DIRECTOR - TECHNOLOGY SDLC & Digital Engineering Transformation

AT&T; Dallas (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

AT&T is seeking a Director - Technology to lead the SDLC automation and release engineering across our enterprise platforms. This role will drive AI-accelerated software development, establish governance, and modernize developer tooling and delivery practices.

The successful candidate will combine hands-on cloud-native experience with proven change leadership, executive storytelling, and a track record of large-scale transformations.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive technology leadership.
• 3+ years directly managing engineering teams focused on SDLC automation or platform engineering.
• Proven track record of leading large-scale cultural and technical transformations.
• Superb presentation, storytelling, and communication skills with executive audiences.
• Ability to recruit, develop, and retain top-tier platform and software engineering talent.

Responsibilities

• Pioneer the AI-accelerated SDLC blueprint and governance for AI tooling across developer squads.
• Drive engineering culture modernization toward high-velocity AI-augmented practices.
• Own end-to-end delivery for core platform tooling and cloud-native release infrastructure.
• Establish the digital developer platform and manage the engineering toolchain (e.g., Jira, GitHub, SonarQube, Artifactory).
• Lead executive communications, secure funding, and align modernization with enterprise priorities.

Tools

Jira

GitHub

SonarQube

Artifactory

Terraform

Kubernetes

Job description

AT&T is seeking a Director - Technology to lead, scale, and transform the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and release engineering functions across our enterprise digital platforms. This leader will drive a massive cultural and technical shift, establishing AI-accelerated software engineering as the cornerstone of our developer experience (DevEx) and delivery governance. You will directly manage cross-functional engineering teams spanning DevOps/SRE, Developer Tooling, and Core Automation, while serving as the primary champion for modernizing how our entire organization builds software.

The ideal candidate combines deep hands-on technical roots in cloud-native architectures with proven experience driving organizational change, adopting AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, agentic workflows), and possessing exceptional presentation and storytelling skills to articulate the business value of engineering modernization to executive leadership.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Transformation & AI Acceleration

• Pioneer the AI-accelerated SDLC blueprint, establishing the governance, safety protocols, and deployment strategies for AI coding assistants and autonomous engineering agents across all developer squads.
• Drive engineering culture modernization, transforming the organization from traditional, manual delivery paradigms to high-velocity, AI-augmented engineering practices.
• Formulate and track innovative DevEx metrics (e.g., DORA, developer sentiment, cognitive load reduction, and AI-tooling adoption/ROI) to prove and optimize velocity improvements.
• Upskill and build durable, in-house teams, systematically leverage AI accelerators to maximize individual and squad engineering output.

Executive Communication & Presentation

• Evangelize the engineering transformation roadmap through highly polished, compelling presentations, technical demonstrations, and business-value pitches to executive stakeholders.
• Translate complex platform architectures and DevSecOps technical debt into simple, high-impact business narratives that align with strategic enterprise priorities and secure funding.
• Facilitate cross-functional alignment by leading steering committees, technology workshops, and town halls to drive adoption and generate excitement around modern digital engineering initiatives.

Delivery Leadership & Toolchain Ownership

• Own end-to-end delivery execution for core platform tooling, automation frameworks, and cloud-native release infrastructure.
• Establish the digital developer platform, managing the engineering toolchain (e.g., Jira, GitHub, SonarQube, Artifactory) to minimize friction and automate quality/security gates (SAST/DAST).
• Set the standards for progressive delivery patterns (canary, blue-green, feature flagging) and modern automated testing (contract, performance, E2E) within an AI-assisted ecosystem.

Platform Accountability & Operations

• Drive DevOps strategy, infrastructure-as-code (IaC) governance, and environment management across development, staging, and production zones.
• Establish platform security hardening, access control (RBAC), and regulatory compliance structures across digital service environments.
• Own incident response, Root Cause Analysis (RCA), and continuous improvements for platform reliability.

Required Qualifications

Leadership & Transformation Experience

• 12+ years of progressive technology leadership, with 3+ years directly managing engineering teams focused on SDLC automation, platform engineering, or digital application development.
• Proven track record of leading large-scale cultural and technical transformations (e.g., migrating from legacy architectures, agile transformations, or executing company-wide AI developer tool adoptions).
• Superb presentation, storytelling, and communication skills with a demonstrated ability to present to senior executives and diverse stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, develop, and retain top-tier platform and software engineering talent.

Technical Depth & AI Tooling (Hands-On Experience Required)

• Deep experience with modern digital stacks using technologies like Java (Spring Boot), Node.js, Python, or Go, and cloud-native infrastructure (Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Hands-on experience implementing and driving the adoption of AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, LLM-based refactoring utilities, prompt registries) across software development workflows.
• Demonstrated expertise in CI/CD pipeline automation (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
• Strong understanding of modern test automation frameworks and code quality/static analysis tools (SonarQube).

Delivery & Operational Excellence

• Track record of improving release predictability, reducing cycle times, and decreasing production change-failure rates using DORA-based metrics.
• Experience with observability and APM suites (Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace) to monitor pipeline health and runtime infrastructure.

Preferred Qualifications

• Background in platform engineering, internal developer portals (e.g., Backstage), or developer tooling orchestration.
• Experience with advanced software delivery patterns, including feature-flag-driven releases (LaunchDarkly), micro-frontends, and service-virtualization.

Contributions to open-source developer tooling, CI/CD plugins, or AI-assisted coding extensions