Director, Product Engineering

UFCU•Austin, TX

2d•Onsite

About The Position

The Director of Product Engineering leads product-aligned engineering teams responsible for the delivery, integration, support, and continuous improvement of member-facing and business-critical platforms across UFCU. This role partners closely with Product Owners, business leaders, architects, and technology teams to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable solutions that enhance member experience, operational excellence, and organizational growth. Operating within an agile POD delivery model, the Director of Product Engineering is accountable for engineering execution, platform reliability, service delivery, and production support across digital banking, lending, payments, CRM/contact center, and enterprise platforms. This leader fosters a culture of accountability, innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement while ensuring solutions align with UFCU’s strategic priorities and operational resiliency expectations within a regulated financial services environment. The Director, Product Engineering is an exempt role and reports to the Chief Technology Officer.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Info Security or related technical/business field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.
10+ years of software engineering, product engineering, or technology delivery leadership experience, including 5+ years in senior engineering leadership roles.
Minimum of seven (7) years of management and supervisory leadership experience developing and leading teams with direct reporting relationships.
Proven experience leading product-aligned engineering teams with service delivery accountability.
Experience partnering with business leaders, Product Owners, and cross-functional technology teams within agile delivery models.
Strong background in modern application architectures, APIs, and cloud-based systems.
Experience delivering and operating business-critical systems in regulated environments.
Ability to communicate effectively with both technical teams and executive leaders.
Must be bondable.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Business, Info Security or relevant field of study.
Minimum of five (5) years of demonstrated strategic leadership experience.
Experience working in financial services, fintech, or credit-union experience.
Background in lending systems, digital banking, payments, or customer-facing platforms.
Track record of partnering successfully with platform, architecture, security, SRE, and operations teams.

Responsibilities

Lead end-to-end engineering delivery across member-facing and business-critical domains.
Translate business strategies and product roadmaps into executable engineering plans.
Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with UFCU’s enterprise architecture and platform strategy.
Operate within a cross-functional agile POD model in partnership with Product Owners, business leaders, and technology teams.
Balance business priorities, delivery commitments, operational stability, and measurable outcomes through shared accountability across teams.
Act as the technology counterpart to the business, with shared accountability for delivery, stability, and outcomes.
Partner with Platform Engineering to leverage shared services, APIs, frameworks, and enterprise capabilities while reducing unnecessary duplication and point solutions.
Leverages platforms, built by platform engineering, to engineer domain-specific business solutions.
Champion a platform-first, product-led engineering approach across teams.
Own service delivery outcomes for applications supporting assigned business domains.
Be accountable for meeting and continuously improving system SLAs.
Establish and maintain clear L2/L3 production support models, escalation paths, and on-call ownership within PODs.
Lead incident response and major incident management, perform root-cause analysis and permanent corrective actions, reduce recurring incidents through engineering and design improvements.
Partner with Platform Engineering, SRE, and Operations to improve observability, monitoring, and alerting.
Drive predictable, high-quality delivery using agile and product-centric practices.
Ensure delivery practices align with clear business objectives, product priorities, security expectations, and operational support requirements.
Improve speed-to-market without compromising security, reliability, or SLAs.
Strategic and operational leader (player-coach) with the ability to remain closely connected to evolving technologies organizational priorities while developing high-performing teams.
Lead, inspire, motivate, and develop team members by providing guidance and training to attain departmental and individual development goals and support organizational needs.
Foster a people-centered culture of accountability, collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement across engineering teams.
Build a successful team to operate according to UFCU guiding principles, providing guidance and resources and removing obstacles as needed.
Provide team leadership based on servant leadership principles, caring for the whole person.
Plan, monitor, and appraise job results with an emphasis on coaching and developing employees to achieve desired performance results.
Help teams achieve their career goals. Ensure team members understand how to have an impact and are aware of that impact when they've made it.
Cultivate a positive, strong, lasting, and meaningful relationship and connection with others, working collaboratively with peers across the organization.
Facilitate joint brainstorming and team collaboration, working closely with peers to aid in creating organizational goals and strategies.
Collaborate with departments across the business, supporting their needs to achieve desired operational results.
Collaborate with business partners to determine future needs and support necessary to achieve business unit strategy.
Collaborate with senior leaders and actively participate in the organizational strategic planning process.
Develop Product Engineering strategies in partnership with executive leadership to support organizational priorities, member experience, and operational goals.
Monitor and evaluate department progress toward stated goals and make adjustments as needed based on business and department needs.
Facilitate procurement of tools and resources necessary to achieve organizational and department strategic priorities.
Establish Product Engineering annual budget with identification of planned expenses for new or enhanced programs and services.
Ensure effective control of results. Take action to guarantee achievement of departmental objectives that fall within designated budgets.
Monitor and manage departmental expenses against budget priorities and adjust resources as needed to support organizational objectives.
Collaborate with senior leaders on development of organizational annual budget in alignment with strategic objectives.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Adhere to all organizational policies, procedures, and business ethics codes.
Complete required regulatory training as assigned.
Maintain strict adherence and compliance to all laws, rules, regulations, policies, procedures, and internal controls specific to the role, including but not limited to the Bank Secrecy Act, Anti-Money Laundering, USA Patriot Act, OFAC, and Fair Lending regulations.