Senior Director, Technology

Reporting to the Business Head for International Education with a functional matrix reporting line to the CTO International. This role will work closely with the Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Finance, and Customer Support & Success teams. This position is based in Singapore.

Key responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership

1. Help define technology vision and strategy of the businesses’ digital education products and solutions, ensuring they align with the market needs, industry standards and broader company goals.
2. Oversee the product roadmap by partnering with Product Management and Engineering to prioritize the development of products, features and tools that meet the customer needs, market demands and business objectives.
3. Identify opportunities for innovation and differentiation in our products.
4. Ensure technology alignment across all areas of the business and with corporate technology roadmap.

Product Lifecycle Management

1. Collaborate with Product Management, Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support & Success to ensure smooth end to end product delivery, from ideation to launch, ensuring sustenance and growth.
2. Collaborate with the Product Management and Engineering teams to ensure product delivery on-time, within scope, and meeting the required quality standards.

Marketing & Customer Insights (including Social Media and Digital Marketing)

1. Support Marketing to select and integrate the necessary tools to support digital marketing efforts to enable the marketing team to launch and optimize campaigns.
2. Ensure the infrastructure is in place to collect, analyse, and act upon user data by integrating data pipelines and analytical tools.
3. Use market research, competitive analysis, customer inputs and data-driven insights to prioritize product features and improvements.

Stakeholder Management:

1. Act as the key point of contact for technology product-related communication with senior leadership, including providing updates on product performance, timelines, and strategic direction.
2. Build strong relationships with internal stakeholders (Sales, Marketing, Customer Support & Success) to gather input and ensure alignment with business goals.
3. Work with external stakeholders (Customers, Partners, Vendors) to ensure product-market fit.

Finance

1. Work with Business Head, CFO International and CTO International to forecast and manage the technology budget for the International Education business.
2. Define and manage the digital product fulfilment and entitlements cycle across all relevant business and customer applications.
3. Define and track key product metrics, ensuring products meet performance goals (e.g., customer acquisition, retention, revenue targets).

Customer Support & Success

1. Advise the Customer Support function with selection and implementation of appropriate customer support tools such as ticketing systems, live chat systems, and customer relationship management tools to efficiently handle the entire customer journey.
2. Work with Product Management to ensure technical issues raised by users are addressed by the support and engineering teams.
3. Assist Customer Success in developing the technical solutions that help with customer onboarding, ensuring a smooth and intuitive experience for new users.
4. Select and maintain tools for tracking customer usage patterns, engagement, and progress to enable the customer success team to identify potential issues before they escalate and provide proactive support.
5. Ensure that data flows seamlessly from the platform to customer success dashboards, allowing for real-time tracking of user success metrics (e.g., completion rates, engagement levels).

Data and Analysis

1. Direct the data infrastructure that powers the business, including data lakes, databases, and analytics tools to collect and analyse user data, ensuring that all user data is stored securely and that the business complies with relevant data protection regulations (e.g., GDPR, COPPA).
2. Ensure that all departments (product management, marketing, sales, etc.) have access to actionable insights to help in decision-making based on real-time data and predictive analysis.
3. Ensure that data from various departments (product, sales, marketing, finance, etc.) is integrated into a unified dashboard that allows leadership to track overall business performance and make data-driven strategic decisions.
4. Oversee the development of reporting that allows department heads to generate specific reports based on their needs, whether it’s financial forecasting, product usage trends, or marketing ROI.

Key requirements:

Qualifications

· Education: Bachelor's degree in business, engineering or product design, preferably with an MBA in Systems or Product Management, or equivalent industry experience.

Experience

1. Minimum 15+ years of product development and / or management experience, including at least 3 years in a leadership role.
2. Proven track record of managing the entire product lifecycle from concept to launch and growth.
3. Experience in the Education sector, with knowledge of school-based products and SaaS.

Skills

1. Strong leadership and collaboration skills, with experience working across cross-functional areas.
2. Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities.
3. Effective communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to influence and build consensus at all levels of the organization.
4. Ability to balance long-term strategic thinking with short-term execution.

Tools

· Proficiency in ERP Order Management (e.g. Oracle NetSuite, Oracle Fusion, SAP or similar), Product Development and Test Management tools (JIRA, Confluence, TestRail), Google Analytics, SEO tools, Google Keyword Planner, Customer Support tools (Freshdesk, Zendesk etc), CRM applications (e.g. SFDC, NetSuite, Freshworks) and data analytics tools (Power BI).