Technical Director

Technical Director, Account Delivery

Reports to: Delivery Head

Location: USA, preferrably Chicago (involve travel)

Fulltime

About the Role

The Technical Director is the senior-most delivery and technical leader on the ground for the account. You are accountable for two things above all: the client's success and the quality of what we deliver. You are the trusted technical voice to the client's senior technical leadership, and you hold final technical authority over how solutions are designed, built, and shipped across every workstream.

This is a hybrid role: part hands-on technical leader, part delivery executive. You lead the delivery organization day to day through Technical Delivery Managers, Program/Project Managers, Architects, and Product Managers. You also carry secondary responsibility for account profitability and for identifying growth opportunities, in partnership with the Client Partner.

Priority order when tradeoffs arise:

1. Client success and delivery quality
2. Technical integrity of the solution
3. Skill development
4. Account growth
5. Account profitability (margin)

Primary Responsibilities

Client success

• Serve as the primary technical relationship for the client's senior technical leadership, with regular on-site presence and a standing cadence of executive touchpoints.
• Own client satisfaction for delivery: gather feedback proactively, surface risks and concerns early, and close the loop with visible action.
• Lead resolution of client-facing escalations. Be the person the client calls when something is at risk.

Delivery quality and execution

• Own end-to-end delivery outcomes across all workstreams: schedule, scope, quality, and release readiness.
• Set and enforce quality standards: definition of done, code and architecture review practices, testing and release criteria, defect and rework thresholds.
• Run the delivery organization through Technical Delivery Managers, Program/Project Managers, Architects, and Product Managers. Set direction, remove blockers, and hold leaders accountable for outcomes.
• Be accountable for core delivery KPIs: on-time delivery, quality (defect escape rate, rework), client satisfaction, and team health.

Technical authority

• Hold final authority over technical direction for the account's delivery , including solution design, architecture, and technology choices. Architects and Principal Architects advise and design; you decide.
• Participate directly in solution design, architecture reviews, and technical deep dives. Validate that any solution is credible and deliverable before it reaches the client, and redirect the approach when it is not.
• Resolve technical escalations and disputes. Consult with Principal Architect(s) and the broader architecture practice, particularly where decisions touch firm-wide standards or reusable assets.

Agentic / AI-assisted delivery

• Own the responsible adoption of the account's agent-orchestrated development model: approved tooling, human review and quality gates, security, IP and data-handling controls (including PHI/PII where applicable), and measurement of productivity and quality impact.
• Ensure delivery teams are trained and that AI-assisted output meets the same quality bar as any other work.

People leadership

• Mentor and coach Technical Delivery Managers, Architects, Program/Project Managers, and Product Managers. Step into the hardest technical and delivery problems and build the account's bench.
• Approve staffing and resourcing changes within account guardrails; manage onshore/offshore coordination across time zones and delivery locations.

Secondary Responsibilities

Account profitability

• Share accountability with the Client Partner and Delivery Head for account margin and budget. Manage staffing mix, utilization, and scope change to stay within agreed guardrails.
• Escalate early when quality or client-success decisions would push the account outside margin guardrails. Decisions beyond the agreed threshold are made jointly with [Client Partner / Delivery Head].
• Partner on change orders, estimates, and SOW management; own the technical basis for them.

Account growth

• Identify expansion opportunities (new workstreams, adjacent problems, additional scope) in the course of delivery and surface them early to the Client Partner.
• Provide solutioning credibility and technical shaping to convert opportunities into scoped work. The Client Partner owns the commercial relationship and the growth number.
• Support renewal and expansion conversations where technical credibility is decisive.

Qualifications

Required

• 12-15yrs years in technology delivery, including meaningful time as a Delivery Director, Associate Director, Senior Manager, or equivalent at a consultancy, systems integrator, or enterprise technology organization.
• Strong hands-on technical background in [platforms/architectures], with the ability to lead and, when needed, overrule architecture and design decisions credibly.
• Proven record of owning delivery quality and client outcomes for large, multi-workstream engagements.
• Experience managing distributed onshore/offshore delivery organizations.
• Experience managing delivery budget and margin, including SOW, change-order, and estimation fundamentals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to explain technical decisions and trade offs to both engineers and executives.
• Demonstrated record of mentoring and developing delivery managers, architects, and project/program managers.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted or agentic development in a delivery setting, including its quality and risk controls.
• Travel to Client office at least monthly and for other important meetings as they come up.

Preferred

• Prior title of Director or Technical Director at a consulting or systems-integration firm.
• Experience in healthcare or another regulated industry (HIPAA, PHI handling).
• Experience operating in an agent-orchestrated delivery model at scale.
• Track record of account growth driven by delivery credibility.