Director of AI-Driven Defense Engineering

IFS; Itasca (IL); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible PTO

401K with company contribution

Flexible spending accounts

Life insurance and disability benefits

Tuition assistance

Volunteer events

Job summary

IFS is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering for Defense solutions in the United States. You will lead autonomous engineering teams, guide architectural decisions, and set high technical standards while maintaining hands-on code involvement.

You will drive AI-enabled development, ensure secure and compliant delivery, and collaborate with product and defense customers to align execution with mission requirements.

Qualifications

• Significant experience at Principal Engineer or Architect level.
• Proven leadership of engineering teams including hiring and development.
• Strong background in cloud-native architectures, microservices, API-first design, CI/CD and IaC.
• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development and AI integration patterns.
• Experience owning development, testing, deployment and production operations.
• Excellent communication to translate business needs into engineering direction.
• Eligible to work in the United States for defense-related work.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow engineers across the full career ladder from associate to senior lead.
• Be the technical leader: participate in architecture reviews and set the technical bar.
• Own delivery outcomes with high-quality software at sustainable pace.
• Drive engineering excellence with modern practices and secure-by-default design.
• Champion AI fluency and guide adoption of AI-powered product capabilities.
• Remove obstacles and shield teams from organizational noise to keep focus.
• Partner with Product, Design and leadership to align execution with strategy.
• Shape engineering culture and foster deep specialisms across teams.

Skills

Technical depth

People leadership

Modern architectures

AI fluency

Lifecycle ownership

Communication

US eligibility

Job description

IFS is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering for Defense solutions in the United States. You will lead autonomous engineering teams, guide architectural decisions, and set high technical standards while maintaining hands-on code involvement.

You will drive AI-enabled development, ensure secure and compliant delivery, and collaborate with product and defense customers to align execution with mission requirements.