Director of Software Engineering (Federal Health)

About the role

Commence is seeking a hands‑on Director of Software Engineering to lead multiple engineering teams building federal health IT and commercial healthcare platforms. The role oversees engineering execution, technical quality, and team health while staying close to technology to make architectural decisions.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and develop a multi‑team organization across platform development, program build, production support, and applied AI, including hiring, coaching, and performance management.
• Own delivery outcomes for the platform portfolio, managing velocity, quality, technical debt, and balancing roadmap work with program commitments.
• Refine and enforce engineering standards (SDLC, code review, testing, release management, secure development, documentation).
• Operate capacity and allocation models across work modes, protecting roadmap capacity while meeting program and support demand.
• Partner with Technical Delivery, Technical Product, Lead Software Architect, and Chief Architect on resource allocation, roadmap sequencing, and platform design direction.
• Drive continuous improvement using delivery metrics and champion configuration over customization.
• Collaborate with DevSecOps, Infrastructure, and Security to meet ATO, FISMA, and other compliance obligations.

Required profile

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading engineering teams and at least 2 years managing managers or team leads.
• Proven ability to lead organizations of 15+ engineers across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Hands‑on experience with modern cloud‑native application development and ability to review designs and make architectural trade‑offs.
• Experience operating in regulated environments with formal security and compliance requirements.
• Excellent communication skills, able to explain engineering trade‑offs to non‑technical executives.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Ability to obtain and maintain a public‑trust government clearance and residence in the United States for at least three of the past five years.

Required skills

• Cloud‑native platforms (AWS, Azure, or equivalent)
• Agile/SAFe delivery methodologies
• Atlassian Jira and Confluence
• Federal compliance frameworks (FISMA, IL4+, CMMC)
• Healthcare data standards (HL7 FHIR, X12, ICD‑10, CPT)
• Multi‑tenant SaaS or configurable platform architecture
• Applied AI/ML within enterprise architectures