Senior Director, Software Engineering

Visa•Bellevue, WA

8h•Hybrid

About The Position

The Value-Added Services Product Development (VAS PD) team drives the diversification of our revenue with products that differentiate Visa network and deliver valuable solutions across other networks. The Acceptance organization in VAS enables secure, seamless payment acceptance for merchants and partners worldwide, supporting Visa’s mission to expand digital commerce and deliver value-added services across the payments ecosystem. Authorize.net, part of Acceptance, provides secure payment solutions tailored for small and medium businesses (SMBs). This Senior Director position in the Authorize.net development team will be responsible for leading the technology strategy, solution, and execution of initiatives that support our business objectives. This role focuses on reimagining Authorize.net and enabling its global expansion. A key aspect of this role is close partnership with Product Management to drive adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI, accelerating agility, developer productivity, and innovation across the platform.

Requirements

12+ years of relevant work experience and a Bachelors degree, OR 15+ years of relevant work experience
Proven experience managing software development teams delivering highly available enterprise level, distributed applications utilizing technologies such as Java, Golang, Spark, etc.
Outstanding verbal, written, presentation, facilitation, and interaction skills, along with effective communication (both written and verbal) skills and the ability to present complex ideas in a clear, concise way.
Proven track record of coordinating multiple product and technical teams by removing roadblocks and solving complex problems collaboratively.
Strong at technical goal setting for a project with actionable success metrics.
Security Expertise: Strong understanding of API security, data encryption, and Hardware Security Modules (HSMs). Experience in building secure applications and implementing security-first practices.
Database Skills: Proficiency in SQL and NoSQL databases (e.g., MSSQL, MongoDB). Experience with distributed caching technologies like Redis.
Generative AI & Agentic AI: Experience leveraging Generative AI and Agentic AI to drive productivity improvements and product innovation. Familiarity with integrating AI solutions into existing platforms.
Cloud & DevOps: Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure, or GCP. Strong understanding of DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, containerization (Docker), and orchestration tools (Kubernetes).
SSDLC Automation: Demonstrated ability to automate SSDLC phases to improve efficiency and quality. Experience with automated testing frameworks, code quality tools, and delivery pipelines.
Architectural Leadership: Deep understanding of architectural patterns and best practices. Ability to balance short-term and long-term technological decisions aligned with business goals. Experience in designing and maintaining highly available (99.999%), reliable, active-active critical systems.
Hands-On Attitude: Willingness to contribute directly to codebases and develop to validate new ideas and integrate beneficial emerging technologies.
Leadership & Communication: Ability to lead and mentor engineering teams, fostering a collaborative environment.

Nice To Haves

15 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 9+ years of experience
16 or more years of experience with a Bachelor’s Degree or 12 years of experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters, MBA, JD, or MD), PhD with 10+ years of experience.
Familiarity with compliance and regulatory requirements in the payments industry is a plus.
Passion for staying current with industry trends and emerging technologies.
Familiarity with Visa, CyberSource, Authorize.net technologies is a plus.

Responsibilities

Lead and scale multiple global development teams comprising engineers, managers, and leaders across levels and geographies.
Define and drive overall technical strategy and architecture, ensuring alignment with business goals while accelerating innovation and time to market.
Drive adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI to materially improve developer productivity and enable innovative business solutions.
Deliver complex, highly interdependent products by collaborating across Product, Operations & Infrastructure, CyberSecurity, Client Support, and other Product Development teams.
Establish a strong culture of engineering excellence, including quality, security, performance, scalability, availability, and resilience.
Partner with product owners to define strategy, roadmaps, and execution plans aligned with business outcomes.
Oversee prioritization, delivery, and ongoing maintenance of multiple platforms and services, including incident, change, and problem management.
Hire, retain, and develop high-performing, diverse global engineering teams, with a strong emphasis on mentorship, coaching, and career growth.
Provide hands-on technology leadership by contributing to architecture, critical code paths, automation tools, and proof-of-concepts as needed.
Establish and promote best practices across the software development lifecycle, including CI/CD automation, DevOps, testing, deployment, and operational excellence.
Oversee cloud-first application development on AWS, Azure, or GCP, ensuring solutions are secure, resilient, scalable, and cost-effective.
Communicate technical strategy and solutions effectively to diverse stakeholders, including executives and business leaders.
Lead with a strong client-focused mindset while adhering to Visa’s Leadership Principles of collaboration, ownership, and execution excellence.
Lead multiple development teams made up of full-time employees and contractors of various levels from junior engineers to directors.
Lead the adoption of Generative AI and Agentic AI to boost developer productivity by 10X, leveraging these technologies to build innovative business solutions and products.
Deliver products with complex technical interdependencies collaborating with cross geographical development and product teams.
Collaborate with Product Office, Operations & Infrastructure, CyberSecurity, Client Support and other Product Development teams in developing complete solutions.
Build a culture of engineering excellence (quality, security, performance, scalability, availability, resilience etc.) across your own teams and the entire organization.
Partner with product owners in developing a strategy and roadmap that align with business goals.
Define and drive the overall technical strategy and architecture, ensuring alignment with business goals while accelerating innovation and time to market.
Influence adoption of best engineering practices, automations of software development, testing and deployment processes.
Manage the prioritization and delivery of enhancements and ongoing maintenance activities for multiple services.
Be responsible for the incident management, change, and problem management.
Hire, retain and grow high-performing and diverse global engineering teams.
Invest in the career development of your employees with a strong focus on mentorship and training.
Lead with a strong client focus mindset across organizations.
Handle routine daily activities such as coordination, coaching, mentoring, recruiting, budgeting, planning, delivery, quality, partner relationships, performance metrics, operations, efficiency, service level management, etc.
Architect, design, and code highly scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems and transaction processing platforms.
Establish and promote best practices for software development, including CI/CD automation and DevOps, to improve efficiency and quality across the SSDLC.
Oversee cloud first application development and optimization on AWS, Azure, or GCP to ensure solutions are resilient, scalable, cost-effective, and secure.
Actively contribute to critical projects by developing key modules, core frameworks, automation tools, and proof-of-concepts to validate emerging ideas and technologies.
Provide technology leadership and motivate high-performing engineering teams, setting clear priorities to achieve product and technology KPIs.
Collaborate cross-functionally with security, privacy, governance, and business partners to deliver compliant, scalable, and reliable solutions that meet all non-functional requirements.
Communicate technical strategy and engineering solutions effectively to diverse stakeholders, including executives and business units.
Mentor and coach senior engineers and engineering managers, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning through brown bags, tech talks, and one-on-one sessions.
Implement rigorous application development, testing, deployment, and monitoring practices to uphold architectural excellence and reliability standards.
Adhere to Visa’s Leadership Principles by promoting collaboration, acting as owner, and executing with excellence.