Vice President of Engineering

About NavaNava is a consultancy and public benefit corporation working to make government services simple, effective, and accessible to all. Since 2013, federal, state, and local government agencies have trusted Nava to build transformative digital services to help people access public benefits. Meeting our mission is an opportunity to restore trust between people and public institutions. We focus on populations that are the least protected because the stakes are higher.

As a client services company, we work with government agencies to improve how people apply for benefits, navigate their health care, and more. We bill for our time, selling our expertise and problem-solving methodology to government clients. Our clients hire us to help improve their products and services so that their users and beneficiaries have a better customer experience.

These end-users—the humans who benefit from our work—are at the core of everything we do. We research beneficiaries’ needs to help our government clients better deliver on their missions, providing everyone at Nava opportunities to do meaningful, impactful work.

The purpose of Nava’s Vice President of Engineering is to lead and grow the engineering organization by defining a clear vision that can design, build, launch, and operate public sector digital services, products, and infrastructure. The incumbent provides oversight to the engineering team from a delivery, growth, and talent development standpoint, continuously improving engineering practice to maximize value delivered to users and clients. This role builds clear and compelling growth paths for engineering staff that support successful careers within Nava, improve retention, and improve long term delivery effectiveness and differentiation. The Vice President of Engineering contributes to decisions about Nava’s long term strategy and policies, structures, and practices in support of Nava’s culture and mission: Be Active Stewards, Pursue the Root Cause, Think Long-Term, Build Together, Inclusion is Essential and Progress Takes Work.

As VP of Engineering, you will be responsible for a vision and strategy for an Engineering organization that can design, build, launch, and operate public sector digital services, products, and infrastructure at large scale, often under legislative and public scrutiny. Nava is a technology consultancy, and you will be responsible for an Engineering practice that continually improves at delivering value, building client trust, and positively impacting end-users. With other Practice leaders and your engineering leadership, you will build clear and compelling growth paths for engineering staff that support successful careers within Nava, improve retention, and improve our long term delivery effectiveness and differentiation. With Programs and Business Development, you will work closely with government clients and vendor partners to position for and win high leverage, mission-aligned contracts to deliver critical public services and infrastructure. With the Executive team, you will contribute to decisions about Nava’s long term strategy and the policies, structures, and practices that will support us in pursuit of our mission.

You will spend most of your time setting Nava’s engineering delivery strategy and vision, identifying structural and operational improvements to delivering value or building client trust as the organization grows, recruiting senior leaders, supporting new business development efforts across the portfolio, and interacting with prospective and existing government customers. You will build and lead your engineering leadership team, and build clarity and direction as they coach and mentor engineering managers, recruit and retain diverse engineering talent, and ultimately grow engineering leaders on your team. You will build best practices for how engineers work in a professional services firm, and set the standard for what successful modernization projects in government look like and how they can be delivered. You will meet with government clients and vendor partners to understand needs and industry trends, and ensure that Nava is successfully solving technology problems so that government services can meet the changing needs of the public.

What you'll do

• Directly contributes to capabilities planning using input from current and potential clients, our BD pipeline and a deep curiosity regarding how their practice can help Nava evolve and anticipate new opportunities
• Driving organizational planning and strategy for the engineering practice, including opening and filling critical leadership positions and ensuring a high level of management maturity
• Leading the engineering talent strategy, with People Ops and Delivery Ops teams to attract, grow, and retain talent
• Defining clear and compelling growth paths for staff that align career progression with increasing value to the company, ensuring performance management is strong
• Working with engineering leadership and other practice leaders to continually improve Nava’s internal training and effectiveness in our professional services and government delivery contexts
• Cascading decision making clearly internally to build trust and strengthen the engineering organization’s momentum
• Working within Nava’s decision making models to define and execute participatory methods of improving structural issues or practices
• Developing engineering leaders who can partner with Business Development / Program leadership on new / organic growth opportunities
• Supporting the development of bids, pitches, and meetings with existing and prospective clients to position Nava as the best digital services delivery firm in the industry
• Building an engineering practice that is differentiated against competition in challenging delivery environments and in capture settingsIdentifying investments toward new engineering capabilities as they intersect with market trends, leverage points, and our overall company strategy
• Tracking financials to ensure Nava meets financial targets and projected growth
• Monitoring the budget to ensure Nava and the engineering department manages costs related to growth
• Working with Engineering and Practice leaders, continually identifying improvements in Nava’s delivery approach that maximizes value delivered to users and clients
• Grow a highly aligned, high energy engineering practice that supports the growth and development of staff, as well as the growth and development of contracts
• Support operational excellence within Nava’s growing engineering practice, and on growing or large contracts
• Foster technical knowledge sharing to mitigate program/contract siloing and build a more robust overall practice with a “one firm” culture
• Ensure staff consistently hit billable hours targets, and that engineering initiatives achieve high return-on-investment for non-billable time
• Strategizing and coordinating engineering staffing and hiring with Delivery, Staffing, and Recruiting teams
• Collaborating with the engineering directors and technical leads on the project to identify departmental hiring needs
• Approving new requisitions in the early stage of recruitment
• Providing guidance and feedback to recruiters and hiring managers on candidates, salaries, levels, etc.
• Participating in interviews as needed

Required skills

• Scaling engineering organizations to 400 staff and beyond – experience and bias toward a “company-builder” frame of mind
• Experience managing the business dynamics in a professional services firm (billable hours, contract portfolios, client services skills)
• 10+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience, including 3+ years as a senior partner or engineering executive
• Track record of successfully delivering business results in rapidly-scaling companies, from hiring and building teams to driving new lines of business to building new capabilities strategically
• Experience partnering with business development and finance departments to strategize new growth and make long-term investments in new lines of business
• Capacity and resilience to develop, build, and grow strong working relationships at all levels of leadership, management, and the organization
• Confidence and proven communication ability (verbal and written) to present challenging and complex concepts simply to a diverse audience, internally and externally
• High level of personal integrity, ethics, motivation, and ability to foster mutual respect and inclusion

Desired skills

• Government contracting experience is not required but a plus