Director, Software Engineering (932466)

Position Summary

We are seeking an experienced and dynamic Director of Software Engineering that possesses a growth mindset, very strong problem-solving skills, and shift-left thinking, to lead a talented team of software engineers. In this role, you will be responsible for overseeing the development of high-quality software solutions, hands-on technical coaching, mentoring, leading, and driving technical excellence, improving development team flows and tools, and ensuring the successful delivery of software projects on time and on budget. You will be a cultural leader embodying Purpose Financials’ core values.

The ideal candidate will possess a strong background in services and platform engineering. Including Microservices, Java, Containers, API development, Quality, Observability, Error Handling, CI/CD, developing for scale in a distributed cloud environment, AWS (including serverless, API services, Aurora and Dynamo), Infrastructure as Code, Mock API testing, virtualization of lower environments, observability and monitoring dashboards, and have a proven track record of coaching and mentoring teams. You should be an engaged and hands-on leader. You should have a desire to raise the bar of excellence through hands-on coaching and co-creation with staff, breaking down silos, and possessing strong architectural experience. Experience with REACT or Vue, JAMStack, and instrumentation is highly desirable. Experience with implementing telemetry and SRE function is highly desirable. Experience with Prompt Engineering and GenAI is desirable.

Job Responsibility

• Lead and manage a team of software engineers, providing technical guidance, coaching, and mentorship.
• Must be highly engaged, available, hands-on (in the code), detail oriented, an active leader and a great listener.
• Drive technical excellence and ensure the delivery of high-quality software solutions at a fast pace.
• Work collaboratively (including with the Vice President of Engineering, Tech Leads, and Colleagues) to define and evolve plans to achieve software engineering excellence.
• Define and manage budget of software development teams and tools.
• Develop roadmaps and plans to incrementally build to end state visions with pragmatic and achievable plans while meeting immediate project deliverables.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to define software development strategies and architectures that align with business goals.
• Understand the business value of software projects and clearly communicate the value to team members and staff to ensure appropriate alignment of success criteria.
• Drive a culture of growth, teamwork, collaboration, and engagement.
• Provide hands on agile team coaching focusing on achievable yet aggressive release plans, story tasking with all required aspects of delivering potentially shippable code, driving team ownership and organization around burndowns, burn-down monitoring and pivoting as needed in line with release themes and business priorities.
• Improve the skills and capabilities of team members in coding best practices, code reviews, standards, automation, tooling, and process alignment.
• Develop and maintain serverless and microservices-based applications using Java, AWS, and other relevant technologies.

Job Responsibilities Cont.

• Contribute to the development efforts by providing project technical guidance, giving real-time technical coaching to staff, providing hands-on development in code and scripts for projects, performing code reviews and ensuring best code practices are implemented, performing architectural design and documentation, performing backlog prioritization and grooming, identifying, and ensuring non-functional requirements of stories are accounted for.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Support, Operations, Release Management, Quality Engineering, and Technical Analysts to improve software quality and operational excellence.
• Foster a startup mentality within the team, encouraging agility, quick decision-making, and rapid iterations driving to continual deployment.
• Work closely with product owners to define requirements, prioritize tasks, and manage project timelines.
• Implement instrumentation and telemetry solutions to monitor and analyze CI/CD pipelines, product performance and product improvements.
• Collaborate with architects and stakeholders to ensure software solutions are scalable, secure, and maintainable.
• Promote a collaborative and inclusive work environment, fostering a culture of innovation, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure staff members are available and communicate efficiently and effectively with team members and across teams.
• Triage defects, collaborate on prioritization of defects, and ensure timely resolution of incidents.
• Stay up to date with industry trends and emerging technologies, evaluating their potential to enhance the software development processes and software solutions and end state strategies.

Education Required

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, or a related field.

Experience Required

• 10+ years in software development, with a strong focus on AWS, serverless, microservices architecture and Java.
• 8+ years in hands-on management of software engineers
• Proven experience with developing for scale in a distributed cloud environment.
• Proven experience in building observability into software, software development standards and process
• Proven experience in enhancing and improving automation of CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong knowledge of AWS services and infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Experience improving the DevEx experience including development and testing processes and environments.
• Demonstrated ability to continual improve software engineering teams through hands-on coaching and mentoring.
• Demonstrated ability to coach agile teams.
• Demonstrated ability in building and fostering relationships across teams and departments and collaborating to achieve alignment of priorities, plans, and tasks.
• Demonstrated ability in building strategies for team growth and software solution end states using incremental approaches (begin with the end in mind)
• Passion for excellence and a strong desire to raise the bar of technical and operational excellence.
• Proven experience in breaking down silos and fostering cross-functional collaboration.
• Familiarity with React, Vue, JAMStack, and modern front-end development frameworks is a plus.

Knowledge Required

Excellent written and verbal communications skills; adaptability and flexibility to a changing environment; and comfortable working in a dynamic, high volume, fast-paced environment. Ability to understand and ensure compliance with policies, procedures, and laws governing our industry/business and products.

Physical Requirements

Sitting for long periods of time; standing occasionally; walking; bending; squatting; kneeling; pushing/pulling; reaching; twisting; frequent lifting of less than 10 lbs., occasional lifting of up to 20 lbs.; driving and having access during the workday to an insured and reliable transportation; typing; data entry; grasping; transferring items between hands and/or to another person or receptacle; use of office equipment to include computers; ability to travel to, be physically present at, and complete the physical requirements of the position at any assigned location.

Competencies

Travel

5% (Occasional team meetings onsite)

Attire

Business Casual

Other

Must be eligible to work in the USA and able to pass a background check.