VP, Business Technology

What You'll Do

Avalara is in search of a Vice President of Business Technology, a role that encompasses a wide range of responsibilities. You will be responsible for overseeing the strategic vision and daily operations of our Business Technology platforms, with a specific focus on Salesforce. Your role will involve ensuring seamless operations, strategic development, and efficient integration to drive growth and value for our business. Reporting to the Vice President of Information Technology, you will have functional relationships across our Marketing, Sales, Go To Market, Customer Compliance, and Revenue Operations responsibilities, with relationships across Finance, Product and Engineering. You will lead a global and technical team of engineers, architects, technical product owners, business analysts, quality assurance professionals, and consultants, all dedicated to enhancing our Business Technology platforms. As the Vice President of Business Technology, you will define strategy and architecture, oversee management, and lead all operations associated with delivering solutions.

Job Duties

Day in the life:

As the Vice President of Business Technology at Avalara, your day begins with sessions around strategic planning and team alignment, ensuring that your teams work is aligned with technology and business initiatives. Throughout the day, you oversee operational aspects, including project management, resource allocation, and addressing challenges within critical initiatives such as the Sales Ecosystem Optimization and Salesforce CPQ & Billing transition. You actively engage in hands-on problem-solving and innovation sessions, collaborating with technical teams to address complex issues and identify opportunities for process improvement and innovation. You regularly connect with executives across the company to ensure their needs are met while making strategic recommendations to help them achieve their goals. Additionally, you conduct performance reviews and career development discussions with team members, fostering growth and professional development. Your role involves strategic reflection and planning, refining plans and preparing for upcoming meetings to effectively communicate the value of business technology initiatives to senior leadership and stakeholders.

Core Responsibilities:

• Provide strategic direction and leadership to the Business Technology teams, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and objectives.
• Oversee the performance and development of multiple scrum teams, each specializing in different domains including Sales, Service, Product Provisioning, Integrations, Salesforce Communities, Urgent Care, Customer Enablement, and Release Management.
• Collaborate with senior leadership and stakeholders to understand business requirements and translate them into technology solutions that drive efficiency and enable growth.
• Manage the implementation, customization, administration, and on-going support of various technology platforms including Salesforce, PROs, FinancialForce, Zuora, Boomi, Gainsight, and others.
• Maintain strong partnerships with key vendors including regular communication, negotiation of contracts and service level agreements, strategic alignment of goals and resources, and ensuring adherence to contractual obligations.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives of various scales and complexities to optimize processes, enhance system capabilities, and ensure scalability.
• Lead the development and execution of the strategic technology roadmap, prioritizing projects and initiatives based on business needs and resource availability.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards, data security regulations, and best practices in technology management.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and accountability within the Business Technology team.
• Proactively monitor industry trends and best practices to inform strategic decision-making and maintain Avalara's competitive edge.
• Establish and maintain effective communication channels with internal stakeholders, ensuring transparency and alignment throughout the organization.

What You'll Need to be Successful

As the Vice President of Business Technology at Avalara, your day begins with strategic planning and team understanding sessions, ensuring that your team's work is aligned with technology and business initiatives. You oversee operational aspects throughout the day, including project management, resource allocation, and addressing challenges within essential projects such as the Sales Ecosystem Optimization and Salesforce CPQ & Billing transition. You participate in hands-on problem-solving and innovation sessions, collaborating with technical teams to address complex issues and identify process improvement and innovation opportunities. You connect with executives across the company to ensure their needs are met while making recommendations to help them achieve their goals. Additionally, you conduct performance reviews and career development discussions with team members, encouraging growth. Your role involves strategic reflection and planning, refining plans, and preparing for upcoming meetings to communicate the value of business technology programs to senior leadership and team members.

Provide strategic leadership to the Business Technology teams, ensuring understanding of organizational goals and objectives.

Oversee the performance and development of multiple scrum teams, each specializing in different domains, including Sales, Service, Product Provisioning, Integrations, Salesforce Communities, Urgent Care, Customer Enablement, and Release Management.

As an essential senior leadership team member, you will collaborate with stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into technology solutions that drive efficiency and ensure growth. Your input and expertise will be valued in this collaborative process.

Manage the implementation, customization, administration, and ongoing support of various technology platforms, including Salesforce, PROs, FinancialForce, Zuora, Boomi, Gainsight, and others.

Maintain partnerships with vendors including regular communication, negotiation of contracts and service level agreements, strategic alignment of goals and resources, and ensuring adherence to contractual obligations.

In this position, you will improve programs of various scales and complexities to improve processes, enhance system capabilities, and ensure scalability.

Lead the development and execution of the strategic technology roadmap, prioritizing projects and initiatives based on business needs and resource availability.

Ensure compliance with industry standards, data security regulations, and best practices in technology management.

Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and accountability within the Business Technology team.

Proactively monitor industry trends and best practices to inform strategic decision-making and maintain Avalara's competitive edge.

Establish and maintain communication channels with company partners, ensuring organizational transparency and understanding.

About the Team

• Experience with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, notably Salesforce, with experience implementing and managing Salesforce solutions in complex business environments.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in technology leadership roles, with at least 5 years of experience managing teams in a global environment.
• Technical background with expertise in cloud-based platforms, integration technologies, and middleware solutions.
• Experience with Salesforce platforms, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Communities, and Einstein Chat.
• Experience with PROs, FinancialForce, Zuora, Boomi, and other relevant tools in the technology stack.
• Salesforce certifications (e.g., Salesforce Administrator, Salesforce Developer, Salesforce Architect) preferred.
• Experience with JIRA, ServiceNow, and other project management and ticketing systems.
• Experience managing and scaling diverse technical teams across multiple locations.
• You will have strategic planning with the ability to inspire creativity and process improvements.
• To be successful, you will have analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Experience working in a scaled Agile environment, preferably with SCRUM or similar methodologies.
• Demonstrated ability to develop teams, including hiring and mentoring team members.
• Experience with ITIL, DevOps, or other IT service management frameworks is preferred.

How We'll Take Care of You

Total Rewards

In addition to a great compensation package, paid time off, and paid parental leave, many Avalara employees are eligible for bonuses.

Health & Wellness

Benefits vary by location but generally include private medical, life, and disability insurance.

Inclusive culture and diversity

Avalara strongly supports diversity, equity, and inclusion, and is committed to integrating them into our business practices and our organizational culture. We also have a total of 8 employee-run resource groups, each with senior leadership and exec sponsorship.

Flexible hybrid working

We support hybrid work and flexible schedules for our employees.

Learn more about our benefits by region here: https://careers.avalara.com/

About Avalara

We're Avalara. We're defining the relationship between tax and tech.

We've already built an industry-leading cloud compliance platform, processing nearly 40 billion customer API calls and over 5 million tax returns a year.

Last year, we became a billion-dollar business , and our tribe expanded by a cool thousand people - there's nearly 5,000 of us now. Our growth is real, and we're not slowing down - not until we've achieved our mission - to be part of every transaction in the world.

We're bright, innovative and disruptive, like the orange we love to wear. It captures our quirky spirit and optimistic mindset. It shows off the culture we've designed, that empowers our people to win. Ownership and achievement go hand in hand here. We instill passion in our people through the trust we place in them.

We've been different from day one. Join us, and your career will be too.

EEO Statement

We're an Equal Opportunity Employer. Supporting diversity and inclusion is a cornerstone of our company - we don't want people to fit into our culture, but to enrich it. All qualified candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, age, gender, national orientation, disability, sexual orientation, US Veteran status, or any other factor protected by law. If you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know.