Associate Director, Product Software Engineering

C T Corporation System (DE); Coppell (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

C T Corporation System (DE) is seeking an Associate Director of Product Software Engineering in Coppell, TX to lead multiple software teams and drive AI-enabled product capabilities across the lifecycle. You will translate business priorities into actionable roadmaps, establish accountability, and foster an engineering culture focused on customer outcomes.

The role requires strong technical judgment, cross-functional collaboration with Product Management, Architecture, QA, UX, Security, and

Qualifications

• 10+ years of significant experience leading software engineering organizations.
• 1+ years applying Agentic Product Development Lifecycle and Spec-Driven Development to product delivery.
• 1+ years leading development of agentic product workflows, including evaluation frameworks and end-to-end traceability.
• Experience hiring, coaching, and mentoring AI engineers and building high-performing teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple software engineering teams with clear goals, ownership, and measurable outcomes.
• Translate portfolio strategy into engineering roadmaps, staffing plans, and delivery commitments.
• Ensure architecture, security, privacy, and reliability are considered throughout the lifecycle.
• Coach engineering managers, AI engineers, and senior staff to build durable, high-performing teams.
• Drive DevOps practices across CI/CD, IaC, telemetry, and monitoring to enable production excellence.

Skills

Leadership

Product lifecycle

AI engineering

Cloud software

DevOps

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Software Engineering

Master's degree preferred

Job description

We are hiring an Associate Director, Product Software Engineering to lead multiple engineering teams responsible for building, modernizing, and operating business-critical customer and internal applications across FCC CLC. This leader will translate product and business priorities into executable engineering strategies, establish clear accountability for delivery and quality, and build durable teams capable of delivering measurable customer outcomes.

The role combines strategic leadership with strong technical judgment. The Associate Director will partner with Product Management, Architecture, Quality Engineering, UX, Operations, Security, and other technology leaders to guide initiatives from initial intent through specification, architecture, implementation, validation, deployment, and production operation. The leader will enforce Spec-Driven Development (SDD) and Agentic Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) practices to improve delivery speed, quality, traceability, and engineering effectiveness. The role will also build and lead AI engineering capability, including hiring, managing, coaching, and mentoring AI engineers responsible for agentic product workflows.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead multiple software engineering teams and establish clear goals, operating rhythms, ownership boundaries, and measurable outcomes.
• Translate portfolio strategy and product priorities into engineering roadmaps, staffing plans, delivery commitments, and technical investment decisions.
• Make critical decisions regarding prioritization, resource allocation, technical direction, delivery risk, and sequencing across concurrent initiatives.
• Build an engineering culture grounded in customer focus, accountability, psychological safety, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Coach engineering managers, technical leads, AI engineers, and senior software engineers; strengthen succession plans and create opportunities for career growth.
• Hire, manage, coach, and mentor AI engineers, building the specialized skills and delivery practices needed to develop reliable agentic product capabilities.
• Enforce Spec-Driven Development (SDD) and Agentic Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) practices, including reusable specifications, explicit acceptance criteria, evaluation strategies, and end-to-end traceability.
• Ensure architecture, security, privacy, accessibility, resilience, scalability, observability, and supportability are considered throughout the lifecycle.
• Ensure effective DevOps practices across CI/CD, IaC, hands-free deployments, telemetry, monitoring, and alerting, using DORA and operational metrics to drive delivery and production excellence.
• Establish quality as a shared accountability across engineering and quality functions, with appropriate automation, release criteria, and production validation.
• Improve engineering flow by identifying and removing systemic blockers, reducing avoidable handoffs, and strengthening cross-team dependency management.
• Use delivery, quality, reliability, customer, and engineering-effectiveness measures to identify trends and drive corrective action.
• Support production operations, incident response, root-cause analysis, and remediation of recurring reliability or quality issues.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Master's degree in a relevant technical or business discipline is preferred.

Required Experience / Skills:

• 10+ years of significant experience leading software engineering organizations responsible for enterprise or commercial software products.
• 1+ years of hands-on experience applying Agentic Product Development Lifecycle and Spec-Driven Development to product delivery.
• 1+ years of hands-on experience leading the development of agentic product workflows, including evaluation frameworks, context engineering, learning and feedback loops, end-to-end traceability, and architecture approaches that optimize token consumption and operating cost.
• Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and mentoring AI engineers and building high-performing teams capable of delivering reliable AI-enabled product capabilities.
• Demonstrated experience managing managers or multiple engineering teams in a matrixed, globally distributed environment.
• Experience delivering and operating native, highly available, secure, and business-critical cloud software.
• Experience guiding modernization of legacy applications while sustaining production operations and customer commitments.
• Experience using metrics and evidence to improve delivery predictability, quality, reliability, and engineering effectiveness.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

Strong people leadership, organizational design, coaching, conflict resolution, and talent-development capabilities.

Strong technical judgment with the ability to challenge assumptions and facilitate sound architecture