Director - Software Engineering

Job Description:

This position is responsible for applying knowledge of people leadership, software development methodologies, best practices, and proven processes to transform and deliver outcomes and decrease the time to market. This role will be responsible for managing multiple teams of engineers solving hard problems in autonomous cloud services, building reusable cross-product cloud components and platforms. This role will collaborate across the organization to prioritize software development needs including design, development, documenting, and testing new and existing software. The Director, Software Engineering will evaluate results within the enterprise to determine if organizational objectives are being met as well as analyze and resolve software development issues and needs in terms of the software's full life cycle.

ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Oversee the software development function including the development and implementation of business plans, policies, and procedures including but not limited to:
  • Participating in the development of strategies and business plans for new Vertex software products
  • Working across multiple product/service teams to help build a unified cloud engineering organization
  • Aligning with cross-functional team owners to understand initiatives and implementations.
  • Working with product owners across the businesses to understand market needs & vision; quickly translate that vision into demonstrable software.
  • Delivering application and services to validate and ensure the portfolio meets all operational standards.
  • Work with product owners and architects to develop multi-generation software technology plans.
  • Working directly with customers to understand their business and technical needs.
  • Driving increased efficiency across the teams, eliminating duplication, leveraging product and technology reuse, and commonality. Leads efforts to improve the technology, processes, and quality of new product prototypes.
  • Providing leadership for the migration and implementation of new Vertex product architectures. Leading the team with hands-on technical expertise to design, deploy, secure and optimize cloud services.
  • Driving world-class quality in the development and support of products allowing IP/assets be leveraged by various business models as appropriate through to delivery.
  • Communicating effectively both within immediate team and leadership ensuring the team receives consistent messages and has clear understanding of business direction, strategy and results.
  • Managing strategic business partnerships and relationships through Technical, Financial, Contractual and Relationship Management.
  • Building a world class software development team. Ensuring new and existing talent is in place to meet the changing needs of the enterprise through coaching, mentoring and leadership.
  • Participate in other projects or duties.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Determine appropriate resourcing of staff in order to achieve goals and objectives.

• Build an effective leadership team through mentoring and formal education that focuses on management and project management principles.

• Define annual Key Performance Indicators aligned with corporate goals.

• Direct and mentor leaders on performance gaps, career development opportunities, and strategies.

• Direct and coach leaders on all human resource related processes including onboarding, performance management, succession planning, employee relations, selection, terminations, compensation and rewards.

• Accountable for collective results and recognizing others’ contributions and share credit for success.

• Own attainment of high employee satisfaction and retention; lead development of program and initiatives within group to attain high employee satisfaction.

• Lead change management initiatives to drive improvements and efficiencies.

• Ability to interact collaboratively and communicate effectively with external, internal customers, and stakeholders to address issues and ensure alignment.

• Prepare and manage budget as assigned; analyzes variances and initiates corrective actions to maximize operational performance.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Excellent transformative leadership and people management skills including solid technical, communication and analytical skills with thorough understanding of product development and successful problem definition, decomposition, estimation and resolution.

• Proficient with various software methodologies (Agile, Lean, SAFe etc.) for both on premise and SaaS based architectures.

• Hands-on experience with modern DevOps, SRE techniques, automation frameworks and operational principles of a large-scale distributed SaaS application across multiple clouds

• Experience with technical design of scalable, robust systems using cloud native architecture principles

• Knowledge and expertise in providing common solutions by identifying and addressing patterns in infrastructure and applications

• Deep understanding of real-world solutions and solutions in availability, performance, security, compliance, and cost management

• Experience with Leadership of complex software development projects and teams through all phases of the software development life cycle

• Proven ability to scale applications horizontally with an engineering team.

• Proven ability to provide leadership, technology guidance and mentorship to others throughout their domain.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with all levels of an organization.

• Ability to apply broad expertise or unique knowledge and professional concepts to develop resolutions to critical issues.

• Ability to manage multiple complex, high visibility or high impact projects simultaneously.

• Must be results oriented, customer focused, and exhibit good interpersonal skills

• Ability to work in a fast-paced environment.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Twelve (12) plus years of experience in the software domain, with five (5) plus years of leadership experience

• Have a wide range of skills, including some of the following:
  • Health - Metrics, analytics, and observability in cloud systems.
  • Application Hosting - Common patterns to host applications (Ku bernetes, Docker, FaaS).
  • Networking - Security and connectivity between, into, and out of cloud services.
  • Databases - Selection and leverage of database types and libraries

• Have a software engineering background with a passion for DevOps.

• Enjoy pushing scalability to the limit with high-throughput services.

• Enjoy working with a large variety of services and technologies.

• Have excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Experience with container technologies like Kubernetes, Docker preferred

• Experience with both Windows and Linux as scaled-out cloud Operating Systems preferred

• Or equivalent combination of education and/or experience

Other Qualifications
The Winning Way behaviors that all Vertex employees need in order to meet the expectations of each other, our customers, and our partners.

• Communicate with Clarity - Be clear, concise and actionable. Be relentlessly constructive. Seek and provide meaningful feedback.

• Act with Urgency - Adopt an agile mentality - frequent iterations, improved speed, resilience. 80/20 rule – better is the enemy of done. Don’t spend hours when minutes are enough.

• Work with Purpose - Exhibit a “We Can” mindset. Results outweigh effort. Everyone understands how their role contributes. Set aside personal objectives for team results.

• Drive to Decision - Cut the swirl with defined deadlines and decision points. Be clear on individual accountability and decision authority. Guided by a commitment to and accountability for customer outcomes.

• Own the Outcome - Defined milestones, commitments and intended results. Assess your work in context, if you’re unsure, ask. Demonstrate unwavering support for decisions.

COMMENTS:

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of work being performed by individuals in this position. Other functions may be assigned, and management retains the right to add or change the duties at any time.