with the organization to identify opportunities for improving operational efficiency, implementing new technologies, streamlining processes, and enhancing existing systems to increase productivity and reduce cost.
• Team Leadership : As a senior member of the IT department, you will provide leadership and guidance to a professional team by setting performance goals, conducting regular performance evaluations, and fostering a collaborative work environment.
• Technology product owner : Ensue that Medavie’s technology solutions are productive for the business and grow with their needs.

As an expert technical advisor to the organization you will build out and execute on roadmaps for our applications, recommend strategies and solutions and communicate the vision, goals, and priorities to all stakeholders.

Strategic Initiatives : Support and advance strategic initiatives that align with corporate objectives and provide oversight in the governance of key projects that leverage applications.

Drive continued progress in adoption of modern software development tooling and techniques.

Service Delivery : Provide stable, secure, and performant applications and oversee maintenance and support for mission critical business applications.

Ensure that service levels are achieved, and that due process is adhered to : Change and Release Management and Problem Management.

Implement and align processes with industry compliance regulations and ensure all solutions remain viable, secure and supported by vendors.

Best Practice and Service Delivery : Ensure best practice agile and DevOps adoption and establish continuous improvement within teams as well as expertise in agile engineering practices (eg Scrum, Kanban, Lean, SAFe).

Create / evolve product roadmaps and manage product backlog and drive agile team performance and outcome metrics.

Lifecycle management : Support critical and complex technology projects that span across multiple business units and operating companies at Medavie.

Identify and mitigate barriers to project progress and ensure delivery through project life cycle. Provide strategic advice and guidance to all stakeholders in the development and implementation of policies, procedures, standards, and best practices relating to desktop, server, and other associated technologies.

Qualifications

Education : Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or Business or equivalent combination of education and experience

Work Experience :

• Minimum of 10 years of progressive IT experience in IT Application Development
• A minimum of 5 years leading teams responsible for implementing and maintaining enterprise applications / systems and related services and supporting complex technology implementations
• Experience working within and leading agile software delivery teams
• Experience in Insurance and / or Health sector is an asset

Technical Skills

• ITIL Certification is an asset
• Proficiency in development including building dynamic customer-facing apps using APIs
• Proficiency in technology infrastructure solutions and services including; operating systems, databases, middleware, web stacks, directories, associated software / applications and disparate technologies ranging from front-end user interfaces to back-end systems
• Experience with evaluating, purchasing, and implementing technology solutions and confidently owning these end-to-end solutions
• Up-to-date with current and emerging trends relating to technology infrastructure and services
• Experience in modern DevOps / SRE practices such as CI / CD
• Experience in the development and administration of policies, programs, and procedures
• Experience with project management skills and Agile at Scale methodologies such as SAFe, Spotify, LeSS, Scrum at Scale, Kanban and agile management tooling such as JIRA

Other Qualifications :

• Experience leading significant change management initiatives or transformative projects in a large organization
• Excellent strategic planning skills with an ability to align technology initiatives with organizational objectives in a fast-paced environment with tight deadlines
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills, demonstrating the ability to make sound business decisions while maintaining long lasting partnerships with peers and internal / external stakeholders throughout the organization
• Solid understanding of technology infrastructure and operations
• Superior leadership skills with the ability to motivate and inspire a team
• Strong fundamentals in object-oriented design, algorithm design, problem solving, and complexity analysis
• Proficiency in planning, design, implementation, and maintenance of all aspects of application architecture projects including identity and access management
• Bilingualism (English / French) is an asset

Leadership Accountabilities :

Values and Ethics : Reflects a commitment to employees, customers, and key corporate stakeholders in own and unit activities.

Fosters a climate of transparency, trust and respect and encourages learning and growth.

• Engagement : Shares information vertically and horizontally and promotes collaboration among cross-functional teams. Encourages open, constructive communication of diverse perspectives.
• People Management : Optimizes diversity among team members to build strong teams with complementary strengths. Develops and supports career plans and learning opportunities.

Fulfills obligations of human resource management.

Action Management : Assigns work, manages resources, and sets realistic timeframes while identifying financial and human resource requirements.

Makes timely decisions and manages risk.

Financial Management : Works closely with various teams and stakeholders for the monitoring and reporting of the IT budgets.

Applies and monitors processes and systems for budget tracking activities.

Core accountabilities :

• Knowledge : A background in health and life insurance industry with the functional and technical knowledge and skills to do the job at a high level of achievement.
• Analytical Thinking : High attention to detail, using logic and good judgment in decision making for when different situations and skills may call for different approaches
• Communication Skills : Possess superior communication skills (oral, written, listening) and delivers information clearly and confidently.

Demonstrates the ability to tailor information and delivery to suit the nature of the material, audience and situation

Customer Orientation : Builds rapport, constructive and effective relationships and spends extra effort to put others at ease.

Can understand where our clients are coming from and place the appropriate level of urgency as required.

Execution and Organizational Skills : Prioritizes and effectively copes with change. Ability to organize work and information in a well thought out manner to deliver on specific tasks and reporting deadlines.

Exhibits high levels of energy and perseverance in the pursuit of established goals.

Teamwork Skills : Demonstrates an understanding of how the job contributes to the overall work unit and takes the initiative to help with problem situations.

Easily gains trust and support of peers, encourages collaboration and is composed. Seeks and is receptive to feedback and enjoys working with people both as part of a team and one-on-one

Security Clearance Requirement

In conjunction with our contract with the Federal Government, you will be required to have Reliability Status Clearance (Enhanced Level B) prior to your start date.

This includes; Fingerprinting, Criminal Record Check, Credit Check and you must have resided in Canada for at least 5 years and hold Permanent Resident or Citizenship Status.