Head of Software Engineering, DevOps, & AI

Job Description

Job Description

Salary:

WHAT YOULL DO

Seakeeper is revolutionizing the marine industry through cutting-edge technologies in a fast-moving, innovation-driven organization. As our Director of Software Engineering, DevOps & AI, you'll lead the development of the cloud platform, building the infrastructure, engineering practices, and AI capabilities that power the next generation of the Seakeeper experience. You'll partner closely with leaders across Engineering, Product, Manufacturing, and Business Technology to deliver scalable platforms, accelerate digital innovation, and transform data into business value. You'll make an immediate impact across Seakeeper by:

Software Engineering

• Leading a team of software engineers responsible for platform services, APIs, and internal business solutions.
• Providing technical direction, architectural oversight, and engineering standards across all software initiatives
• Driving effective planning, prioritization, and execution through modern software development practices.
• Recruiting, developing, and mentoring engineering talent while building a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Balancing strategic leadership with hands-on engagement in architecture, design reviews, and technical decision-making

DevOps

• Establishing and maturing DevOps practices across Business Technology, including CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, monitoring, and incident management
• Defining release governance, deployment standards, testing disciplines, and operational best practices
• Partnering with Engineering to align development, security, and deployment processes
• Building and leading a high-performing DevOps capability that improves speed, stability, and reliability
• Tracking and improving key platform performance metrics, including uptime, deployment frequency, and recovery times

Cloud Architecture & Connected Product Platform

• Establishing the platform's security, networking, identity, and trust architecture in partnership with Embedded Systems Engineering
• Ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability as the connected fleet and product portfolio grow
• Evaluating technology solutions and vendors, making strategic build-versus-buy recommendations

Applied AI & Machine Learning

• Leading the identification and delivery of AI and machine learning solutions that improve products, operations, quality, and customer outcomes
• Developing predictive and prescriptive analytics capabilities using manufacturing, and enterprise data
• Establishing AI/ML development, deployment, governance, and lifecycle management practices
• Partnering with business and functional leaders to prioritize high-value automation and intelligence initiatives
• Driving the practical adoption of AI technologies that create measurable business impact across the organization

WHAT YOU NEED TO SUCCEED

Do you have a positive attitude, an eagerness to learn, and the ability to hustle in a fast-paced environment? Then Seakeeper is the place for you! Here are a few other specifics youll need to have to succeed.

MUST-HAVES

• Bachelors degree in computer science, software engineering, electrical engineering, or a related technical field required.
• Experience working in business systems, IT, or technology leadership role with 10+ years of progressive experience including:
  • Cloud architecture or platform engineering, with production experience on Microsoft Azure
  • Hands-on experience with Container Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or equivalent container orchestration, PostgreSQL or similar relational databases, Blob Storage, Key Vault, and Entra ID
  • Direct experience shipping OTA or firmware-update infrastructure for a physical connected product automotive, marine, industrial IoT, medical device, or similar
  • Infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform
  • Networking fundamentals virtual network design (hub-and-spoke topology), VPN Gateway, TLS/mTLS, DNS, and load balancing
  • Experience designing microservices architectures, RESTful APIs, and event-driven integration patterns
  • Hands-on DevOps practice: CI/CD pipeline design and implementation (Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions
  • Containerization and orchestration experience (Docker, Kubernetes)
  • A dynamic leader who understands the value of being present, accessible and accountable to their team and the business stakeholders
  • Observability tooling Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights, or equivalent platforms (Datadog, Grafana/Prometheus)
  • Experience with progressive delivery patterns canary releases, blue-green deployments, feature flags, and automated rollback
  • Applied AI/ML experience with real technical depth Python and standard frameworks (PyTorch, scikit-learn, or similar)
  • Demonstrated experience building custom ML models from the ground up for process-improvement or operational use cases not limited to configuring pre-built APIs or AutoML platforms
  • MLOps practice model versioning, deployment, and monitoring in production (MLflow, Azure Machine Learning, or equivalent)
  • Data pipeline and ETL/ELT experience (Azure Data Factory, dbt, or equivalent)
  • Experience with time-series data and predictive maintenance or anomaly-detection modeling is highly relevant given the telemetry use case
  • Security and PKI experience certificate lifecycles, code-signing chains, and trust architecture. This role owns the signing chain for every firmware update that reaches the fleet, not a delegated afterthought
  • Secrets management experience (Azure Key Vault or HashiCorp Vault)
  • People-management you've directly managed engineers before, including hiring, code review, and career development
  • Managing budgets & external vendor relationships
• Familiarity with the following:
  • IoT/embedded security threat models and mitigations
  • Data warehousing concepts and tooling (Azure Synapse, Snowflake, or similar)
  • SRE practices SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, on-call rotations, and incident management
• Comfortable operating at the executive level this role feeds directly into quarterly technology reviews with the CEO, CFO, and CTO, and needs to translate technical tradeoffs into business terms
• Comfortable being the architect and the builder at once this is a small, growing team, not one with a bench to hand things off to
• Track record partnering directly with embedded or firmware engineering teams across the device-to-cloud boundary.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and strategic planning skills
• Flexible and adaptable with the ability to deal with ambiguity and triaging competing priorities
• Openness to collaboration in all scenarios you bring good ideas to the table, but can also recognize them from others
• Flexible and agile with the ability to pivot quickly to changing circumstances and business demands
• Changemaker with a bias for positive action

NICE-TO-HAVES

• Masters degree in computer science, data science, or a related field preferred
• Relevant industry certifications preferred Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure AI Engineer Associate, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), or equivalent
• Infrastructure-as-code experience with Bicep or ARM templates
• Experience in marine, automotive, or industrial equipment connected-product platforms
• Prior experience standing up DevOps practice from scratch at a growth-stage or PE-owned manufacturing company
• Experience managing external technology vendors and evaluating build-vs-buy tradeoffs on live platform decisions
• Contribution to open-source tooling in the DevOps, MLOps, or IoT space
• Experience operating in a multi-site or distributed manufacturing environment

MORE DETAILS YOU'LL WANT TO KNOW

• This is a new role that you will have the opportunity to pioneer and make an immediate impact
• This is an onsite position, based in either our Leesport, PA, or Ft. Myers, FL, locations
• Up to 25% travel to other Seakeeper facilities as well as other Seakeeper events is expected
• Youll report to the Vice President of Business Technology and have two direct reports to start with

WHY YOU'LL LOVE IT HERE

Its true that we make extraordinary products, but our favorite part about Seakeeper is our people! We believe in participative leadership. That means you have the freedom to make a difference and contribute to the larger goal, regardless of your position. Great ideas can strike at any moment, and when you have one, youre empowered to speak up!

We are constantly pushing (or crushing) boundaries. Stagnant or bored are about as opposite from Seakeeper as you can get! We move quick and if there is something that can be improved upon, we jump on it.

WHO WE ARE

71% of our Earth is covered by water and we want everyone to make the most of it. Thats why we are committed to creating products that transform the boating experience with an organization that employees want to work for, customers want to buy from, and vendors want to partner with. Seakeeper Ride, a Vessel Attitude Control System, eliminates underway pitch and roll, making time on the water safer and more comfortable for everyone on board.

Seakeeper was founded in 2008, growing from a start-up operation to the worldwide leader in stabilization thanks to its popular line of gyrostabilizers. Seakeeper Ride launched in 2022 and is the first product deviation from that line, bringing the magic of Seakeeper to boats while underway. Theres a long runway of growth ahead as more and more OEMs adopt Seakeeper Ride as standard equipment and we work to make aftermarket refits a reality.

Ready for a new challenge in a fast-paced environment? Want to help us disrupt an industry? Come on and apply, we are ready for you!

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Seakeeper is personally committed to building an inclusive and diverse workforce. We are an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer/Affirmative Action Employer and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. All employment is decided on the basis of job requirements, individual qualifications, and business need.