Director of Engineering - A&D

IFS•Itasca, IL

10d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Director of Engineering leads engineering teams that build Defense software for U.S. operators, helping keep fleets and platforms mission-ready. This is a player-coach position requiring technical depth comparable to a Principal Engineer or Architect alongside direct responsibility for hiring, developing, and retaining engineers. Teams own the full delivery lifecycle, including design, development, testing, deployment, and operations, with a you-build-it, you-run-it approach. Reliability, security, and compliance are essential. The Director stays close to engineering work by joining design reviews, guiding architectural trade-offs, resolving difficult technical problems, and using the engineering practices and AI tools used by the teams. The role drives practical AI adoption in development workflows and in product capabilities, including in settings with strict data-handling and deployment constraints. The Director partners with Product Management, Design, Architecture, senior leadership, and defense customers to align technical execution with product strategy and mission needs. The role also fosters a culture of ownership, continuous learning, healthy debate, and engineering specialization across areas such as front-end, back-end, data engineering, applied AI, platform and SRE, and security. IFS is a global enterprise software company with more than 7,000 employees. Its Aerospace & Defense business supports airlines, MROs, OEMs, and defense operators with software for fleet, asset, maintenance, and service lifecycle management. The company describes its workplace as flexible, innovative, diverse, inclusive, and committed to sustainability. The position supports hybrid work opportunities and flexibility.

Requirements

Significant software engineering experience and a track record operating at Principal Engineer or Architect level, including system design, cross-team architectural thinking, and technology strategy.
Proven experience managing and developing engineering teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development.
Strong hands-on background in cloud-native architectures, microservices, API-first design, CI/CD, containerization, and infrastructure as code.
Proficiency in one or more modern programming languages, such as Go, Python, Java, C#, or TypeScript.
Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools and understanding of AI/ML integration patterns, including RAG, agents, prompt engineering, and evaluation.
Track record of driving AI adoption within engineering teams.
Experience leading teams that own development, testing, deployment, and production operations.
Ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders and translate business and mission needs into engineering direction.
Must be based in the United States and able to meet eligibility requirements for U.S. defense work for this requisition.

Nice To Haves

Experience delivering software to defense, government, or other regulated customers, including security accreditation, restricted or disconnected networks, and controlled-data handling.
Experience in enterprise software or SaaS product development at scale.
Experience building or leading teams that ship AI-powered product capabilities, including MLOps pipelines, AI safety and governance practices, or AI evaluation frameworks.
Experience working in or with Aerospace & Defense organizations, or on asset, maintenance, MRO, or fleet-readiness management solutions.
Background across multiple engineering disciplines, such as front-end and back-end or platform and application development.
Experience with event-driven architectures, message brokers, and streaming platforms.
Track record of modernizing legacy systems or migrating to cloud-native architectures.
Familiarity with security practices such as OWASP, threat modeling, and security tooling in CI/CD.
Experience with organizational design, including team structures, team topologies, and scaling engineering organizations.

Responsibilities

Hire, onboard, coach, and develop software engineers across career levels from associate through senior lead.
Manage engineering team performance and support employees’ career growth and retention.
Participate in architecture reviews, guide technology choices, and set the technical bar for the Defense solutions portfolio.
Read, review, and reason about production code and advise on technical decisions.
Ensure teams deliver high-quality software at a sustainable pace, balancing technical quality with business and mission value.
Promote modern engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, infrastructure as code, and secure-by-default design.
Address defense-specific supply-chain, hardening, and security accreditation expectations.
Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools and workflows across teams.
Help engineers build and validate AI-powered product features, including RAG, agentic architectures, and evaluation harnesses, with responsible guardrails.
Resolve cross-team dependencies, remove obstacles, and protect teams from organizational distractions.
Partner with Product Management, Design, Architecture, and senior leadership to align engineering execution with product strategy.
Engage directly with defense customers in technical discussions, workshops, and co-creation.
Foster continuous learning, healthy debate, ownership, and growth of engineering specialisms.
Lead teams that own design, development, testing, deployment, and production operations.