Current Assignments

PROJECT NUMBER: 2064
TITLE: Vice President, Engineering & Product Development
LOCATION: Ann Arbor, Michigan 
COMPANY:Arbor Networks
REPORTS TO: CEO
URL: http://www.arbor.net/

The Company

Our client, Arbor Networks delivers network security and operational performance for global business networks. From the service provider cloud to the enterprise core, Arbor’s Peakflow network behavior analysis & anomaly detection solution delivers unmatched network-wide visibility and scalability to defend against a wide range of threats, including worms, data theft, DDoS attacks, botnets, and more as they inevitably arise. Solutions are deployed within the service provider management network — at the broadband network edge, customer edge, transit and peering edge — and within the internal enterprise network.

Since the company was founded in 2000, Arbor Networks has been committed to researching next-generation cyber threats and developing solutions that prevent network attacks. The company's patented technology is based on 5 years of pioneering network security research conducted by Arbor's founders at the University of Michigan under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant.

Arbor is headquartered in Chelmsford, MA, with R&D in Ann Arbor, MI and at HQ, EMEA headquarters in London, and Asia operations in Beijing.

Position Responsibilities & Attributes

• Key executive management team (EMT) change agent, charged with introducing and optimizing a fresh development paradigm & revenue architecture within this engineering/R&D rich software company. Requires significant experience working in a 3rd party developer, and/or bespoke outsourcing environment in order to lead credibly as the company transitions to a more risk-reward oriented partnering model. Must be capable of creating the transition strategy, and articulating the vision, which inspires a world-class development organization to embrace change, and push beyond their best-of-breed comfort zone to facilitate rapid expansion of the addressable customer universe.
• Accountable for driving the Company’s multi-location engineering and product development organization; functional and cultural leader tasked with revitalizing infrastructure, process and ethos required to ensure a unified, robust product migration capability. Work closely with CTO to constantly re-evaluate the Company’s product-service value proposition, and relevance of product metrics used in the context of next-generation network management and security opportunities.
• Track record in the delivery of products emphasizing complex structural software, transitioning from software delivered on an Intel platform to porting software to blades in a 10 to 40 Gig environment. Experienced driving large-scale enterprise-class development projects, with a strong focus on quality, time and cost parameters, and consistency/maintainability of software. Deploy structured methodologies while still encouraging creativity, innovative design and practical risk-taking.
• Leverage generic product models used dynamically on multiple levels. Optimize modern software design/development techniques and prototyping to yield significant productivity gains in managing development costs handling sequences of large projects quickly. Integrate multiple and diverse components to produce highly differentiated new products.
• Strong leadership skills, with a history of building teams of highly qualified technical staff on a distributed basis; demonstrated ability to re-set the ethos and culture for the development area, and to present the team’s capabilities to outside organizations and customers.
• Able to manage the unit on a P&L basis, as well as assist in client negotiations/bid management; ability to understand the business applications of the product range, and to focus design & development on market requirements. High level of strategic capability, able to extrapolate the benefits and application of next-generation technologies.

Candidate Background

• Requires significant experience with the Security Software, and any background servicing the telecom vertical with security offerings is a major plus. Must have experience leveraging development partners and outsourcing assets, as well as building packaged mission-critical enterprise software in a distributed development environment.
• Broad general knowledge of the high-technology industry gained in larger enterprise security software environments enhanced by in-depth knowledge of complex application solutions issues and ongoing awareness of R&D practices / technology advances
• Track record of producing complex software products, on time and on budget. Business development orientation, and robust interpersonal communications skills essential.
• B.S. Computer Science or equivalent required; MBA preferred but not essential