Director of Software Engineering

SANS Institute•Bethesda, MD

4d•$200,000 - $240,000•Remote

About The Position

We are seeking a Director of Software Engineering to join our Product Development team. This role plays a key part in providing senior technical and organizational leadership for SANS’ Cloud Platform Engineering organization — spanning platform core services (identity, product administration, and entitlements), DevOps tools and services, website engineering, and courseware & platform orchestration — while serving as the engineering executive for Project CORE, SANS’ enrollment and entitlement modernization program. This role leads individual contributors and engineering teams through their managers and leads; owns shared engineering platforms, standards, tooling, and vendor relationships; and drives the architecture, delivery, and cross-functional coordination required to modernize SANS’ enrollment, entitlement, and administrative systems. The Director partners closely with Product, Operations, Sales, Finance, and fellow engineering directors to translate business strategy into secure, scalable, and maintainable systems.

Requirements

BS or MS in Computer Science, related technical field, or equivalent industry experience.
At least 10 years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering teams and 3+ years managing through engineering managers or leads.
Demonstrated success leading a large, multi-team modernization or systems-integration program from design through delivery.
Strong technical acumen with prior hands-on development experience and the ability to guide architectural decisions across services, integrations, and data flows.
Experience with modern AI development techniques and best practices.
Experience with enterprise business systems and integrations (e.g., Salesforce/Service Cloud, identity providers, payment/order management).
Experience with cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices, including AWS, CI/CD pipelines, containerization, and infrastructure as code.
Experience managing vendor relationships, software procurement, licensing, and budgets.
Experience with Agile, SDLC, and modern development standards and best practices.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including executive-level reporting and cross-functional coordination.
Unrestricted authorization to work in the USA; visa sponsorship is not available.

Nice To Haves

Experience in education technology, training delivery platforms, or certification systems.
Experience facilitating architecture governance (architecture councils, RFC processes, engineering standards).
Familiarity with identity and access management platforms (PingIdentity, Entra ID) and entitlement modeling.
Experience integrating AI-assisted development tooling and governing its safe, cost-effective adoption.
Interest in a security-first mindset and secure coding practices.
Ability and passion for developing both individuals and teams.

Responsibilities

Lead, manage, and mentor individual contributors and engineering teams through managers and leads.
Own engineering standards and best practices — CI/CD, code quality, secure development — and facilitate architecture governance across teams.
Plan and balance engineering capacity against shifting business priorities, communicating trade-offs to stakeholders.
Lead strategic modernization programs end to end: architecture, cross-team commitments, delivery planning, and executive reporting.
Direct modernization of core product platforms — enrollment, entitlement, identity, and product services — including integration with enterprise systems and retirement of legacy tooling.
Measure engineering effectiveness and drive continuous improvement across teams.
Champion incident management discipline and publish regular engineering communications to stakeholders.
Other duties as assigned.