Director of Software Engineering

Director of Software Engineering

Location: Atlanta, GA (Hybrid)

Employment Type: Full-Time

Reports To: Head of Software Engineering

About the Opportunity

Our client is an established enterprise software company investing heavily in cloud modernization, AI-enabled software development, and next-generation SaaS platforms. They are seeking a technically strong Director of Software Engineering to lead multiple engineering teams responsible for mission-critical customer-facing applications.

This is not a traditional management role. The ideal candidate enjoys staying close to the technology while developing engineering talent, driving architectural decisions, and partnering with executive leadership to modernize software delivery.

Position Overview

The Director of Software Engineering will lead a team of approximately 20 software engineers and contractors responsible for delivering scalable, cloud-native enterprise applications.

This leader will own engineering execution, technical direction, software architecture, and modernization initiatives while helping build an AI-enabled engineering culture. Success in this role requires balancing strategic leadership with hands-on technical credibility.

This position is approximately 60% technical leadership and 40% people leadership.

What You'll Do

Engineering Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of approximately 20 software engineers and contractors.
• Build a high-performing engineering organization focused on accountability, ownership, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Recruit, coach, and retain top engineering talent.
• Develop future technical leaders through mentoring and career development.
• Foster a culture where engineering excellence and collaboration are expected.

Technical Leadership

• Provide architectural leadership across multiple enterprise SaaS applications.
• Drive modernization initiatives focused on scalability, cloud-native architecture, security, and performance.
• Remain technically engaged through architecture reviews, technical discussions, design sessions, and code reviews when appropriate.
• Partner closely with Product, Infrastructure, Security, and executive stakeholders to align technology with business priorities.
• Champion engineering best practices around CI/CD, automated testing, observability, reliability, and software quality.

AI & Modern Engineering

• Drive adoption of AI-assisted software development across engineering teams.
• Evaluate and implement modern AI development tools that improve developer productivity and software quality.
• Identify opportunities to incorporate intelligent automation and AI capabilities into both engineering workflows and customer-facing products.
• Help establish an engineering culture that embraces continuous innovation and emerging technologies.

Delivery Excellence

• Own delivery execution across multiple engineering initiatives.
• Improve engineering predictability through modern Agile practices, engineering metrics, and operational excellence.
• Remove organizational and technical obstacles that slow engineering teams.
• Continuously improve release quality, system reliability, and platform performance.

Required Qualifications

Leadership Experience

• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience.
• 4+ years leading software engineering teams.
• Experience managing engineering organizations consisting of both full-time employees and contractors.
• Proven ability to lead highly technical engineering teams while remaining technically credible.

Technical Experience

Candidates should have recent hands-on experience with most of the following:

• Modern full-stack software development
• Angular
• NestJS
• AWS cloud platform
• Enterprise software architecture
• Microservices architecture
• REST APIs
• CI/CD pipeline implementation
• Automated testing and modern DevOps practices
• Cloud-native application development

Candidates should be comfortable discussing recent technical design decisions and architecture leadership.

Leadership & Communication

• Strong executive presence with the ability to communicate effectively with both technical and business stakeholders.
• Experience partnering with Product Management and executive leadership to define technical roadmaps.
• Comfortable balancing technical execution with people leadership.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth engineering organization.

Preferred Experience

The ideal candidate will also bring experience with one or more of the following:

• AI-assisted software development tools (Copilot, Cursor, Claude, or similar)
• Agentic AI applications or LLM implementations
• Enterprise SaaS platforms
• Customer-facing web applications
• Identity and Access Management (IAM)
• User management and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Pricing, workflow, or transaction processing platforms
• Modern UX-focused application development
• Experience working within regulated industries such as financial services, insurance, healthcare, or automotive technology

What You'll Be Leading

You'll play a key role in modernizing a large-scale enterprise platform by:

• Improving engineering delivery and execution
• Driving cloud modernization initiatives
• Scaling distributed software platforms
• Increasing AI adoption across engineering teams
• Improving application performance, usability, and customer experience
• Building a highly engaged engineering organization that delivers predictable, high-quality software

Ideal Candidate Profile

We're looking for someone who can confidently answer yes to most of these questions:

• Have you led software engineering teams for 4+ years?
• Are you still actively involved in architecture and technical decision-making?
• Do you have recent hands-on experience with Angular, NestJS, and AWS?
• Have you built or modernized cloud-native enterprise applications?
• Have you implemented CI/CD pipelines and modern engineering practices?
• Have you introduced AI-assisted development tools or AI-powered capabilities into engineering teams?
• Are you comfortable operating in a role that blends strategic leadership with technical depth?
• Can you work in a hybrid environment in the Atlanta area?