Director, Application Developer

L3Harris is dedicated to recruiting and developing high-performing talent who are passionate about what they do. Our employees are unified in a shared dedication to our customers’ mission and quest for professional growth. L3Harris provides an inclusive, engaging environment designed to empower employees and promote work-life success. Fundamental to our culture is an unwavering focus on values, dedication to our communities, and commitment to excellence in everything we do.

L3Harris is the Trusted Disruptor in defense tech. With customers’ mission-critical needs always in mind, our employees deliver end-to-end technology solutions connecting the space, air, land, sea and cyber domains in the interest of national security.

Job Title: Director, Application Developer

Job Code: 45641

Job Location: Melbourne, FL; Arlington, VA; Herndon, VA; Salt Lake City; UT; Greenville, TX; Plano, TX; Rochester, NY; Remote Opportunity

Job Schedule: 9/80: Employees work 9 out of every 14 days – totaling 80 hours worked – and have every other Friday off

Job Description

L3Harris is undertaking one of the largest-scale Data/AI implementations in the defense contracting sector. This multi-year, transformative program is building state-of-the-art AI applications on top of unified data. It is integrating ~100 legacy systems—including enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM), supply chain, finance, operations, and specialized domain systems. The capabilities cover dozens of critical corporate use cases spanning program management, finance, operations, supply chain, engineering, and strategic planning.

The Director of Applications Development is a key senior leader role that is foundational to the program's success. The development organization will build sophisticated data pipelines, applications, workflows, and AI models that operate at enterprise scale while maintaining security, compliance, and operational excellence in the regulated defense environment.

Essential Functions

• As Director of Applications Development, you will build and lead the development organization that delivers all data pipelines, applications, workflows, and AI/ML capabilities for this enterprise Palantir implementation. You will build a team of experienced developers and scrum masters and leverage leading tools to create a high-caliber, AI-leveraged development core. Your team will work closely with enterprise architects, business system analysts, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into high-quality, secure, compliant software and data products.
• This is a leadership role requiring strategic vision, operational excellence, and hands-on technical judgement. You will build and scale a world-class organization capable of delivering at the speed and quality required by a high-profile, high-security platform. You will partner closely with the Business Transformation Leader to ensure business goals and requirements guide the development work, and with the Chief Data Architect to ensure that development teams operate within defined ontology and architectural guidelines while maintaining velocity.
• Recruit, hire, and onboard a team of high-caliber, AI-leveraged developers and scrum masters, with diverse skill sets (backend, frontend, full-stack, data engineering, DevOps, QA).
• Build a strong software engineering culture emphasizing quality, collaboration, psychological safety, and continuous improvement. Work with HR to establish career development and professional growth frameworks that attract and retain top talent.
• Create an organizational structure with multiple engineering managers/tech leads who can scale with the team. Establish clear reporting lines, decision-making authority, and cross-functional dependencies.
• Build and refine the operating model to efficiently and effectively work with cross-functional teams and ensure compliant, high-performance development.
• Work with the Chief Architect to develop comprehensive training and onboarding programs to rapidly bring engineers up to speed on Palantir, defense security requirements, domain knowledge, and enterprise standards.
• Define and enforce engineering standards covering code quality, testing (unit, integration, end-to-end), code review processes, and documentation requirements.
• Build secure development practices aligned with compliance standards.
• Lead design and implementation of data pipelines that integrate 100+ legacy systems into the Palantir platform. Define patterns for real-time and batch data ingestion, transformation, quality assurance, and delivery.
• Establish data quality frameworks, automated testing for pipelines, and SLAs for data freshness and accuracy.
• Partner with Chief Data Architect to ensure pipelines respect ontology models and data governance standards while optimizing performance and maintainability.
• Work with IT leadership to select, deploy and drive usage of AI tooling by the development team.
• Lead development of AI and machine learning models for key use cases.
• Establish ML governance frameworks including model versioning, reproducibility, fairness/bias assessment, explainability requirements, and monitoring of model drift.
• Ensure rapid and high-quality execution of applications, workflows, and user experiences on Palantir that deliver value across dozens of use cases (finance, supply chain, operations, engineering, strategic planning).
• Establish agile practices (scrum, kanban, or hybrid) that balance speed with quality. Define sprint planning, story estimation, velocity tracking, and iteration cycles.
• Ensure delivery against program roadmaps and milestones while maintaining flexibility to respond to business priorities and technical constraints.
• Work closely with Chief Data Architect to align development with ontology strategy, data models, and enterprise architectural standards. Ensure development teams operate within defined boundaries while maintaining velocity.
• Collaborate with Business Transformation Leader, business system analysts, product owners, and business stakeholders to translate requirements into user stories and technical specifications.
• Partner with Leader of UDL Operations & Management to define deployment environments, infrastructure, and operational support models. Work with security/compliance teams to integrate security into the development lifecycle.
• Engage with systems integrators to leverage best practices and resolve technical blockers.
• Provide visibility into development capacity, progress, risks, and dependencies. Forecast delivery timelines and communicate realistic expectations to program leadership.
• Manage scope, priorities, and trade-offs to optimize program success. Identify and upscale risks early; propose mitigations and contingency plans.
• Track metrics including velocity, quality (defect rate, test coverage), productivity, schedule adherence, and team satisfaction.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree and minimum 15 years of prior relevant experience. Graduate Degree and a minimum 13 years of prior related experience. In lieu of a degree, minimum of 19 years of prior related experience.

Preferred Additional Skills

• Proven track record building and scaling engineering teams from 0 to 25+ engineers. Experience establishing organizational structure, hiring practices, and culture development.
• Deep expertise across modern software development practices: agile/scrum, CI/CD, code review, testing, and DevOps.
• Experience with large-scale data integration and pipeline development (ETL, data warehousing, streaming systems). Familiarity with modern data tools and frameworks (Apache Spark, Kafka, Airflow, or similar).
• Demonstrated experience using AI tooling for development and testing and building AI/ML systems, including model development, evaluation, and deployment.
• Experience in heavily regulated environments (defense, financial services, utilities, healthcare)
• Strong operational and program management skills. Comfortable with metrics, planning, forecasting, and communicating status to executive stakeholders.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills. Ability to work effectively across technical and non-technical audiences.
• Direct experience with Palantir, including knowledge of Palantir's development frameworks, ontology API, and deployment models.
• Experience building large-scale enterprise systems integrations (10+ systems, heterogeneous platforms).
• Background in one or more technical domains relevant to the implementation: ERP systems, supply chain, financial systems, operations, or defense/aerospace.
• Experience managing multiple product teams or squads in a matrix organization with complex dependencies.
• Track record of leading through periods of rapid growth and organizational change.
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and modern DevOps practices.
• Background in AI and model deployment in production systems.
• Experience with security-focused development practices, including threat modeling and secure coding.

In compliance with pay transparency requirements, the salary range for this role in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, and the Greater D.C, Denver, or NYC areas is $184,000-$341,500. The salary range for this role in Colorado state, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New York state, and Vermont is $160,000-$297,000. This is not a guarantee of compensation or salary, as final offer amount may vary based on factors including but not limited to experience and geographic location. L3Harris also offers a variety of benefits, including health and disability insurance, 401(k) match, flexible spending accounts, EAP, education assistance, parental leave, paid time off, and company-paid holidays. The specific programs and options available to an employee may vary depending on date of hire, schedule type, and the applicability of collective bargaining agreements.

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L3Harris Technologies is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. L3Harris is committed to treating all employees and applicants for employment with respect and dignity and maintaining a workplace that is free from unlawful discrimination. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or other related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, disability, genetic information, citizenship status, characteristic or membership in any other group protected by federal, state or local laws. L3Harris maintains a drug-free workplace and performs pre-employment substance abuse testing and background checks, where permitted by law.

Please be aware many of our positions require the ability to obtain a security clearance. Security clearances may only be granted to U.S. citizens. In addition, applicants who accept a conditional offer of employment may be subject to government security investigation(s) and must meet eligibility requirements for access to classified information.

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