Director of Engineering

Vizient•Chicago, IL

11d•$135,200 - $236,600

About The Position

The Director of Engineering provides strategic, organizational, and technical leadership across engineering teams that deliver and operate enterprise software platforms supporting critical business capabilities and customer workflows. The role translates business strategy into engineering execution, guides platform modernization, and builds a high-performing engineering organization focused on quality, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence. The Director leads internal and partner-delivered teams, establishing technical governance, accountability, and alignment with organizational objectives. In partnership with Product Management, Architecture, Security, Operations, Cloud Engineering, and business stakeholders, the role drives modernization, improves engineering effectiveness, and establishes sustainable delivery practices that balance customer value, innovation, operational stability, and long-term platform health. The position calls for strong engineering leadership, software delivery expertise, organizational development, and business acumen to lead teams through complex technical and organizational challenges, develop future engineering leaders, and strengthen engineering culture.

Requirements

Relevant bachelor's degree preferred; advanced degree preferred.
10 or more years of software engineering experience.
5 or more years of engineering leadership experience managing teams, engineering managers, or technical leaders.
Demonstrated success leading engineering organizations in a matrixed environment and aligning technical strategy with business objectives.
Experience building, scaling, and leading software engineering organizations delivering enterprise SaaS and cloud-native applications.
Experience defining and executing technical roadmaps, modernization strategies, and large-scale engineering initiatives.
Strong understanding of modern software architecture, distributed systems, APIs, event-driven systems, microservices, cloud-native engineering, and platform engineering practices.
Experience delivering enterprise-scale solutions on AWS, Azure, or other public cloud platforms.
Experience establishing operational excellence practices, including monitoring, incident response, reliability engineering, disaster recovery, and production support.
Strong leadership, communication, stakeholder management, coaching, organizational development, vendor management, and strategic planning skills.
Demonstrated ability to influence across engineering, product, architecture, operations, and executive leadership teams.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading geographically distributed teams, offshore delivery organizations, or strategic technology partners.
Experience with enterprise integrations, including APIs, messaging platforms, EDI, HL7, EMR/ERP integrations, and third-party technology ecosystems.
Experience implementing modern engineering practices, including Agile, DevSecOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, observability, automated testing, and security-by-design.
Experience leading modernization initiatives involving cloud migration, platform transformation, legacy modernization, or technical debt reduction.
Experience within healthcare, SaaS, supply chain, procurement, financial systems, or other regulated industries.

Responsibilities

Lead multiple engineering teams through coaching, mentorship, performance management, and career development.
Recruit, develop, and retain engineering talent; build succession plans and strengthen organizational capability.
Define and execute engineering strategy, technical roadmaps, and modernization initiatives aligned with product and business objectives.
Partner with Product Management, Architecture, Security, Operations, and business stakeholders to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable software solutions.
Establish engineering standards, architectural patterns, and governance processes that promote quality, maintainability, security, scalability, and operational excellence.
Provide executive oversight for partner-delivered and vendor-supported engineering initiatives, ensuring accountability, transparency, and delivery excellence.
Review and challenge technical designs, architecture decisions, estimates, implementation approaches, and delivery plans.
Lead platform modernization initiatives, including cloud adoption, scalability improvements, technical debt reduction, systems integration, and architecture evolution.
Drive adoption of modern engineering practices, including Agile delivery, DevSecOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, automated testing, observability, and reliability engineering.
Own engineering readiness for production support, incident management, disaster recovery, service reliability, and operational resilience.
Establish and monitor engineering KPIs related to delivery predictability, software quality, reliability, platform health, operational maturity, and team effectiveness.
Lead technical risk assessment, dependency management, capacity planning, and resolution of complex engineering challenges across teams and business functions.
Build partnerships with product, operations, customer support, and business stakeholders so customer and operational priorities inform engineering decisions.
Promote engineering excellence through continuous improvement, innovation, automation, and knowledge-sharing practices.
Communicate engineering strategy, delivery progress, organizational health, risks, and outcomes to executive leadership and key stakeholders.
Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement.