Director, Innovation & Technology

CSC Leasing Co.•Richmond, VA

About The Position

The Director, Innovation & Technology is a hands-on engineering leader responsible for managing CSC’s Innovation and Technology team, upholding first-class software development standards, and driving the adoption of agentic development practices across every project the team delivers. This role reports to the Chief Operations Officer and works in close partnership with Senior Leadership on technology and AI direction. The Director’s primary mandate is translating strategic priorities into disciplined, high-quality execution—ensuring the team ships reliable software on predictable timelines through CSC’s Execution Framework (Idea ? Discovery ? Design ? Build ? QA ? Rollout ? Measure) and the agentic development loop that runs underneath it. The ideal candidate is an experienced engineering manager who leads with clarity, accountability, and high standards. They are technically credible—able to evaluate architecture, review code, and make sound technical decisions—but their primary focus is making the team excellent, not being the top individual contributor. They bring strong opinions on software quality, development process, and engineering culture, and they are energized by the opportunity to build a team that develops software through agentic tools (Claude Code, MCP servers, autonomous workflows) as the default way of working.

Requirements

10+ years in enterprise technology, software engineering, or cloud architecture roles.
5+ years managing engineering or technology teams, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
Strong technical foundation across cloud services (AWS and/or Azure), modern application development (Go, TypeScript/React, C#/.NET, or similar), APIs, CI/CD, and automation.
Hands-on experience with or strong aptitude for agentic developer tools (Claude Code or equivalent), Model Context Protocol (MCP), prompt engineering, and agent orchestration patterns.
Demonstrated ability to establish and enforce development standards, code review practices, and quality gates across a team.
Experience with DevOps practices and tooling (Terraform, Docker, GitHub Actions) and secure development practices.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
Strong communication skills—able to translate technical concepts for executive stakeholders and translate executive priorities for engineering teams.
High emotional intelligence, servant-leader mindset, and a talent for building collaborative, accountable engineering cultures.

Nice To Haves

Holds the team to a high bar on software quality—code review, testing, documentation, and security are non-negotiable, not aspirational.
Manages delivery with clarity and discipline—keeping projects on track, risks visible, and stakeholders informed without micromanaging.
Drives agentic development adoption with conviction—this is how CSC builds software, and this person makes sure the team operates that way.
Gets technically involved when it counts—reviewing architecture, unblocking teams, evaluating trade-offs—without defaulting to being the top individual contributor.
Builds teams that are values-aligned, technically excellent, and culturally strong—engineers who hold each other to a high standard.
Earns trust at every level of the organization—translating complex technical topics into language executives can act on, and translating executive priorities into work the team can execute with confidence.
Brings ideas and technical perspective to the table without needing to own strategy—a strong contributor to direction who thrives in execution.

Responsibilities

Manage, mentor, and grow a team of engineers, DevOps specialists, and analysts—building a collaborative, curious, and accountable team culture.
Lead hiring for engineering roles; ensure new team members integrate successfully into CSC’s agentic workflows and development standards.
Conduct regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations. Address performance issues directly and constructively.
Cultivate taste, judgment, and agent-collaboration literacy across the team so that every engineer operates effectively with both humans and agents.
Own and enforce CSC’s development standards across the full stack—Salesforce (Apex, LWC, Flow), Go and .NET backend services, React and TypeScript front-ends, and cloud infrastructure (AWS, Cloudflare).
Establish and maintain code review practices, testing standards, CI/CD pipeline quality gates, branching strategies, and release management processes.
Ensure consistent documentation, secrets management, DevOps practices (Terraform/Terragrunt, GitHub Actions, Docker), and security protocols across all projects.
Review and approve architecture decisions, integration patterns (REST APIs, event platforms, MCP tool servers), and technical designs before the team builds.
Hold the team accountable to quality—shipped code meets CSC’s standards for reliability, security, maintainability, and performance.
Drive the team’s adoption of agentic development as the default way of building software—structured plan-mode design, worktree-isolated development, parallel subagent execution, automated review, and measured rollout through Claude Code.
Ensure the team builds and expands CSC’s library of MCP tool servers that expose internal data stores and operational systems as first-class capabilities agents can call safely.
Embed AI and autonomous agents into operational workflows, measuring agent leverage and identifying opportunities to increase automation coverage.
Uphold CSC’s AI governance standards—model selection, prompt safety, privacy, ethics, human-in-the-loop controls, and cost-per-outcome tracking for LLM usage.
Contribute ideas and technical perspective on frontier model capabilities, agent frameworks, and tooling to inform executive build/buy/adopt decisions.
Steward the CSC Execution Framework across all innovation and technology projects, ensuring disciplined progression from Idea through Measure.
Manage prioritization, sprint cadence, and resource allocation across concurrent workstreams. Keep both human and agent work transparent, predictable, and cross-team aligned.
Ensure predictable delivery of MVPs with strong scoping, clear quality gates, governance, and disciplined cost controls.
Provide consistent, timely communication of progress, risks, blockers, and decisions to the COO and Senior Leadership.
Serve as the operating layer between executive direction and engineering execution—translating priorities into actionable work without requiring executive involvement in day-to-day delivery.
Work closely with department leaders to identify opportunities for automation, agentic augmentation, and operational improvement.
Translate complex technical, AI, and agentic concepts into accessible language for business stakeholders.
Steward the prioritization of high-impact initiatives in partnership with the COO.
Partner with security stakeholders to uphold identity, access, secrets, and cloud governance standards across AWS, Cloudflare, and Salesforce.
Enforce agent-safety practices including entitlement management, secure API management, LLM prompt-safety reviews, and audited tool scopes for autonomous agents.
Ensure compliance with CSC’s internal policies, AI responsible-use standards, and industry regulations alignment such as SOC II.