Director, Digital Technology Engineering (Remote, AZ, NC, TX)

First Citizens Bank; Austin (TX); Remote; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

First Citizens Bank is seeking a Director, Digital Technology Engineering to lead a global team of approximately 40 software professionals responsible for the custom Commercial Banking platform.

The role owns the end-to-end technology delivery lifecycle across web and mobile banking, APIs, and platform services, ensuring scalability, security, resilience, and alignment with long-term business and technology objectives. Strong leadership and product partnership are essential.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology or related field (plus 8+ years of IT leadership)
• 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience with 5+ years leading large teams
• Experience building and scaling custom digital platforms in regulated environments
• Proven success in modernization and digital transformation initiatives
• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills
• Experience operating in Agile delivery at enterprise scale
• Deep knowledge of secure software development practices and regulatory compliance

Responsibilities

• Lead a global engineering organization of ~40 professionals across US and India.
• Own end-to-end delivery of multiple banking digital platform capabilities (web, mobile, APIs).
• Ensure predictable delivery within budget and aligned with business objectives.
• Drive accountability, innovation, and engineering excellence.
• Build high-performing teams through coaching and succession planning.
• Partner with Product, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Risk, Compliance, and Operations.
• Own technology roadmap and modernization to improve scalability, security, and maintainability.
• Establish KPIs and executive visibility into platform health and delivery progress.

Skills

Leadership

Executive communication

Agile delivery

Stakeholder management

Security-first engineering

DevSecOps

Cloud-native patterns

Distributed systems

Engineering management

Strategic planning

Education

Bachelor's Degree in IT or related field

High School Diploma with 12+ years IT experience

Tools

React.js

JavaScript

TypeScript

Red Hat OpenShift

RESTful APIs

Elasticsearch

Job description

Overview

This is a remote role that may only be hired in the following location(s): AZ, NC, TX.

This is a critical leadership role that sits at the intersection of technology strategy, engineering excellence, product partnership, and operational reliability.We are seeking asenior digital engineering leader with experience building and scaling custom banking platforms inahighly regulated, fast-paced, future focusedenvironment.

We are seeking a highly accomplished Director, Digital TechnologyEngineering to lead a global organization of approximately 40 software engineering professionals responsible for the development, testing, delivery, and production support of our custom-built Commercial Banking digital platform.

This leader will owntheend-to-end technology delivery lifecycle across multiplemodules of ourweb and mobile bankingplatform, including software engineeringdesign and development, quality engineering, release management, platform integrity, and Tier 4 production support. The role is accountable for ensuring the platformremainsscalable, secure, resilient, and aligned with long-term business and technologyobjectives.

The ideal candidate combines deep technicalexpertise, exceptionalpeopleleadership, strong product partnership capabilities, and a passion for engineering excellence. They will play a key role in advancing our digital transformation strategy whileoperatingwithin a highly regulated, security-first banking environment.

Responsibilities & Qualifications

Engineering Leadership & Delivery

• Lead and develop a global engineering organization of approximately 40 professionals across the United States and India.
• Own end-to-end delivery of multiple commercial banking digital platform capabilities across web, mobile, APIs, and supporting platform services.
• Ensure predictable delivery of business features and strategic initiatives on schedule, within budget, and aligned with businessobjectives.
• Drive a culture of accountability, innovation, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence.
• Build andretainhigh-performing engineering teams through coaching, mentoring, succession planning, and talent development.

Product & Business Partnership

• Establish deep partnerships with Product Management, Business stakeholders, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Risk, Compliance, and Operations teams.
• Help to translate product vision and business priorities into scalable technology solutions and execution plans.
• Partner closely with product leaders to balance feature delivery with technical debt reduction, modernization efforts, and platform sustainability.
• Act as a trusted technology advisor to business and technology leadership teams.

Technology Strategy & Platform Ownership

• Own the technology roadmap for assigned platform domains, ensuring architectural integrity and long-term return on technology investments.
• Drive modernization initiatives that improve scalability, resiliency, maintainability, security, and operational efficiency.
• Ensure alignment between engineering delivery, enterprise architecture standards, and strategic technology direction.
• Maintain accountability for platform health, stability, performance, reliability, and technical risk management.

Engineering Excellence & Operational Discipline

• Champion best practices across software engineering, quality engineering, DevSecOps, CI/CD, observability, and production operations.
• Ensure the platform meets or exceeds all non-functional requirements (NFRs) including performance, scalability, availability, recoverability, observability, and maintainability.
• Establish andmonitorengineering KPIs and service levelobjectivesfor quality, reliability, delivery predictability, and operational excellence.
• Provide executive-level visibility into platform health, delivery progress, engineering metrics, and operational performance.

Risk, Security & Compliance

• Ensure adherence to all enterprise security, privacy, accessibility (ADA/WCAG), risk management, and regulatory requirements.
• Embed security-first engineering practices throughout the software development lifecycle.
• Partner closely with Cybersecurity, Risk, Audit, and Compliance teams tomaintaina strong control environment.
• Ensure technology solutions satisfybanking regulatory expectations and enterprise governance standards.

Continuous Improvement & Enterprise Leadership

• Drive continuous improvement and standardization across the broader digital technology organization.
• Contribute horizontally across Commercial Digital Services to strengthen engineering processes, governance, delivery practices, and NFR outcomes.
• Lead initiatives focused on improving software quality, resiliency, delivery effectiveness, and operational maturity.
• Foster a culture of measurement, transparency, and continuous learning.

Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree and 8 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management. OR High School Diploma or GED and 12 years of experience in Information Technology including application development, support roles, and management.

• 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience with at least 5+ years leading large engineering organizations
• Proven experience leading teams of 25+ engineers, architects, QA professionals, and engineering managers in a global delivery model
• Demonstrated success building and scaling custom-developed digital platforms rather than implementing commercial off-the-shelf solutions
• Experience leading technology modernization and digital transformation initiatives within complex enterprise environments
• Strongtrack record delivering large-scale web and mobile applications in regulated industries such as Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, or other highly controlled environments
• Hands-on understanding of modern software engineering, cloud-native patterns, DevSecOps, and distributed systems
• Experience managingfull software development lifecycle including development, testing, release management, production support, and operational excellence
• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills
• Experience operating in Agile delivery environments at enterprise scale
• Deep knowledge of secure software development practices and regulatory compliance frameworks
• Vendorcontractmanagement& strong negotiation skills
• Financial budgetdisciplineand forecast management

Preferred Qualifications

• Commercial Banking, Treasury Management, Cash Management, Payments, Lending, or Financial Services domain experience
• Experience leading engineering teams supporting customer-facing digital banking platforms
• Experience working in cloud and hybrid-cloud environments
• Experience implementing accessibility standards and modern digital customer experience practices
• Prior experience managing globally distributed teams

Technical Environment

Experience with many of the following technologies is highly desirable:

• React.js, JavaScript, TypeScript leveraging an API-driven microservices architecture backend on a containerized platform
• Red Hat OpenShift, RESTful APIs and event-driven architectures, Elasticsearch
• Modern automation, testing, deployment, and release pipelines, Enterprise-grade platform monitoring, logging, alerting, and performance management

Additional Information

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/benefits.