Director, Software Engineering - Residential

strongtie; United States; Remote; USD 170,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Simpson Strong-Tie in the United States is seeking a Director of Software Engineering - Residential to lead a team of about 30 developers and QA engineers. You will report to the VP of Digital Solutions and drive modernization of residential applications from desktop to cloud on Azure, aligning multiple divisions under shared practices.

This role emphasizes architecture, modernization decisions, and building a collaborative engineering culture.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/SE/IS or equivalent.
• 10+ years of software development experience.
• 5+ years leading engineering teams, including 3+ years managing managers.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute a modernization roadmap for the residential application portfolio.
• Own architecture decisions and cloud-native development standards.
• Standardize the software development life cycle across divisions and drive CI/CD adoption.
• Lead the shift to automated quality engineering and DORA metrics.
• Foster a remote-first culture with distributed teams across US time zones.
• Set goals, performance measures, and career development across the organization.

Skills

Leadership

Team leadership

Managing managers

Architecture

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Software Engineering / Information Systems or related field

Tools

Azure

Observability tooling

Job description

Simpson Strong-Tie is a leader in engineered structural connectors, software, and solutions for the building industry. We maintain a reputation as a trusted manufacturer, partner, and corporate citizen committed to our customers and employees.

Our founder, Barc Simpson established 9 Principles of Business we live out as company values and have made Simpson Strong-Tie an inspiring place to work since 1956. Our team of talented people are dedicated to our shared mission: to provide solutions that help people design and build safer, stronger structures.

Learn about our company culture directly from our team.

YOU

The Director, Software Engineering -Residential leads software development across our three residential software divisions. You will lead multiple engineering managers and roughly 30 developers and QA engineers, reporting to the Vice President, Digital Solutions. Your mandate is to modernize our residential applications and how we deliver them. You will bring multiple divisions onto shared engineering practices and build one collaborative engineering culture. You will work as a peer to the Director, Platform Engineering, whose team provides the cloud platform and tooling your teams build on. Our residential applications are predominantly Microsoft-based, a mix of legacy desktop software and cloud applications running on Azure. You will lead the move from desktop to cloud and modernize the existing cloud applications. This is a leader-of-leaders role that still requires real technical depth. You will lead architecture and modernization decisions and review designs. You will not be expected to write production code.

WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING (% of Time)

Application Modernization and Architecture (25%)

• Define and execute a modernization roadmap for the residential application portfolio, including re-platforming and incremental migration of legacy applications.
• Own application architecture decisions, lead design reviews, and set standards for cloud-native application development.
• Manage technical debt deliberately, balancing modernization against ongoing customer commitments.
• Use product telemetry and usage data to guide modernization priorities.
• Ensure applications meet customer expectations for usability and accessibility.

Delivery Modernization and Engineering Excellence (25%)

• Standardize the software development life cycle across the managed divisions, consolidating tooling and practices.
• Drive adoption of modern delivery practices: CI/CD, automated testing, and frequent, small releases.
• Lead the shift from manual QA toward automated quality engineering, including reskilling QA staff.
• Measure delivery performance using DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, time to restore) and act on the results.
• Build secure development practices into the life cycle, including vulnerability management.
• Own application-level reliability and incident response, using observability tooling provided by Platform Engineering.
• Evaluate and adopt AI-assisted development tools where they improve speed or quality.

Team Leadership and Culture (25%)

• Lead, coach, and develop a geographically distributed engineering organization spanning multiple U.S. time zones, including both direct and indirect, holding them accountable for performance.
• Unite different teams with different histories, stacks, and norms into one collaborative engineering culture.
• Lead the change management that modernization requires, bringing teams along rather than imposing change.
• Hire, develop, and retain engineering talent; address underperformance directly.
• Set clear goals, performance measures, and career development plans across the organization.
• Build a succession bench by developing future engineering leaders.
• Establish operating rhythms, communication standards, and team norms that promote collaboration, accountability, and inclusion in a remote-first environment.

Strategy, Planning, and Budget (15%)

• Set the technical strategy for residential software in alignment with Digital Solutions objectives.
• Develop and manage the engineering budget for the residential software organization.
• Lead quarterly and annual planning, keeping the Vice President and senior leadership informed on progress, risks, and impediments.
• Manage vendor and third-party relationships as needed supporting the residential applications.

Cross-Functional Partnership (10%)

• Partner with Product Management on roadmap, prioritization, and trade-off decisions.
• Work with the Director, Platform Engineering under clearly defined ownership boundaries and a shared roadmap.
• Explain technical concepts, trade-offs, and progress clearly to non-technical stakeholders.

REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of software development experience.
• 5+ years leading engineering teams, including 3+ years managing managers.
• Proven experience leading di