Director of Research & Development

Valsoft Corporation-posted 4 months ago

Director

Northbrook, IL

1,001-5,000 employees

Resume

Match Score

Upload and Match ResumeTrack Jobs with Teal

We're looking for a Director of Research & Development to lead the modernization and expansion of our software products for the alternative financial services industry. This is a hands-on leadership role that merges software engineering expertise with forward-thinking AI integration and rapid product innovation. As Director of R&D, you will manage a talented engineering team and collaborate closely with our Product Manager and Operations teams. You’ll take ownership of delivering modern, scalable software—while embedding cutting-edge AI technologies into our workflows, user experience, and development process.

Take technical ownership across the entire stack: APIs, databases, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, frontend apps, and internal tools.
Promote best practices in testing, observability, documentation, and code quality.
Ensure platform reliability and performance across services, products, and AI components.
Lead and grow a cross-functional engineering team with a strong culture of innovation, delivery, and continuous learning.
Mentor developers in AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor) and encourage experimentation to increase team productivity.
Support individual and team performance through feedback, pairing, code reviews, and professional development.
Design, build, and deploy AI-powered features across the platform—including agent-based workflows, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), predictive tools, and automated decision systems.
Drive the rapid prototyping of new features, turning ideas into working proof-of-concepts in days and production-ready tools in weeks.
Apply LLMs and AI orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) to real-world problems like compliance automation, document analysis, and fraud prevention.
Lead platform modernization by refactoring legacy components and building scalable cloud-native services.
Work in close partnership with Product Management and Operations to align development work with customer needs and business priorities.
Communicate technical vision and architectural decisions across departments.
Bring a pragmatic approach to balancing innovation, speed, and technical debt.

5+ years of experience leading software engineering or R&D teams, ideally in SaaS or fintech environments.
Proven success delivering production-ready, customer-facing software across the full stack—from backend services to web frontends.
Strong architectural skills and comfort with modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure) and DevOps workflows.
Experience applying AI or automation tools to enhance product features or streamline development workflows.
Familiarity with emerging AI/LLM frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LlamaIndex) and enthusiasm for exploring how they can support product innovation.
A track record of rapid iteration: launching prototypes quickly, gathering feedback, and refining based on real-world use.
A leadership style grounded in mentorship, collaboration, and elevating team performance.
Strong communication and project management skills—able to align cross-functional stakeholders and keep teams focused.

Experience revamping or re-platforming legacy systems into modern microservice or serverless architectures.
Understanding of compliance and regulatory demands in financial software or MSBs.
Background in intelligent automation, ML ops, or AI infrastructure.

Track Jobs with Teal

Job Search Resources

•

Resume Builder

•

Director of Innovation Resume Examples

•

Director of Innovation Cover Letter Examples

Director of Research & Development

Job Search Resources

Tools

Career Hubs

Guides

Company