Director of Software Engineering

Lucas James Talent Partners; Minneapolis (MN); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Lucas James Talent Partners seeks a Director of Software Engineering to oversee delivery, quality, and execution of the engineering department. You will lead Software Engineering Managers and the QA Manager, driving roadmap-aligned delivery and architectural standards across portfolios.

You will shape performance culture, manage incident response, and coordinate with Product and PMO to ensure customer outcomes and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• Strong leadership of software delivery organizations.
• Experience mentoring and performance management.
• Expertise in QA integration and release processes.
• Proven ability to communicate delivery realities to execs.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering delivery aligned with product roadmap and architecture.
• Lead Software Engineering Managers and QA Manager.
• Drive incident response, on-call practices, and post-incident reviews.
• Collaborate with Product, PMO, and client-facing teams for alignment.
• Establish engineering management standards and accountability.

Job description

Director of Software Engineering Job Description

Job Summary:

The Director of Software Engineering is responsible for the delivery, throughput, quality, and operational execution of the company’s software engineering department. This role leads the Software Engineering Managers and the QA Manager and owns engineering delivery against the product roadmap and against the architecture, technical standards, and solution designs set by the Architecture and Software Design vertical.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• Manage the daily activities of the Software Engineering Managers and the QA Manager.
• Conduct annual performance evaluations and frequent one-on-one check-ins with direct reports.
• Establish performance expectations for the engineering management layer and hold managers accountable to those standards.
• Execute and document performance management actions as needed, including coaching, regular review of performance metrics, and recommendations regarding employment decisions.

General Responsibilities:

• Own engineering delivery in alignment with the product roadmap and meet delivery commitments to the business and to clients.
• Execute engineering delivery in alignment with the architecture, technical standards, and solution designs established by the Architecture and Software Design vertical; lead execution of the legacy-to-cloud migration roadmap, provide progress updates, and elevate roadmap re-sequencing needs as appropriate.
• Lead the Software Engineering Managers responsible for product engineering teams across the portfolio.
• Lead the QA Manager and the centralized QA function, including QA leads and analysts embedded with product teams.
• Establish, communicate, document, and enforce engineering management standards, including 1:1 cadence, performance feedback, mentoring, and accountability practices.
• Build and sustain a culture of performance management, including direct feedback, performance improvement tools, and recognition aligned with actual contribution.
• Identify, define, and monitor delivery performance metrics including throughput, predictability, defect rates, and staff capacity planning.
• Partner with the PMO on portfolio governance, including work-in-progress discipline and capacity allocation across product and technical debt streams.
• Partner with Product leadership on intake, scoping, and prioritization so delivery teams operate against well-formed requirements.
• Partner with Client Implementation and Client Support on handoffs, escalation paths, and engineering’s response to client-impacting issues.
• Own engineering’s response to production incidents originating from application and custom code, serving as the senior escalation point for client-impacting outages and defects.
• Maintain production on-call coverage, incident response practices, and runbooks within the delivery teams.
• Coordinate with the Architecture and Software Design vertical on incident triage and routing, with that vertical serving as routing arbiter when incident origin is disputed.
• Drive post-incident review and remediation for code-origin defects into the engineering backlog to reduce recurrence.
• Escalate cross-vertical priority conflicts between delivery and Product or technical initiatives.
• Coach and develop the Software Engineering Managers and the QA Manager.
• Identify, mitigate, and resolve cross-team roadblocks that may impact scheduled deliverables.
• Represent engineering delivery in executive leadership forums, including communication of capacity, risk, and dependencies.

Required Skills and Abilities:

• Demonstrated success leading software engineering delivery organizations through engineering managers.
• Strong people leadership skills, with a documented track record of mentoring, performance management, and building accountability culture.
• Ability to deliver direct feedback and to coach engineering managers in doing the same.
• Experience leading QA functions and integrating quality practices into the development lifecycle.
• Strong working knowledge of modern software delivery practices, including Agile, CI/CD, code review, and release management.
• Experience running production incident response and on-call processes within a software delivery organization, including triage, escalation, and post-incident review.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to communicate delivery realities to executive stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills.
• Ability to partner effectively with peer engineering leadership (architecture and platform), Product, PMO, and client-facing departments.
• Experience with SaaS products in an Agile environment.
• Knowledge of industry standards and best practices in software engineering management, quality assurance, and SaaS delivery.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field; master’s degree preferred.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a senior engineering management role (Director, Sr. Director, or VP-level).
• Experience managing software engineering managers.
• Experience leading or partnering closely with QA leadership.
• Experience leading engineering teams through periods of significant growth or transformation.