Director of Applied Innovation - York, NE

Central Valley Ag Cooperative•York, NE

12d

About The Position

The Director of Applied Innovation leads the team responsible for building, deploying, and operating Central Valley Ag's custom business applications, including RouteForge, Gravis, the grower portal, and future applications. This is a working leadership role: the Director sets direction and develops the team while also writing and reviewing code and personally handling the most challenging problems. The Director owns the application portfolio roadmap, prioritizes work according to business value, and establishes a delivery cadence focused on putting usable software in users' hands within weeks. The role is accountable for application availability, production operations, user experience, and equipping CVA's support organization to handle routine support over time. The Director also establishes engineering and AI-assisted development practices, partners with architecture, infrastructure, security, and data teams, and manages vendors, cloud spending, and licensing. The position directly supervises an Applied Innovation Engineer and an Applied Innovation Analyst and reports delivery, risk, and portfolio health to the Chief Technology Officer and business leadership. The role may be based at any Central Valley Ag location or worked remotely. Periodic travel to CVA locations is expected for user engagement, onboarding, and team meetings. Occasional after-hours availability is required to support deployments and production issues.

Requirements

Seven or more years building and supporting business software, including substantial time in a hands-on engineering role.
Demonstrated leadership of a team, a product, or a significant delivery effort; formal management experience is not required when the leadership track record is clear.
Hands-on proficiency with a modern application stack, such as TypeScript/JavaScript with React or Next.js, C#, or Python, and with relational databases and SQL.
Experience with cloud application delivery, including deployment, application hosting, identity and authentication, secrets management, monitoring, and cost control in AWS and/or Microsoft Azure.
Knowledge of system and data integration, including APIs, file interfaces, and integration with ERP or third-party platforms.
Sound scope judgment, including deciding what not to build and shipping a narrow first version that earns the next one.
Strong written and verbal communication with non-technical stakeholders, including the ability to run intake conversations with business leaders and reach a decision.
Demonstrated ownership of production systems, including release management and incident response.
Ability to perform the essential functions of the job, with reasonable accommodations where applicable.
Agreement to Central Valley Ag's confidentiality, intellectual property, and non-disclosure terms is a condition of employment.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in a technology-related field, such as computer science, computer information systems, or management information systems.
Working fluency with AI-assisted development, including coding agents and assistants, prompt-driven development, and reviewing AI-generated code to the same standard as hand-written code. Candidates without this experience who are eager to adopt it will be considered.
Experience in agriculture, commodities, logistics, or a cooperative.
Experience establishing or turning around a small delivery team.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and develop a team of two: an Applied Innovation Engineer and an Applied Innovation Analyst; hire into the team as it grows.
Personally design, develop, and review application code.
Own the application portfolio roadmap, run intake with business leaders, prioritize work based on business value, and decide what the team will not build.
Establish and maintain a delivery cadence that puts usable software in front of users in weeks rather than quarters, and report against it.
Own production availability for the application portfolio, including deployment, release management, monitoring, and incident response.
Establish and enforce engineering practices for version control, testing, code review, release and change management, and documentation.
Establish the team's AI-assisted development practices, including tooling, review standards, guardrails, and appropriate handling of company and customer data.
Partner with Enterprise Architecture to ensure applications conform to CVA's architecture, integration, and data standards.
Partner with IT Infrastructure and IT Security on hosting, identity, access management, and secure development practices.
Equip CVA's support organization to support business applications by creating documentation, runbooks, training, and knowledge transfer; serve as the escalation point.
Maintain the boundary between operational applications built by Applied Innovation and tools or agents for answering questions from CVA's data, which belong to the Director of Data & AI Enablement; partner with that team rather than duplicating its work.
Manage vendor relationships, cloud spending, and licensing for the application portfolio.
Report delivery, risk, and portfolio health to the Chief Technology Officer and business leadership.
Carry out supervisory responsibilities, including interviewing and hiring, planning and assigning work, coaching and performance management, and addressing employee concerns.
Perform other duties as assigned.