Director of Software Engineering - Based East or Central US Time zone - Global Software Company

Kingston Consulting Global Ltd's client is a global software company with a strong market position and plans to scale. The Director of Software Engineering will set technical direction, lead and scale global engineering teams, and ensure delivery of secure, scalable, high-quality software. The role focuses on engineering strategy, modern software delivery practices, AI-first development, DevOps, and cross-functional executive partnership.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and scale a high-performing software engineering organization across application development, architecture, quality engineering, DevOps, and platform capabilities
• Define and execute the engineering strategy, operating model, and technical roadmap in alignment with business goals, product strategy, customer commitments, and long-term platform evolution
• Own software delivery execution, including planning, estimation, prioritization, release readiness, quality, reliability, and continuous improvement across the software development lifecycle
• Establish and continuously improve modern engineering practices, including Agile delivery, DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, secure coding, observability, release management, and production support readiness
• Champion AI-first development practices that embed AI-assisted and agentic development into the software lifecycle, accelerating discovery, design, coding, testing, documentation, analysis, code review, refactoring, and engineering workflows while maintaining strong governance, security, code quality, and human oversight
• Partner closely with Product, Customer Success, Sales, Operations, Security, Infrastructure, and executive leadership to translate business needs into executable engineering plans
• Represent engineering in executive forums, customer meetings, sales pursuits, board-level updates, internal staff meetings, and strategic client discussions
• Communicate complex technical concepts clearly to executive, business, technical, and client audiences

Requirements:

• Candidates must have demonstrated success leading and scaling software engineering teams in complex enterprise software/SaaS companies
• Experience leading globally distributed engineering teams or multi-site development organizations
• 12+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including significant experience in engineering leadership roles such as Director, Head of Engineering, or VP-equivalent
• Strong working knowledge of AI-first software development practices, AI-assisted coding, agentic development models, prompt-based engineering workflows, AI coding assistants, evaluation methods, governance, and responsible AI use in engineering environments
• Strong technical background in modern software architecture, cloud-native systems, APIs, data platforms, integration patterns, security, performance, and scalable application design
• Hands-on leadership experience with Agile, DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, release management, and engineering productivity practices
• Experience modernizing engineering organizations, development processes, tooling, technical practices, and delivery governance
• Strong executive presence with the ability to present to senior leadership, clients, prospects, partners, and other high-level stakeholders
• Excellent communication, collaboration, negotiation, and decision-making skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience in companies serving the supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, or retail sectors