Reports To: Chief Financial Officer
Job Type: Full-time
Region: Central America & Mexico - South America - United States
Location: USA, Costa Rica, Peru
Start Date: Immediately
Contact: Please apply by using this link:

https://rootcapital.org/careers/senior-director-of-information-technology-it/

Mission & History of Root Capital
Root Capital is a nonprofit whose mission is to grow rural prosperity and build the resilience of farming families around the world. We support the growth of agricultural enterprises, so they can transform rural communities. These businesses purchase crops such as coffee, cocoa, or grains from smallholder farmers. With growth, they become engines of impact that can raise incomes, create jobs for the next generation of leaders, level the playing field for women, and take urgent action against climate change.

We supply these businesses with vital credit and capacity building to foster their growth and resilience. We work in hard-to-serve communities where others don’t. To date, we’ve distributed $1.8 billion to improve the lives of over 10 million people in farming families. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Root Capital currently has associated offices in Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Ghana, and Kenya.

Summary
The Senior Director of IT is expected to provide exemplary leadership of the growing IT department, and ensure that Root Capital is optimally utilizing information technology to achieve our goals and execute on our mission. The Senior Director of IT is expected to be a seasoned manager with a passion for people management and a demonstrated track record of working collaboratively with direct reports to support their career progression, facilitate their development, and champion a strong and collaborative team culture.

The Senior Director of IT is expected to build successful relationships with key stakeholders across the organization by developing a clear understanding of business needs, acting as a trusted advisor, and ensuring efficient and effective delivery of IT services to meet those needs.

The Senior Director of IT will manage a team of eight IT staff, with the opportunity to add additional roles to the team in 2024 and future years. The mandate of the IT departments includes delivering the right IT equipment and best-in-class end-user support and training to Root Capital’s global team of over 160 staff and more than 80 consultants across the United States, Latin America, Africa and Indonesia. It will be critical for the Senior Director of IT to partner with departments across the organization to ensure we have the right technology supporting all key business processes, and to build a data strategy to ensure we have a long-term plan that defines the technology, processes, people and rules to optimally manage our information assets.

Responsibilities
IT Team Leadership

The Senior Director of IT is expected to provide exemplary leadership of Root Capital growing IT department, through the following management responsibilities:

Develop and implement a long-term IT strategy that articulates a comprehensive vision and plan for how Root Capital will utilize information technology to achieve its goals and execute on our mission
Set annual IT department goals and success metrics that the IT department will use to measure the value that IT is delivering to the organization and the level of staff satisfaction with the services provided by the IT department
Prioritize team management through working collaboratively with direct reports to support their career progression, facilitate their development, and championing a strong and collaborative team culture that drive and inspires team productivity while also respecting work-life balance
Builds successful relationships with key stakeholders by developing a clear understanding of business needs, acting as a trusted advisor, and ensuring cost-effective delivery of IT services to meet those needs.
Develop, manage, and track the IT department's annual budget, including advocating for the IT department’s priorities to ensure the department has the resources needed to deliver the most possible value to the organization
IT Operations

The mandate of the Senior Director of IT includes oversight of IT operations, which is the team responsible for delivering the right IT equipment and best-in-class end-user support and training to Root Capital’s global team of over 160 staff and over 80 consultants across the United States, Latin America, Africa and Indonesia. They also protect Root Capital from operational risks through data security, disaster recovery and data retention policies and procedures, and support the organization in other critical areas such as systems integration.

Salesforce & Business Intelligence

The Senior Director of IT will also be responsible for overseeing Root Capital’s use of Salesforce, which is arguably the organization’s most important software platform due to the ways we leverage both the out-of-the-box CRM capabilities, coupled with custom-developed functionality that supports critical business processes, such as our Salesforce-based Bank Core platform that is used to manage our end-to-end lending activities.

In addition to managing Salesforce architecture, development, administration, and support, this team is also responsible for Root Capital’s use of the Tableau platform to meet the business intelligence and data visualization needs of both Root Capital staff, and clients of Root Capital’s digital business intelligence (DBI) advisory service offering.

Business Enablement

Root Capital’s IT department strives to help Root Capital achieve our ambitious impact objectives by supporting teams that are working to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of current business processes, as well as develop new processes to support the delivery of innovative products and services that support Root Capital’s mission. To this end, we recently added a new Senior Business Analyst role to the IT department, with a mandate to develop and maintain effective relationships with key stakeholders across the organization in order to share best practices, provide technical advice, and collaborate on business process improvement opportunities.

Data Strategy & Data Governance

Root Capital collects voluminous data about our lending operations and advisory services, including data regarding the hundreds of agricultural enterprises who are recipients of our lending and technical advisory services, and the millions of agricultural producers and family members who are positively impacted by our work. The Senior Director of IT will be tasked with developing and implementing a data strategy for Root Capital, to ensure we have a long-term plan that defines the technology, processes, people and rules to optimally manage our information assets. This includes leading efforts to further develop Root Capital’s policies and procedures related to Data Governance, including ensuring that Root Capital establishes and enforces clear policies and procedures related to data quality, system documentation, and system integration.

Skills & Experience
Minimum 10 years of IT experience, including a minimum of 5 years in a IT leadership role with significant team management responsibilities.
Passion for team management, including hiring, training, motivating and coaching employees, and building collaborative and highly-effective teams by assessing employee performance and providing helpful feedback and training opportunities
Proven track record as a leader who can manage communication, scope, schedule, budget, risks, and resourcing at the project level, including actively removing blockers, escalating project issues, and providing oversight on mitigation of issues/risks
Excels at collaboration and communication with stakeholders at different levels of the organization and across diverse cultures, including the ability to build consensus and influence decision-makers.
Familiarity with complex business systems, and experience analyzing whether the application structures and functions are well aligned with functional requirements for new business system implementations
Adept at navigating organizations with complex structures organizational structures; understanding people's roles, foreseeing obstacles, identifying workarounds, leveraging resources and rallying teammates.
Experience managing teams responsible for staff onboarding and helpdesk support, with a providing track record of delivering best-in-class end-user support
Familiarly with cloud-based IT systems, such as Google, Box.com, OneLogin, Mimecast, and video conferencing systems (such as Zoom.). Experience training others on these systems is a plus.
Experience with Salesforce and/or Tableau highly preferred
Strong organizational skills with the ability to complete work within established time frames, as well as prioritize and coordinate multiple projects and competing work demands.
Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills in English required, bilingual candidates (English/Spanish) preferred
Commitment to Root Capital’s mission
Must be authorized to work in the United States, Peru or Costa Rica
Are you missing a few of the skills listed? We would still like to see your application. While the skills above fit our vision of this role, we are open to those candidates with a strong knowledge foundation that are fast learners and highly motivated to close any skill gaps, and are happy to provide on-the-job training.

Root Capital is committed to diversity and inclusion within our team, and recognizes our role in closing the digital divide, including identifying obstacles that certain groups face in developing skills needed for roles in the humanitarian & technology sectors. Women, nationals of low and middle income countries, and members of other underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

Root Capital provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, active military or veteran status, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy (which includes pregnancy, childbirth, medical conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth, and breastfeeding and expressing breast milk), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. Root Capital is committed to creating a dynamic work environment that upholds our leadership principles of empowerment, equity, integrity, service, and transparency.

Job Email id: jobs(at)rootcapital.org