Senior Director of Software Engineering

hackajob is collaborating with Optum to connect them with exceptional tech professionals for this role. Senior Director of Software Engineering The Senior Director of Software Engineering is tasked with providing strategic leadership and direction to large-scale, cross-functional technology teams while championing innovation and collaboration across the OPEN organization. This role involves overseeing the development lifecycle of high-impact product solutions, ensuring technical excellence, scalability, and operational efficiency. Key responsibilities include shaping engineering design and culture, driving AI strategy to unlock customer and operational value, and aligning technical strategies with broader business goals. The director fosters close partnerships across business units, advocates for cross-functional collaboration, and ensures robust stakeholder management practices. Talent development is a cornerstone of this role, requiring the creation of growth-oriented plans, including recruitment and mentorship, to build a high-performing team. Additionally, the position demands a focus on operational excellence, integrating modern technologies like cloud-native design, DevOps, and infrastructure automation to deliver reliable and cost-effective solutions. Reporting to VP of Technology for OPEN team, this senior role plays a critical part in ensuring seamless product launches, influencing business outcomes, and maintaining transparency and trust between technical and business leadership. Primary Responsibilities

• Provide visionary leadership and direction for the end-to-end development life cycle of a portfolio of high-impact, complex product solutions that deliver significant value to the organization.
• Serve as a seasoned and trusted leader, directly responsible for shaping engineering organization design and driving a product engineering culture grounded in innovation, technical excellence, and accountability for outcomes.
• Lead large-scale, cross-functional technology teams across multiple disciplines, overseeing design, development, testing, integration, deployment, and ongoing support and maintenance to ensure delivery of robust, scalable, and high-quality products.
• Champion close partnership and collaboration with peer OPEN leaders (Product Management, Architecture, Engineering and Portfolio), Business partners and other cross Enterprise teams (e.g. security, analytics, technology, legal, compliance, AI, etc.) to define, prioritize, and execute product roadmaps and technical strategies that advance both business and technology goals.
• Drive the evolution and execution of an AI and innovation strategy aimed at improving customer value, operational efficiencies, and future-ready digital capabilities.
• Support Director of Architecture in early-stage ideation, technical governance, technical architecture discussions, recommending optimal solutions and innovative approaches while ensuring technical feasibility, scalability, and maintainability.
• Foster strong stakeholder management practices, ensuring transparent communication, trust, and alignment between technology teams and senior business leadership.
• Serve as a thought leader and advocate for the benefits of enterprise-wide collaboration, ensuring cohesive engagement across engineering, data, product, and business functions.
• Lead the creation and execution of talent development plans, including coaching, mentoring, and career pathing to build a high-performing, engaged, and growth-oriented engineering organization.
• Establish and drive operational excellence, ensuring the reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency of production services and solutions.
• Take a hands-on role in recruitment, selection, and retention strategies to attract top-tier technical talent and thought leaders into the organization.
• Provide executive-level guidance for product launches and customer adoption initiatives, ensuring technology alignment with market and business demands.

Qualifications Required:

• Proven, extensive leadership experience in building and leading world-class software and product engineering teams with a track record of driving measurable business impact.
• Ability to manage transformation processes
• Deep expertise in product engineering, agile delivery practices, and modern software development methodologies with strong focus on quality, scalability, and performance.
• Demonstrated excellence in stakeholder management, with ability to influence and align cross-functional and senior leadership teams toward shared outcomes.
• Passion for innovation, with strong experience developing and implementing AI strategies that unlock value and efficiency across product portfolios.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect technical strategies to business outcomes and market dynamics.
• Expertise in back-end technology stacks (Java, Spring Boot, REST API development) as well as modern data platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP, Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, etc.).
• Practical experience implementing DevOps, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, and cloud-native design principles at scale.
• Skilled in building and sustaining collaborative cultures that bridge engineering, product, business, and enterprise technology teams.
• Exceptional communication skills, able to engage, inspire, and drive consensus across all organizational levels.

Preferred

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.
• Prior experience leading technology initiatives in healthcare, digital health platforms, or other regulated industries.
• Demonstrated success in evangelizing and embedding AI-driven solutions into core product and business strategies.
• Recognized champion of enterprise collaboration with a reputation for building trust-based relationships across business and technical teams.
• Familiarity with open-source platforms and tools, as well as agile, lean, and evidence-based engineering practices.