Director, Engineering

Director, EngineeringThe Director, Engineering will direct the planning and execution of Software Development including research, design, and development of computer software systems in conjunction with hardware engineering and product development. Assigns projects, establishes/monitors work priorities and schedules. Responsible for standard practices, departmental instructions and modifications to policies and procedures to align execution with strategy. Ensures overall budgets, schedules, and performance standards are realistically set and attained. Owns the quality for software features and fixes. Drives the culture in the organization to create a safe environment where engineers can thrive to establish a talent development pipeline. Participates with senior management in developing and owning the implementation of strategic business plans. Participates in the development of corporate and/or organizational policy and authorizes implementation with adherence to compliance goals. Partner with peers and team members to define a technical roadmap, software architecture, design and structure. Research, evaluate, and implement new software technologies, processes, and workflows for productivity gains. Lead continuous improvement efforts within software development and bring best practices to bear throughout the development life cycle. Strategic Oversight Establish software development strategy and vision and create a culture of practical execution that translates strategy into effective execution plans. Manage budget planning and oversight for all software development teams. Keep up to date on both macro and micro changes that may impact development efforts and goals and adapt development strategies based on learnings. Partner with other departments to ensure alignment with goals and strategies. Leadership Act as a mentor for other technical leaders and work to establish a strong bench of future leaders. Recruit, develop, and partner with team members in support of building a pipeline of top talent and team member career goals. Drive quality metrics that matter to the customer — field defect rate, seat-level reliability, MTBF impact, MTTR Lead multiple software engineering teams and managers, with accountability for architecture, execution, quality, and delivery. Partner effectively with Product, Architecture, Program, Customer, and executive stakeholders, including managing technical trade-offs, risks, and escalations. Develop, modify and execute company policies that affect immediate operation(s) and may also have company-wide effect. Executive communication — able to present a recovery plan to an airline VP when a milestone slips Direct activities through subordinate managers who exercise full supervision in terms of costs, scheduling, and staffing. Select and monitor vendor support for departments to ensure state-of-the-art applications and equipment. Technical Oversight Strong experience with AWS cloud systems, distributed architectures, APIs/microservices, databases, security, scalability, and production operations. Own end-to-end software delivery from requirements and architecture through development, integration, validation, release, and operational support. Drive engineering excellence through CI/CD, automation, observability, reliability, test strategy, and secure software development practices. Strong systems integration background, ideally across cloud, networking, hardware/edge systems, and third-party platforms. Foster a work environment that is innovative and fast and delivers high-quality software products. Interface with other business units to help establish common tools, workflows, best practices, and standards to promote concurrent engineering. Establish proper interfaces for exchange of data between departments, business units, and vendors. Maintain responsibility for technical deliverables of the group.