Bloomington, MN
Director of Software Engineering Job Description
Job Summary:
At TempWorks, 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.
This role is accountable for building and sustaining a high-performance engineering organization through strong people leadership, coaching, and performance management. It partners with the Architecture and Software Design vertical as the delivery-and-execution arm of the engineering organization, and operates as a key partner to Product, the PMO, Client Implementation, and Client Support.
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.
- Coordinate new hire onboarding and ongoing professional development for engineering managers and QA leadership.
- Oversee timekeeping procedures and provide payroll approval.
- 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 escalate 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.
- Implement software development process improvements, including code review standards, release practices, and quality gates.
- 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.
- Perform other related duties as assigned.
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.
- Ability to prioritize and delegate efficiently.
- Ability to work well under pressure while leading a growing team.
- 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.
- Familiarity with the staffing and recruiting industry strongly preferred.
Physical Requirements:
- Prolonged periods of sitting at desk and working on a computer.
- Must be able to lift up to 10 pounds at times.
The pay range for this role is: $135,000 - $195,000
TempWorks Software offers a comprehensive benefits package and provides eligible employees with an opportunity to enroll in various benefit programs, subject to applicable waiting periods. This includes the following:
Paid Time Off
Holiday Pay
Volunteer Time Off
Medical Insurance
Health Savings Account with Employer Contribution
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
401(k) with Employer Match
Life Insurance and AD&D
Short-Term and Long-Term Disability Insurance
Paid and Unpaid Leave of Absences
Commission
Applicants have rights under Federal Employment Laws
TempWorks Software does not participate in E-Verify.