Chief Technology Officer

| Chicago
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Chief Technology Officer

FTD is searching for a Chief Technology Officer to begin a new and incredibly exciting chapter in our iconic brand's evolution. From 1910 - 1994 FTD was mainly a cooperative owned by and created to serve the florist industry. From 1994-2019 FTD went through various ownership structures, both public and private, culminating in filing for voluntary Chapter 11 on June 3rd, 2019. The company plans to exit chapter 11 in August 2019 with new owners, strong financials, and a robust growth plan. Never has there been a more exciting time to join the FTD Company. We are the world's experts on flowers, we have a right to reassert ourselves as the premiere leading provider for our florists and our consumers, and that is our plan.

Your frequent and proactive communication with and across the business will lead a charge of dauntlessly focusing on prioritization of what matters most to the Company and our stakeholders - including the executive liaison to external partners and providers. You will run all the products and digital experiences for consumers, employees, and florists. Your efforts will address the most significant and impactful KPI's while helping the team buffer less meaningful distractions - all the while keeping a sharp eye on avoiding increased technical debt. You will enhance an environment already in flight in which your team operates swiftly and with "timeline urgency" to address experiential defects: most importantly, with an abhorrence for poor consumer experiences.

Growth & Strategy

The company will hang its hat on four primary areas of focus to win in the industry. 

  1. Growing and deepening our florist relationships going back to our roots of enabling florists not just to survive but thrive as locally owned businesses throughout the continent. Including offering exceptional systems and services harnessing the power of FTD's analytics, marketing, technology, and service teams.
  2. Amazing end-to-end customer experiences for our customers for both our florist business as well as our 3PL drop-ship floral, plant and gift businesses served by ftd.com, and proflowers.com and several other URL's.
  3. Partnerships with Companies where flowers make sense as a complementary companion to other companies. Retail, corporate, event sites, dating sites, the possibilities are endless. Also, back-end partnerships, to enhance the customer experience for delivery, payments, distributed commerce.
  4. Modern, smart, scalable, flexible, rapid, and frequent deployment of remarkable technologies to enable all of the above.

Four Key Characteristics

  • Data-driven CX: Data and the "customer" (including the florist) will be at the core of everything you do and everything we do as a company. Test, measure, fail or scale. Always through the lens of the consumer and always supported by as much science as possible - however still with a slice of hearty "art" because as shoppers and floral experts, our guts count!
  • Continual curiosity: While our stack is leading-edge, you recognize that tech moves fast and our ability to stay flexible and fast is critical. You understand and embrace micro-services, cloud-based e-commerce, open standards, and continuous delivery and appreciate the strong bridge to choosing and implementing technologies that provide differentiated experiences. We also have many legacy platforms all slated to be replaced with our emerging technology.
  • Service Leadership: You are inheriting a strong team - even given that there is always headroom! Getting the most from them is not as much providing micro-direction as being a superior conductor of an orchestra. Continually improve, enable, challenge (and be challenged), have opinions and accept them from others. Pave the way for rapid and innovative tech leading to business-meaningful results. Encourage healthy debates.
  • Commercially bent: While you are a tech at your roots, you appreciate and can engage actively in bringing tangible value to the Company staying tightly tied into the core business metrics to ensure tech is moving the dial to the maximum extent possible. Also, we have tremendous opportunities to bring our new tech into partnerships directly and at scale (previously almost impossible). You are comfortable externally facing with teams from other companies to discuss strategy and technology as the bridge to enable world-class and lasting partnership.

Vital Statistics of the Chief Technology Officer.

  • Direct Reports: Product Management, User Experience, End-to-end Engineering, Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, ERP, and co-manage technical and functional analytics with other executives.
  • Peers: Consumer GM; EVP Florist Division; SVP CX/CS leader; VP Marketing Leader; finance leadership including the CFO. You aspire to peer mastery where we all operate as one team with the same goals and drive and strive to continual reach new heights together. No silos. No defensiveness. New ideas in any area always welcome. These executives are the guardians of the Company's strategy, culture, and growth, along with their passionate teams. If it doesn't work there, it doesn't work anywhere.
  • Cultural compass: While we are working in the newco to build a culture with values that genuinely is our compass, there are some key areas we know now are critical to who are and who we are to become.
    • Positive urgency - we eschew negativity! Urgency because we want to get things done.
    • You have the same amount of comfort and fun with interns or board members. Equally with your directs as your peers. Partners you serve or partners that serve us. You recognize it's the "village" that makes us who we are.
    • You are humble and not afraid to be vulnerable - able to listen and not always try to be "the smartest person in the room." However, you are also confident and not afraid opine on any area that can help us grow - both as a business and as people.
    • Flexible of mind. You love it when you think you are right and find out you aren't leading to even better results! You welcome new ideas, from any source.
    • Action-oriented - see a hole? Fill it!

Requirements

  • Deep understanding of modern technologies within the B2C and B2B spaces.
  • In-depth knowledge of e-commerce trends in both technology and experiences.
  • Must have leadership experience in a highly transactional 24/7 agile environment as VP.
  • Must have previous oversight and leadership of Product Management.
  • Awareness of technology impacts to data privacy and information security.
  • Experience in modernizing legacy platform and sunsetting depreciated technologies
  • You can speak very specifically to what you read above! Moreover, it excites you!
  • Bachelor's degree in anything! Master's in anything else also cool.

Location: Downers Grove & Chicago Offices

Hours: Full-time Monday through Friday

Connect on LinkedIn with the Recruiter: Duarte R Mendonca

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Location

We also have an office in the heart of Downtown Chicago at 200 N LaSalle

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