Director of Digital Software Engineering Job Description
Role Overview
The Director of Digital software engineering is a hands-on leadership role responsible for leading teams of in and out-sourced software engineers, and providing leadership, vision and direction for the software engineering organization. This position is responsible for recruiting, developing and retaining talent, as well as ensuring the software engineering staff has the skills and capabilities to meet business needs. The Director of Digital software engineering also oversees the implementation of software engineering initiatives, particularly in on-line commerce, and is responsible for championing best practices and ensuring initiatives achieve business outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
Leadership and Strategy Responsibilities
? Lead the design, development, testing and deployment of complex digital initiatives including a migration from multiple legacy ecommerce sites to a modern, robust, architecture.
? Lead the software engineering organization to successful delivery of business outcomes.
? Manage the software engineering budget, with ongoing focus on personnel, vendor, and capital expenditures.
? Build strong working relationships with business leaders to ensure software engineering teams meet expectations and contribute to achievement of business goals.
? Collaborate with IT and business leaders to develop short- and long-term strategic plans.
? Support and facilitate innovative software development work to test new ideas, within bounded cost and time frames.
? Provide leadership, vision, and direction for the software engineering organization.
? Create a process to prioritize demand, schedule workloads and communicate productivity metrics to all internal stakeholders
Talent Management Responsibilities
? Develop workforce strategy to meet the organization's current and future software engineering needs through developing, hiring, and/or sourcing talent.
? Manage resource allocation across teams to maximize business impact of resources and ensure each team has the skills and capabilities needed to achieve its objectives.
? Manage software engineering talent, playing a key role in performance management and compensation processes, role and competency definition, and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
? Partner with Human Resources to create learning and development opportunities aligned to the organization's skill and capability needs, and to provide rewarding career paths for software engineering staff.
? Recruit and hire talent to address new needs and skill gaps.
? Facilitate collaboration and partnership across software engineering teams and stakeholders.
? Build a culture that supports learning, collaboration, transparency, and inclusiveness.
? Manage employee engagement and promote a compelling employee value proposition to retain software engineering staff.
Oversight Responsibilities for Software Engineering Activities
? Champion best practices and modern software development methods and tools.
? Experience with software version control systems.
? Ability to design a robust, fault tolerant eCommerce environment with strong backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
? Lead software engineering teams and other stakeholders to set goals for improving code quality, maintainability, security, and scalability. Monitor progress against these goals.
? Implement and manage software development status reporting, metrics, and benchmarks.
? Manage collaboration with Infrastructure and Operations to ensure software performs well in production and meets SLAs.
? Ensure software is effectively secured and that cyber risks are mitigated.
? Oversee management of relationships with consultants, vendors, and contractors and support negotiation of statements of work and business terms with suppliers.
? In collaboration with Infrastructure and Operations leaders, oversee DevOps processes and practices, including automating the handoff of code releases from development to operations.
Skills and Experience
? Demonstrated leadership skills and experience.
? Strong talent management skills including talent development, coaching, mentoring, and team motivation.
? Ability to build and maintain strong cross-functional partnerships at all levels of the organization.
? Strong business acumen and ability to understand and drive business objectives.
? Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical information in a condensed manner to various stakeholders verbally and in writing.
? Strong organizational skills, including an ability to perform under pressure and manage multiple priorities with competing demands for resources.
? Understanding of software development methodologies and best practices.
? Understanding of relevant tools and platforms (e.g. cloud platforms, web technologies, client-server technologies, version control, continuous integration and deployment), with an eagerness to learn about new and unfamiliar technologies.
? Adaptability and ability to manage rapid change in business needs, processes, or technologies.
Qualifications
? Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related area
? 10+ years of experience in eCommerce and distributed software engineering.
? 10+ years of experience in managing talent.
? Experience managing a team of at least 10 employees.
? Background in eCommerce, full stack development, highly available computing environments, Java, AJAX, SDLC and Agile are strongly preferred.