Director of Software Engineering

VIDA is seeking a Director of Software Engineering to lead a high-performing engineering team responsible for core platform capabilities behind the VIDA Intelligence Platform, VIDA Biobank, and VIDA’s AI orchestration engine.

This is a player-coach role that combines people leadership, hands-on technical contribution, and strong project execution. The Director will develop engineers, improve delivery pace and predictability, guide architecture and implementation, and help the team turn technical vision into high-quality production software.

The role requires a leader who stays directly involved in the work through design reviews, code reviews, technical coaching, debugging support, and project leadership. A key focus will be helping VIDA scale AI-enabled workflow orchestration, algorithm execution, cloud services, data movement, monitoring, and production reliability.

As AI-assisted development changes how software is built, this leader will help the team use AI coding tools responsibly while reinforcing customer understanding, human ownership, code quality, validation, security, privacy, and maintainability.

Key Responsibilites

• Lead, coach, and develop software engineers and technical leads, strengthening technical judgment, ownership, communication, execution discipline, and software quality.
• Operate as a hands-on manager/practitioner who stays close to the work through architecture discussions, design reviews, code reviews, debugging support, and technical problem-solving.
• Lead critical engineering initiatives from scope through production, including planning, sequencing, dependency management, milestone tracking, risk management, cross-functional communication, and release readiness.
• Improve team pace, predictability, and accountability by strengthening prioritization, sprint execution, decision-making, acceptance criteria, validation planning, release checklists, and operational handoff.
• Guide implementation of VIDA’s AI orchestration and cloud platform capabilities, including algorithm execution, workflow coordination, scalable compute, data movement, monitoring, observability, and production reliability.
• Partner with Product, Architecture, QA, Security, Compliance, Data Science, Trial Operations, Data Delivery, and Customer Success to deliver business, customer, and regulated SaaS outcomes.
• Champion responsible AI-assisted development practices that improve productivity while reinforcing human ownership, problem understanding, secure coding, privacy boundaries, testing, maintainability, and quality controls.
• Balance speed and pragmatism with the expectations of a regulated SaaS environment, including security, compliance, auditability, reliability, and customer commitments., All VIDA employees expected to be flexible and have an entrepreneurial mindset. Other duties may be assigned as needed.

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience building cloud-native software systems.
• 5+ years leading, managing, or formally mentoring software engineers with accountability for team performance, delivery outcomes, and engineering quality.
• Proven ability to improve engineering team effectiveness through stronger planning, technical decision-making, project execution, delivery discipline, accountability, and stakeholder communication.
• Experience leading complex software initiatives from concept through production, including scope definition, dependency management, risk identification, status communication, validation, and release readiness.
• Experience with complex cloud-native platforms involving distributed services, workflow orchestration, AI/ML capabilities, data movement, scalable compute, high-volume processing, APIs, or algorithm/service integration.
• Strong technical judgment with the ability to review designs and code, guide implementation decisions, and coach engineers through difficult tradeoffs.
• Practical experience using AI-assisted development tools in professional software workflows, with an understanding of human review, testing, secure coding, privacy boundaries, dependency review, and maintainability expectations.
• Experience in small or growth-stage technology organizations where leaders balance coaching, execution, technical judgment, stakeholder communication, and hands-on problem solving., * Experience working with healthcare, medical imaging, DICOM, quantitative imaging, clinical research, or life sciences platforms.
• Experience building or supporting AI/ML workflow platforms, algorithm orchestration systems, model execution services, scalable compute platforms, or data-intensive SaaS platforms.
• Experience designing or operating event-driven pipelines, orchestration workflows, distributed storage systems, Lakehouse architectures, scalable microservices, APIs, or multi-tenant data access patterns.
• Familiarity with relevant cloud and platform technologies, including AWS, Kinesis, Kafka, Pub/Sub equivalents, queues, event buses, AWS Step Functions, Temporal, Airflow, S3, Delta Lake, Parquet, RDS, DynamoDB, observability tools, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, or cloud cost optimization.
• Experience operating in regulated, compliance-sensitive, security-conscious, or enterprise SaaS environments.
• Experience partnering cross-functionally with Product, QA, Security, Compliance, Data Science, Customer Success, and customer-facing operational teams.

VIDA is the global leader in AI-powered Biomarker Intelligence Solutions. We use secure, cloud-native medical imaging technology, advanced analytics, and AI to help life sciences organizations generate stronger imaging evidence, improve clinical trials, and accelerate therapy development.