Job details

Manager, Platform Development

Who We Are:

IMG Academy is the world’s leading sports education brand, providing a holistic education model that empowers student-athletes to win their future, preparing them for college and for life. IMG Academy offers an innovative suite of on-campus and online experiences, providing growth opportunities for all student-athletes through:

Boarding school and camps, via a 600-acre state-of-the-art campus in Bradenton, Fla. (
IMGAcademy.com
)
Online coaching via the IMG Academy+ brand, with a focus on personal development through the lens of sport and performance (
IMGAcademy.com/Plus
)
Online college recruiting, via the NCSA brand, providing content, tools, coaching and access to a network of 40,000 college coaches (
ncsasports.org
)

Our team has a deep appreciation for the transformative power of sports and holistic personal development. Our leadership is actively investing in the growth of the organization. We continue to broaden and deepen our technology platform and team in pursuit of our vision for empowering youth sports and the path-to-college for student-athletes.

Position Summary:

The Platform Development Manager sits at the center of NCSA’s efforts to make that vision a reality by identifying, scoping, and managing the execution of platform development initiatives. The Platform Development Manager works closely with Product, Engineering, and business stakeholders to understand company initiatives in depth and works those problems to resolution through a combination of methods: the software development lifecycle (SDLC) of one or more Platform Engineering sprint teams; the identification, selection and integration of Open Source and commercial 3rd party software; and the ongoing management of the resulting solution to deliver business value. The Platform Development Manager acts as a Product Owner on one or more Agile development teams and prioritizes a backlog balancing long-term project initiatives against maintenance and incoming Product and Business needs. Additionally, the Platform Development Manager works closely with cross-functional teams in their domain(s) of responsibility; specifically: Infrastructure, Identity & Authentication Management, Athlete Data Management, Ecosystem Data Management, Front-End Platforms, Athlete Products, Coach Products, and. The role requires a unique blend of business acumen, research and design skills, technology expertise, and a strong drive to exceed growth expectations.

This is a remote-based role that provides both management-track and individual contributor opportunities for career development. The position reports to the VP Platform Development.

Position Responsibilities:

Act as Product Owner on a Platform development team, owning the SDLC from ideation through rollout and adoption.
Own the backlog for one or more Platform-centric development teams, employing iterative, agile research and lean methods to identify problems and solutions for key Product, Engineering and stakeholders, understanding the key metrics for evaluating the resulting platform components.
Work with business stakeholders, product managers, and engineers to define hypotheses for platform components, translating them into defined scope of epics with goals and user stories with definitions of done.
Adopt a growth mindset approach to platform development, using critical thinking, creativity and hypothesis-driven experimentation to deliver extensible software and solutions that position Reigning Champs for future revenue opportunities.
Conduct user acceptance testing on features and bug fixes prior to release, ensuring high quality platform componentry.
Work with leads across Operations, Sales, Support, Product, and Platform to craft the Platform Strategy around one or more Platform Components.
Partner with Product Managers as internal customers by developing enabling technologies that meet the needs of their respective Product Development teams, or by collaborating on a Product Engineering team as a Platform “advisor” to ensure Product adoption of Platform components and that the Platform continues to meet the needs of the product.
Act as a leader within the department and development teams by modeling transparency, continuous improvement, preparedness, and action-oriented decision making.
Be an evangelist of new practices and technologies throughout the organization; train and lead business stakeholders and users on new platform componentry.
Use direct research and analysis to understand common and divergent needs across stakeholder constituencies: product managers, general managers, and technical staff.
Contribute to a clear, easy to understand vision, strategy, and platform roadmap providing cross-functional opportunities for evangelization, feedback and continuous optimization.
Partner with technology leadership to develop a set of reusable platform components that provide building blocks for internal reporting across NCSA business units.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

You have 3+ years’ experience in product and platform development, software, and data in diverse environments, with a mix of start-up and/or growth-stage organizations.
You have experience leading product or platform development teams, working cross-functionally with business stakeholders and engineering teams as a Product Owner for multiple sprint teams.
You are very comfortable providing insights to business leaders using descriptive, diagnostic, and predictive analytics.
You are a servant leader who understands their primary role to be supporting and enabling their team by maintaining a healthy, supportive culture.
You have an entrepreneurial, experimental and growth mindset, strong cross-functional facilitation and motivation skills, and most importantly, a consistent focus on empathetic continuous improvement.
You have a deep understanding of, and expertise in, managing sustainable software development, with strong research, assessment, and documentation skills, and the ability to critically evaluate customer and employee behavior for incorporating into software.
You have strong business process definition and refinement skills, with an ability to identify areas of opportunity or challenge and methods for providing a clear analysis.
You enjoy getting things done working cross-functionally in fast-paced, growth-stage organizations.
You are familiar with SQL, HTTP, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, log analysis, API development, high-level cloud computing concepts, and have an understanding of engineering methodology.
You have experience leading cross-functionally in situations requiring collaboration, negotiation and communication of complex analyses to non-technical or senior management audiences.
You have excellent visual, verbal and textual communication and presentation skills; extremely strong skills for using data to tell stories, especially counter-intuitive or controversial ones.
You are highly self-motivated, self-directed, resourceful and autonomous; capable of managing multiple simultaneous deliverables with proactive status updates and requests for support.

Background Requirements:

Requires a background check upon offer

Don’t meet every single requirement? We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfect with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

Get to know us better:

Ncsasports.org

Imgacademy.com

EEO Statement

IMG Academy provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.