Director of Software Engineering

The role

The Director of Software Engineering provides strategic and technical leadership for the enterprise application portfolio. This person leads a growing team of software engineers and manages internal staff and external development partners.

What you will do

• Lead the design, delivery, and operation of enterprise application platforms.
• Provide engineering leadership across the full software development lifecycle.
• Build, develop, and retain a high-performing Software Engineering team.
• Participate directly in architecture, system design, and key technical decision-making.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards for software design, code quality, testing, CI/CD, security, and development practices.
• Work alongside engineering teams to diagnose and resolve complex production, performance, reliability, and integration issues.
• Define and execute the application modernization strategy.
• Partner with Infrastructure & Security to ensure applications meet availability and operational requirements.
• Evaluate architectural trade-offs involving performance, security, reliability, maintainability, scalability, and cost.
• Manage software vendors, consultants, and external development partners.

Required qualifications

• 10+ years of progressively responsible software development experience supporting production applications.
• 5+ years leading software engineering teams with responsibility for delivery, hiring, coaching, performance management, and organizational outcomes.
• Experience managing teams consisting of employees, consultants, and external development partners.
• Recent hands-on technical leadership experience, including architecture, design reviews, implementation guidance, and production troubleshooting.
• Ability to review source code, APIs, system designs, deployment configurations, and data flows.
• Experience owning enterprise application platforms in production, including managing technical debt and long-term platform evolution.
• Experience supporting highly available or mission-critical business systems.
• Strong experience with cloud platforms and distributed systems.
• Experience with containerized and cloud-native environments such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience integrating enterprise applications and third-party platforms.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor and develop engineers through direct technical leadership.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with both technical and business audiences.

Nice to have

• Experience working in regulated, public sector, healthcare, financial, or other high-accountability environments
• Experience with C#/.NET, modern web development frameworks, Microsoft Azure, RESTful APIs, relational databases, containerization, Kubernetes, and AI-assisted software engineering tools

Benefits

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• four weeks of paid vacation
• paid holidays
• retirement plan with employer contributions
• ongoing professional development opportunities

Before you apply

• Ability to successfully pass a background investigation
• Internal applicants must have completed at least one year in their current position and be in good standing, with no disciplinary action within the previous 90 days

About the company

The New York City Criminal Justice Agency (CJA) is a not-for-profit service and research organization that operates in partnership with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. CJA is the City’s main pretrial services agency, combining operations, pilot projects, and research under one roof.