Vice President Of Technology

About Opportunity

The client is one of the largest greenhouse growers of greens in the United States. The company operates several large-scale hydroponic greenhouses across the country, growing a variety of leafy greens, herbs, and other produce. The client uses cutting-edge technology and sustainable practices to grow produce year-round, with a focus on reducing water and energy usage, and minimizing food waste. The client's produce can be found in many retailers across the country and it's known for its focus on providing fresh, locally-grown produce to consumers.

Opportunity:

The client is building the most advanced high-tech greenhouse facilities that are wired with thousands of sensors, including a network of IoT sensors and robotic cameras to monitor growth from seed to harvest. This network emits millions of data points that are fed to the client's artificial intelligence system, the “brain” that connects our growing network of indoor farms to our information systems and data analytics.

The Client is seeking a VP of Engineering who can architect, design and develop a new Technology group that will elevate the way we collect and analyze our data to improve our growing processes. The VP will play a visible and important role in scaling the client nationally over the next five years.

Responsibilities:

The VP of Technology will guide the enterprise through technology transformation and optimization initiatives. They will focus on understanding and applying existing, new, and emerging technologies to transform and optimize business and operating models. The following are specific areas of responsibility:

The VP of Engineering will lead and coordinate all aspects of digital technologies, specifically driving outcomes in the following areas:

Technology Leadership:

• Advise the executive team on the development of a strategic direction for IT systems and services, monitoring trends and innovations in the industry to meet those needs
• Oversee strategic relationships between engineering and IT resources and external entities (vendors, partners, etc)
• Set the organization’s technology vision and priorities in alignment with organizational goals, while building a first-class development & IT team
• Participate in budgeting and strategic planning; manages to budget
• Ensure information security, risk management, disaster recovery and business continuity planning processes are in place and receive regular review for currency and adequacy and all IT operations adhere to applicable laws and regulations

Data Analytics and Machine Learning:

• Integrate existing external advanced plant growth analytics platforms with internal data collection systems to improve crop yield predictive models
• Information Technology Systems:
• Identify and recommend new technology solutions; direct the sourcing and implementation of new software and hardware and lines of control for current and proposed information systems
• Deploy algorithms and dashboards to production to drive cost efficiencies and customer insights • Develop and embed automated processes for predictive model validation, deployment, and implementation
• Identify opportunities to apply the latest advancements in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to build, test, and validate predictive models for greenhouse operations, logistics, and sales
• Lead a team of software engineers and data scientists to create innovative solutions to enhance productivity and efficiency at our greenhouses
• Lead the development and maintenance of the internal tech stack across the organization, which is currently; NetSuite/Oracle, Office 365, Salesforce, Slack.
• Create algorithms and dashboards to extract information from large, multiparametric data sets

Technology Services & Device Deployment:

• Gauge and anticipate the diverse needs of constituents; hold the IT team to a high standard of service
• Ensure continuous delivery of IT services through oversight of service level agreements with end users and monitoring of IT systems performance
• Oversee the management and deployment of device inventory

Qualifications:

• Minimally a BS (MS or PhD preferred) in Engineering, Statistics, Data Science, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Computational Biology, Computational Chemistry or related quantitative field.
• Experience with EA and ITIL or similar frameworks for effectively managing IT services throughout the entire service lifecycle, including information management practices, system development life cycle management, IT services management.
• Strong presentation skills, the ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical people and integrate product and business-related requirements into technical solutions.
• 10+ years driving technology strategy in a leadership role across multiple disciplines, ideally, Enterprise Systems, Machine Learning and Data Analytics, and Services & Device Deployment, preferably in an agriculture or tech start-up setting