Director, Software Engineering

Valvoline•Frankfort, KY

5d•Remote

About The Position

The Director, Software Engineering is responsible for the strategy, delivery, budget, and continuous improvement of Valvoline’s software engineering capabilities across customer-facing, store operations, enterprise, and digital platforms. The leader combines strategic leadership with technical credibility to influence enterprise technology direction and build a high-performing organization of architects, engineers, and agile delivery professionals. The role partners with DevOps and Infrastructure teams to deploy and operate the solutions built by the organization. A central responsibility is shaping Valvoline’s future Store platform in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture, Digital Product, Infrastructure, and Security leaders. The Director helps set technical direction and architectural standards and evaluates tradeoffs to keep the platform scalable and aligned with store operations. The role also develops engineering talent, establishes development standards, advances cloud-native solutions, and augments teams with agentic frameworks to deliver high-quality solutions at speed.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading managers, architects, and engineering teams.
Experience making and owning architectural and technical decisions for large-scale, business-critical platforms.
Experience leading enterprise application development and cloud modernization initiatives, and building and scaling software engineering organizations.
Experience influencing senior leadership and enterprise-level technology decisions.
Experience partnering with Product, Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, and business stakeholders, and managing customer, business owner, vendor, and delivery partner relationships.
Experience working within Agile product delivery environments.
Budget and financial management experience.
Technical experience in AWS cloud platforms, platform and solution architecture (including APIs and microservices), and DevOps and CI/CD practices.
Technical experience with modern software engineering methodologies with agentic augmentation, engineering governance and quality practices, and application security and secure development principles.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field.
Experience in retail service environments with large-scale field organizations, such as automotive maintenance or quick-service restaurants.
Experience in North American business and compliance environments.

Responsibilities

Define and execute software engineering strategy aligned with enterprise technology and business objectives, translating Digital Product roadmaps into executable engineering plans.
Own engineering delivery of the future Store platform roadmap, from architecture through release and ongoing support.
Ensure teams deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable solutions, with governance for software lifecycle management and technical debt reduction.
Manage budget, delivery capacity, prioritization, and resource allocation across initiatives and product teams.
Drive modernization using cloud-native architectures, APIs, microservices, automation, and AI-assisted development.
Lead technology selection, design patterns, integration approaches, and build, buy, or integrate tradeoffs for the future Store platform.
Lead the enterprise and senior solution architects reporting to the role; align with Enterprise Architecture on technology standards and document architectural decisions for consistent adoption.
Establish technical quality standards through architecture and design reviews, code quality standards, peer reviews, automated testing, CI/CD practices, and observability, while ensuring cybersecurity, compliance, and data governance requirements are met.
Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted engineering approaches that create business value, and support simplification across legacy and modern platforms.
Partner with DevOps and Infrastructure leaders to mature cloud engineering practices, platform reliability, and automation across build, testing, deployment, monitoring, and support processes.
Champion Site Reliability Engineering, DevSecOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code principles, and drive adoption of engineering tooling and developer productivity solutions.
Lead, coach, develop, and retain a high-performing software engineering organization, including clear career paths, technical growth opportunities, and leadership development plans.
Build succession pipelines for critical technical and leadership roles.
Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and customer focus, and drive workforce planning and organizational design aligned with future technology needs.
Partner with Digital Product, Quality Engineering, Data & AI, Infrastructure, Security, Enterprise Architecture, and PMO leaders to align priorities and communicate engineering strategy, risks, tradeoffs, and progress to technology and business leadership.
Make and own technical decisions within the scope of the Store platform and engineering organization, in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture and Digital Product, while influencing senior leadership and enterprise decision-making on technology investments and product delivery.
Support vendor selection, strategic partnerships, and third-party delivery teams when applicable.