Director, Engineering Excellence
We are seeking a Director of Engineering Excellence to lead a high-impact organization responsible for defining the engineering standards, best practices, and processes that span across core software development, quality engineering, agile methodologies, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). This role will manage a team of multi-disciplined domain experts and collaborate closely with R&D leadership across seven product lines to drive engineering transformation initiatives that elevate the quality, reliability, and scalability of our products.
This position requires a leader with a proven ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive change across a diverse and fast-paced engineering organization. The ideal candidate will bring a strong engineering background with experience in modern SDLC practices, agile software delivery, quality engineering, SRE, and/or CI/CD automation.
Key Responsibilities
Engineering Standards and Best Practices
- Define and implement engineering standards, processes, and best practices across software development, quality, SRE, and agile methodologies.
- Establish and promote frameworks for scalable, maintainable, and high-quality software development.
- Develop and maintain guidelines for CI/CD pipelines, test automation, and monitoring to ensure consistent delivery across all product lines.
- Drive the adoption of modern SDLC processes, ensuring teams are aligned and operating
efficiently.
Leadership and Team Management
- Lead and develop a team of domain experts across software development, QA, SRE, and agile delivery.
- Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement within the Engineering Excellence organization.
- Mentor and guide engineering managers and technical leaders across teams, ensuring alignment with engineering transformation goals.
Collaboration with R&D Leadership
- Partner closely with R&D leadership across seven product lines to influence and align on engineering transformation initiatives.
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior leaders on engineering standards and processes, enabling high-quality and reliable product delivery.
- Drive cross-product collaboration to ensure consistency and knowledge-sharing across teams.
Engineering Transformation Initiatives
- Lead and execute transformational engineering initiatives to improve development velocity, quality, and reliability across Arctic Wolf’s engineering organization.
- Identify and address gaps in engineering processes and tooling to improve efficiency and reduce technical debt.
- Advocate for and implement agile methodologies to enhance team efficiency, delivery, and collaboration.
Certified Engineering Toolchain and Automation
- Advocate for and drive a standardized engineering tooling ecosystem that supports software development, quality engineering, SRE, and agile delivery.
- Drive the adoption of certified engineering development, quality, and SRE tool
- chain across all product lines to streamline workflows and enhance operational efficiency.
- Ensure observability and monitoring tools are in place to meet SRE and reliability standards.
Metrics and Continuous Improvement
- Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure engineering excellence across targeted focus areas.
- Use data-driven insights to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement, driving iterative enhancements.
- Lead initiatives to reduce technical debt, improve development velocity, and enhance system reliability.
About You
- 10-15 years of engineering management experience, with a proven track record of leading and scaling engineering teams.
- Strong understanding of modern SDLC practices, including agile delivery, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps principles.
- Expertise in software development, quality engineering, and SRE practices.
- Demonstrated ability to influence cross-functional teams and drive change across a diverse engineering organization.
- Exposure and/or experience with engineering tooling for development, testing, monitoring, and automation (e.g., GitHub, Jenkins, Selenium, Prometheus, Grafana, Jira, etc.).
- Solid understanding of agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, and/or SAFe frameworks.
- Proven leadership in driving engineering or transformation initiatives at scale.
- BS or Masters in Computer Science or Engineering.
- Experience working in a multi-product or multi-line organization, collaborating across diverse teams and stakeholders.
- Knowledge of cloud-native architectures, microservices, and containerization technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker).
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence at all levels of the organization.
- Experience working with product management balancing feature delivery with engineering initiatives.
- Familiarity with security operations or cybersecurity products is a plus.