Director of Software Development
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
We are seeking a hands-on Director of Software Development to lead the design, development, and delivery of next-generation software products. This individual will combine strong technical expertise with leadership skills to implement agile processes, modernize architecture, and guide a small but high-impact development team toward predictable, scalable, and high-quality delivery.
You will play a pivotal role in shaping both the product and engineering culture - balancing execution with strategy. Initially, you'll contribute directly to the codebase, especially around architectural foundations, frameworks, and development standards., Leadership & Process
- Establish and lead agile development processes (Scrum/Kanban), implementing sprint planning, retrospectives, and velocity tracking.
- Define and enforce engineering best practices, including coding standards, peer reviews, documentation, and CI/CD integration.
- Mentor developers and foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and innovation.
- Partner closely with Product Management and Operations to translate business goals into technical plans and deliverables.
- Own the end-to-end SDLC and drive measurable improvements in quality, reliability, and time-to-market.
Technical Ownership
- Lead architectural and framework decisions across the stack (frontend, backend, APIs, database, integrations).
- Design and evolve scalable, maintainable, and secure application architectures.
- Contribute code to critical components, especially in early-stage architecture and core system design.
- Guide database schema design, performance optimization, and data integrity practices.
- Collaborate with DevOps to enhance CI/CD pipelines, cloud deployment automation, and environment consistency.
- Drive adoption of testing frameworks, unit testing, and automated QA pipelines.
Strategic Contribution
- Build and scale a high-performing team aligned with business growth and product strategy.
- Participate in long-term architectural planning and technology roadmap development.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and tools to improve productivity and maintain technical competitiveness.
- Partner with leadership on capacity planning, budgeting, and risk mitigation for ongoing and future initiatives.
Requirements
- 10+ years of professional software development experience, including 3+ years in a leadership role (Tech Lead, Architect, or Director).
- Proven experience designing and delivering full-stack web applications (front-end frameworks like Angular, React, or Vue + back-end such as Node.js, Python/FastAPI, .NET, or Java).
- Strong architectural, design, and database modeling skills (SQL and/or NoSQL).
- Demonstrated success implementing or maturing Agile processes within small to midsized teams.
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines, version control (Git), and deployment automation.
- Strong understanding of software quality practices including automated testing and code reviews.
- Excellent communication and leadership skills; ability to balance technical depth with business context.
Nice-to-Have Qualifications
- Experience with AWS cloud services (EC2, RDS, S3, CloudFront, ECS/EKS, etc.).
- Background in test automation frameworks (e.g., PyTest, Jest, Cypress, Selenium, or similar).
- Familiarity with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Experience with observability tools (Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, etc.).
- Prior SaaS, multi-tenant, or high-availability system experience.
Personal Attributes
- Pragmatic, execution-driven, and comfortable being "hands-on."
- Collaborative and able to mentor without micromanaging.
- Strong systems thinker - able to design for both current needs and future scalability.
- Passionate about improving process maturity, code quality, and team culture.
- Thrives in fast-paced environments with small, cross-functional teams.