Software Engineering Manager

Overview

Watchfire Signs headquarters is in Danville, IL - 2.5 hours from Chicago, 1.5 from Indianapolis, 1/2 hour from Champaign/Urbana and University of Illinois.

Watchfire Signs is an exciting, dynamic company, headquartered in Danville, IL. We are more than 85 years strong and have been growing steadily. Vertically integrated, we do everything from engineering and sales through circuit board assembly; from accounting and technical support through final product integration and calibration. Watchfire offers excellent comprehensive benefits including 401K with matching, affordable health/dental insurance, paid time off in year of hire, and continuing education assistance. Internal promotion and career development are core to our culture. We have been an employer of choice for decades and are growing strong! Watchfire has an exciting work force with a fascinating product line and state of the art facility. We have had consistent double-digit growth since 2009.

This is a middle management position within the R&D department, for candidates with a minimum four-year bachelor’s degree.  We are looking for an accomplished technology leader and engineering professional, with expertise in people and project management. S/he will lead from the front to innovate, support attentive issue tracking, and get involved in regular prioritization and timely communication. Proven technical leadership and mentoring skills are highly desirable, as is extensive experience in full software development life cycle processes comprised of requirements-gathering, proof-of-concept, feasibility studies, design, implementation, documentation, testing, maintenance and obsolescence. Experience leading/participating in projects that involve groups of cross-functional engineers from Software, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering disciplines is a plus. S/he must be able to lead designs and development plans of high complexity products, which typically requires a broad background of technical and process knowledge.  This position provides expert guidance, drives decision-making, and supports the Software Engineering group in various technical and functional aspects of research and development of new products. A successful candidate will be a strong team player who is able to work across multiple functions and disciplines. The candidate should be self-directed and have experience and knowledge in software design, coding, and testing methodologies. We take pride in our fast-paced environment, and the willingness to learn and adapt (new technologies) will be key to success in our organization. Our software products are a critical differentiator in our market, and we take great pride in our in-house products developed entirely by this team, from embedded systems to exceptional user-facing GUI applications.

Responsibilities

• Recruit, inspire, and develop engineering talent for Software Engineering group.
• Foster a strong engineering culture, set clear expectations and create a positive work environment based on accountability, in collaboration with other engineering and management teams.
• Lead/facilitate technical discussions for the software engineering group, be a subject matter expert (in industry and technology trends), and have strategic influence within R&D.
• Co-own and maintain product road map.
• Communicate cross-functionally across various teams, organizations and internal and external stakeholders to drive research and product development efforts.
• Ensure design and code reviews, analysis of code components and code coverage of Unit test cases.
• Drive end-to-end quality with effective automation of unit level, component level and system level testing. Work closely with Software QA team to ensure high quality of product delivered.
• Lead/facilitate creation and maintenance of system and software requirements specifications.
• Promote good software engineering practices. Lead/facilitate creation and maintenance of software engineering best practices.
• Lead/facilitate data gathering and troubleshooting of products, under design or returned/reported from the field.
• Follow relevant company procedures and help create and maintain relevant documentation.
• Be involved in all aspects of the software product development processes.

Required Education/Qualifications

• BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering or a related discipline.
• 10 years of software engineering experience building and/or leading product software development.
• Experience working and/or leading software development in one or more of the following areas – embedded systems development; n-tier web applications with database driven backends; desktop application development.
• Experience working and/or leading software development in one or more of the following OS environments – Windows (Desktop, Server and Embedded); Linux (Desktop, Server and Embedded).
• Experience working and/or leading software development in one or more of the following programming platforms – C++; Java; C#; JavaScript; HTML/CSS; Qt
• Proficiency in communication protocols (Ethernet specifically). Understanding of the OSI model is a plus.
• Experience with version control software (preferably Git), Continuous Integration Build systems (preferably Jenkins), project management tools (like Jira) and automated testing tools.
• Good understanding of Object Oriented Design/Analysis (OOD/OOA) concepts. Understanding of design languages such as UML will be a plus.
• Good written and verbal communication skills.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.

Other ideal skills include:

• Experience with image processing and rendering algorithms.
• Experience with IoT and cloud infrastructure (Azure; AWS).
• Experience with SaaS and PaaS cloud models.
• Mobile application development.
• Software & Systems Security.
• Familiarity with Agile product development methodology (Scrum in particular) is a plus.