Sr Director, Customer Engineering

Job Description:
The Opportunity:
As Pluralsight continues to push into enterprise and strategic customer segments, our prospects, partners and competitive market conditions call us to deliver value in new, differentiated ways. Platform integration, where we are enabling application interface between our platform and the functionality of any/all of the core platforms that the customer uses, is a table stakes market expectation. Take, for example, the integration of our hard tech skill proficiency data as made seamlessly available into static HR systems of record such as Workday being able to effectively transform those platforms for customers and partners alike into dynamic systems of action. A sound, efficient integration strategy provides joint augmentation benefits of our own platform and market leading solutions to the benefit of our customers and partners, alike.
Another practical call to action is providing enhanced extensibility of our own solution to create new joint solutions with existing and new partners that can be commercialized and sold to/through our customers to their end-users. Think Tech Quotient / Tech Foundations or industry focused cloud custom sandboxes transacted through online marketplaces demonstrating proprietary functionality from hyperscalers, global MSPs and Tech Vendors.
And lastly, customers are looking to Pluralsight to better integrate and position application use case scenarios for our existing core offerings, Skills and Flow for example, to deliver new value greater than we yield today from Skills or Flow independently. Our Skills IQ and overall methodology for allowing the foundation of a Skills OS to emerge within our customer base can be augmented for wider-area deployment and scale through reviewing existing services routines for their productization potential.
Further complicating our ability to respond to increasingly sophisticated and demanding customers is that these demands occur on an ad-hoc basis, outside of the predictable rhythms of defined product development cycles. We must be flexible, agile, and innovative to stay relevant but the vast majority of our developer resources are consumed maintaining and incrementally advancing the large, sophisticated Skills platform. In summary, customers really need and want Pluralsight to achieve our vision of becoming the world's most trusted tech workforce partner and operating system, but we still need the appropriate capabilities and processes to enable this vision.
The Mission & Role
Pluralsight has created the Senior Director, Customer Engineering role - a new leader and function residing within the Channels & Services business unit at Pluralsight. The role envisioned is as a technology and platform solutions development leader and innovation catalyst, ushering in new opportunities to nimbly leverage customer engineering insights to accelerate our capacity to innovate and deploy offerings more readily to market. The role will ideally display a unique balance of hands-on innovation capability together with the demonstrated experience of a seasoned customer-centric engineering leader able to lead a team of resources operating in a tiger team mode. The Sr. Director will identify carefully selected, customer sourced and market led opportunities for their design and build from demo and prototype into viable last mile solutions that drive Pluralsight bookings and customer retention. Success will be measured by the pace and magnitude of impact these solutions ultimately deliver across our strategic customer base and channel partners. This person must demonstrate acuity for interfacing functionally and in coordination between customers and Pluralsight's Product & Engineering leadership teams.
Pluralsight is advancing the world's technology workforce with each new implementation and opportunity. Channels and Services is investing in deliberate steps toward becoming the world's most trusted technology workforce development partner and operating system. We are selectively creating partnerships that increase ecosystem value for all participants.
A blend of product, customer engineering, services delivery, software development and innovation experiences will best help this individual and Pluralsight establish an agile vision. This will unlock transformative value with our existing customers and new partners by successfully creating custom personalized product experiences.
The solutions designed, built and deployed will drive additional "sell to", "sell-with" and "sell-thru" bookings for our strategic customers and ecosystem partners allowing for an enhanced, "last mile" highly differentiated Pluralsight experience. The function will translate market and customer needs into unique, custom personalized product experiences. The leader must be capable of establishing actionable functional requirements allowing for rapid development and prototyping of the selected solutions going on to be deployed into select customer segments. Successful implementation of these initial solutions would invite and inform more widespread Pluralsight impact through a broader roll out across our global customer base where appropriate. In order to collaborate with partners at scale and drive significant GtM impact, Pluralsight must enhance its ability to integrate into and with select partners, delivering a more seamless extensibility of our offerings. These offerings will be brought to bear by co-innovating with cloud platforms (public and industry specific), Tech vendors, functionally specific software applications and emerging LMS/LXP AI based platforms.
The function will need to identify, budget, scope, initiate, manage, and deliver on the key workflows necessary for the POC, prototyping, rollout, and eventual scaling of our embedded routines to efficiently implement upon multi-directional integrations with our platform technology.
Span of control for this role will include, but not be limited to, local and distributed teams (based out of our India Technology Center) as resources are made available. This is an exciting and entrepreneurial role which combines dynamic aspects of both individual contribution, strategic consulting, customer engineering, hands-on leadership, as well as being a recognized SME in specific technology domains such as AI, APIs and digital first mobile learning experiences.
Who you are

• Motivated by working in a fast paced "startup within a mature environment" structure relying on a dedicated, growth mindset.
• A demonstrated modern, API first, software development skills possessing the ability to design and supervise the implementation of scalable and robust APIs.
• A deep understanding of artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies deployed in practical application use-case scenarios for advancing teaching and learning innovation, efficiency and market advantage.
• Well-versed in modern development and agile methodologies; possessing excellent communication and leadership skills to collaborate effectively with multi-functional teams not under your direct control.
• Ability to illustrate in both concept and concrete working demo and accessible prototype models the articulated vision and functionality of a particular customer engineered solution.
• Advanced experience in learning / education, application technology and the delivery of consultative/advisory services intent on driving proficiency of technology use in enterprise scale customers.
• Unique and validated customer experience and insights into key Pluralsight industry verticals such as financial services, banking and healthcare.
• Accomplishments in the design, delivery, development of incubation and lab based offerings intended for proof of concept and wide area application based upon success outcomes delivered, advanced and measured with customers/clients.
• Capacity for deep mastery and proficiency in various Pluralsight offerings and solutions.
• Ability to recruit, develop, advance, retain and optimize development teams locally, distributed, and in an ITC workflow environment.
• A self-starter that proactively solves problems quickly; able to lead others by modeling proven behaviors evidencing best practices for designing, initiating and building technology based solutions for known gaps and opportunities.
• Understands traditional/tech based organizational and corporate hierarchical systems within multiple collaborators - Pluralsight, our partners, and our customers.
• Capability to lead a lot of engagement, coordinate it, and then prioritize, to make sure the most significant and impactful deliverables are met.

What you'll do

• Occupy a visible, customer effacing presence as a qualified SME, technical product development catalyst and our lead customer engineering advocate
• Create and implement proper design input methodologies sufficient to harness strategic customer interest into developing custom personalized product experiences
• Opportunistically evaluate select industry, partner and application use scenarios for deployment of new market driven innovation based solutions and services
• Identify and close gaps where necessary to be able to advance certain selected services offerings into potentially repeatable productized solutions
• Scope and evaluate the productization steps necessary to move PS' Skills IQ/OS into a lightweight, stand alone customer experience offering (ie - Inventory & Insights)
• Establish and train a competent foundation of talent for efficiently executing on necessary third party and tech vendor based integration services and routines
• Recruit, hire, train, develop a winning tiger team in the ITC to efficiently execute and advance the pace of customer engineering driven workflows
• Maintain a senior technical, engineering and learning pedagogy based persona and relationship with partners and strategic customers, operating as a trusted advisor.
• Collaborate, partner with the Product and Technology organization when/where required to meet partner and customer requirements

Experience you'll need

• 12+ years professional experience in software development, product and services delivery, customer engineering and engagement
• Understanding of the financial services industry sector a plus
• Fluent command of API first, and extensible stack build methodologies
• Advanced technology and/or engineering degree preferred
• Consistent track record of delivering excellence in product innovation and customer engineering across digital experience technologies
• Experience in SaaS and private equity backed business a plus
• Fluency in building and leading distributed teams including an ITC structure
• Up to 35% of travel

Bring yourself. Pluralsight is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age or veteran status.
Working at Pluralsight
At Pluralsight, we believe everyone should have the opportunity to create progress through technology. That everyone should have access to the skills of tomorrow. That technology can make the world a better place. Through the work we do everyday, we empower the people who power our world. And we don't let fear, egos or drama distract us from our mission. We're adults, and we treat each other that way. We have the autonomy to do our jobs, transparency to eliminate office politics and trust each other to do the right thing. We thrive in an environment with creativity around every corner, challenges that keep us on our toes, and peers who inspire us to be the best we can be. We bring different viewpoints, backgrounds and experiences, and united by our mission, we are one.
#LI-Remote
#LI-AS1