Roger Kirkness and Chris Grouchy, both former Shopify Plus team members who helped launch Shopify’s wholesale channel, saw an opportunity to disrupt a technology that’s been in place since its creation shortly after World War II. 

 

Convictional is the first supplier enablement platform for retailers and distributors to power drop-ship, marketplace and wholesale business models in one solution and enable businesses to automate and integrate trade, regardless of size or technical expertise. They want to level the playing field, connecting suppliers and buyers, regardless of the systems they use. 

 

Enterprise retailers like Indigo, Staples, Equinox, and Harry Rosen now rely on Convictional’s infrastructure to trade with third-party suppliers, and they’ve secured $6.7M in Series A funding led by solo venture capitalist Lachy Groom (who led Convictional’s 2019 seed round out of Y Combinator). With other leading operators, like the former COO of Stripe and the former CEO of Walmart International joining the round, this startup is primed for growth and impact.

 

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How Will I Make An Impact?

 

Convictional is looking for a highly motivated VP Engineering to help scale their engineering team and increase the health of their engineering function in service of their customer goals. 

 

In the first 12-18 months, you will make an impact across: 

• Company - Alongside the leadership team, help contribute to 3X recurring revenue and usage-based revenue YoY.

• Team Growth - Build and grow an effective values-aligned team of engineers from 13 today to likely 30 by the end of next year. 

• Leadership - Hire, retain and develop the team to reinforce Convictional’s values and impact their customers. 

• Engineering - Provide bar raising advice and high speed, high-quality judgement on material technical discussions and strategy. 

• Culture - Build an engineering function made of kind people focused on usage-based growth and engineering excellence.

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Why Now?

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The go-to-market leadership team is built out, which is leading to increased sales velocity. With their recent Series A raise, they are in a great position to scale rapidly and purposefully.  

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The engineering team has grown to 13 engineers, split into 3 pods, but the bandwidth of management is limited. The technical Co-Founder and CEO is primarily product-focused, so there is a gap we are looking to fill in bringing on their first VP Engineering to support and build the team - with a people/process focus - reporting to the CEO.

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How Do I Know If This Is For Me?

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• You know how to, and you take pride in building an engineering function made of kind people focused on focused intensity, learning velocity and long-term thinking (all of which form Convictional’s core values). 

• You thrive being the person your teams look up to - both to support their development and to provide strategic direction - and you achieve this predominantly by helping teams focus their efforts where they can have the biggest impact.

• You’re passionate about promoting continuous learning and improvement not only for your team but for yourself as well.

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Our Ideal Candidate Looks Like:

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To succeed in (and enjoy!) this role: 

• You have experience building and managing a 30-50 person engineering team. 

• You have great enterprise-focused software engineering experience and fundamentals

• You can set the pace with your energy, kindness, and aspirational work ethic. 

• You have experience leading a multi-team engineering org entirely remote and async.

 

Nice to have:

• You’ve been with an early (Series A) stage start-up, where you were more technical and hands-on (and you enjoyed it!).

• You’ve worked for a B2B enterprise/infrastructure company.

• You’re experienced in leading a team in one of the following domains: B2B trade, EDI, or eCommerce.

 

We understand, accept, and value the differences between people of different backgrounds, genders, sexual orientations, ages, beliefs, and abilities.  We aim to create an inclusive environment and encourage diverse individuals to apply.

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The Process:

Convictional is hyper-focused on delivering a positive candidate experience. The general hiring process looks like the following:

 

Step 1: Conversation with your Artemis Recruitment Consultant, Carly

Step 2: Introductory conversation with CEO, Roger  

Step 3: Conversations with 3 additional members of the leadership team

Step 4: Assessment for evaluation & debrief 

Step 5: Meet & greet with the engineering team

Step 6: References & Offer 

 

And of course, your Artemis Canada Recruitment Consultant, CARLY, will work closely with you throughout every step of the process.

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We’d love to hear from you - even if you don’t meet 100% of the requirements! Send a note to carly@artemiscanada.com