Ruth De L'Arbre

Define and execute the business unit’s product and technology strategy in close collaboration with executive leadership, ensuring alignment with broader organizational goals. Lead a global team of over 20 professionals, including engineers and architects, across multiple locations, managing both onshore contractors and internal staff. Oversee the delivery and support of internal and external customer-facing applications valued at $128M globally, driving efficiency and quality in project execution. Ensure system integrity, compliance, and continuous improvement of applications, databases, and IT infrastructure, aligning them with business needs and industry standards. Foster innovation by optimizing technology platforms, integrating new solutions, and enhancing operational performance. Manage budgets, resource allocation, and timelines, while also focusing on talent acquisition, development, and team performance. Champion IT governance, risk management, and best practices, ensuring high availability, security, and scalability across technology systems. Work closely with business stakeholders and cross-functional teams to identify and deliver impactful solutions, supporting both short-term and long-term business objectives.

Together with the technology management group define the technology strategy in order to support the corporate strategy. Act as a people manager for a distributed team of 23 junior, medior and senior software engineers and architects. Collaborate closely with business program manager, product managers, UX team and business stakeholders on projects to develop new products and to make changes to our current business systems in order to provide internal and external end users products of high quality.

Manage multiple high-impact technology projects aligned with critical business goals, overseeing deliverables, scope, timelines, and expectations. Serve as the primary point of contact for all stakeholders, including senior management, ensuring clear communication and timely updates. Make informed decisions on schedules, prioritization, and resource allocation, driving the definition of project scope and managing changes with proper documentation and stakeholder buy-in. Lead cross-functional, globally distributed teams, fostering collaboration and maintaining a strong team dynamic to ensure project success. Monitor KPIs, deliverables, and milestones, ensuring projects stay on track, within scope, and on budget. Identify and mitigate risks, implement project management processes, and ensure seamless communication across stakeholders. Provide regular status updates, manage expectations, and adjust resources or timelines as needed. Conduct post-project reviews to capture lessons learned and improve future projects.

Act as a product designer for large to medium-sized projects, collaborating with tier 1 customers (industry clients, trademark law departments, trademark agents) globally to develop tailored solutions that enhance workflows by optimizing existing systems or providing tools to automate manual tasks. Conduct user research, gather feedback, and create wireframes, prototypes, and user journeys to ensure the designed solutions meet client needs. Set up and serve as the ambassador for implementing the Agile methodology within project teams, facilitating Scrum ceremonies, and ensuring continuous improvement throughout the development process. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to prioritize backlogs, refine user stories, and deliver iterative value to customers. Support QA teams during the testing phase by ensuring all user stories are adequately covered through both manual and automated testing, identifying gaps, and driving corrective actions. Provide insights and guidance to ensure a seamless handoff between design, development, and QA processes. Additionally, contribute to the creation of user documentation and training materials, support change management efforts, and work closely with stakeholders to ensure smooth adoption of new solutions. Track project progress, report on milestones, and adjust timelines or resources as needed to ensure successful delivery.

Draw up use cases and perform data and functional analysis to define requirements for new applications by organizing workshops with internal and external customers. Gather, document, and analyze business needs, translating them into clear functional and technical specifications. Participate in the interaction design process with business stakeholders to develop customer-focused solutions, ensuring that online customer-facing applications align with market needs. Conduct gap analysis, identify process improvements, and recommend solutions to enhance business efficiency. Define acceptance criteria and create test coverage plans for UAT, while planning and overseeing the user acceptance testing phase. Develop detailed process flows, data models, and wireframes to support system development and decision-making. Facilitate communication between business and technical teams to ensure alignment and feasibility of proposed solutions. Collaborate with the program manager to introduce a structured requirements procedure, enhancing efficiency and quality across the organization. Support change management efforts by preparing training materials, providing user support, and ensuring smooth implementation of new systems and processes.

Writing or assisting in the development of test plans and test procedures and automate relevant test procedures. Testing software releases during the product development and report test results and entering problems and issues into the defect database. Providing technical expertise on specific products, operating systems and specialized environments by gaining in-depth experience in areas of technology relevant to testing of company products Translate business requirements into functional and data analyses and business process diagrams.

As trademark analyst: mark trademark elements as important or less important through signs in such manner that the elements can be analyzed by the Search engine and Watch scoring system. As content operations analyst: Investigate user problems and needs, identify their source, and determine possible solutions. Automate data flows and processes through evaluating and interpreting end user information requirements.

Data input in the database using internal applications.