Senior Director of Engineering

ABOUT THE ROLE The Campaign Finance Board (CFB) is seeking a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the engineering function behind New York City's public matching funds program, the Voter Guide, and campaign finance disclosure systems. This senior leadership role owns the multi-year technical roadmap, supervising software development, quality assurance, Salesforce engineering, and data engineering. The role involves turning around inconsistent engineering practices, managing technical debt, building a Salesforce engineering function from scratch, and eventually overseeing Infrastructure and Cybersecurity. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Build, supervise, and mentor a leadership team across engineering functions, establishing accountability and developing managerial capability. - Implement baseline people management practices including hiring, performance management, and retention strategies. - Foster an engineering culture prioritizing collaborative problem-solving, knowledge-sharing, and continuous improvement. - Expand knowledge and comfort with the software development lifecycle, agile processes, and product thinking in partnership with product leadership. - Set and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and develop a multi-year technical roadmap aligned with agency goals. - Establish, document, and enforce engineering standards including coding standards, branching strategy, security policies, and architecture reviews. - Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend adoption decisions appropriate to public-sector constraints. - Lead the agency's software development and quality assurance functions, owning the software development lifecycle, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines. - Own the technical implementation of AI use cases and evaluate model performance against capability, accuracy, latency, cost, and security. - Provide senior-level oversight of IT infrastructure and cybersecurity functions, ensuring alignment with citywide standards and leading disaster readiness planning. - Oversee data engineering build-and-operations, delivering secure, scalable data infrastructure and modern data architecture like data lakehouses and ETL/ELT pipelines. - Build an in-house Salesforce engineering function from the ground up, hire a Director of Salesforce Engineering, and establish procedures for bug fixes and enhancements. - Provide senior technical oversight of strategic technology vendors, holding them accountable for scope, quality, and delivery commitments. - Lead the agency's technical workforce development strategy, including reskilling programs and knowledge transfer from vendors to internal staff. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS 1. A bachelor's degree from an accredited college including or supplemented by at least twelve-semester credits in accounting, auditing, business or public administration, computer science, economics, finance, statistics, graphic design, personnel or human resources administration, user experience design, or a closely related area of study and one year of satisfactory full-time experience in a closely related field. 2. A four-year high school diploma or its educational equivalent and five years of experience as described in the first option. 3. Education and/or experience equivalent to the above options. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS - Preferred qualifications include a bachelor's degree in computer science or related field (master's preferred) and 15+ years of progressive software engineering experience with at least 5 years in leadership roles. - Hands-on experience with Python-based development, cloud-native architecture, and modern CI/CD tooling is preferred. - Experience modernizing legacy systems, managing technical debt, and public-sector or civic tech leadership experience is preferred. - New York City residency is generally required within 90 days of appointment. - No civil service exam is required for this position. SELECTION PROCESS Candidates with preferred qualifications will be given preference in the selection process. Only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted. HOW TO APPLY Apply via SmartRecruiters. Candidates are invited to provide a cover letter via the attachment or the Message to the Hiring Team field. EMPLOYMENT DETAILS - Position Type: Full-Time, Pending Classification-2, Manager - Department: Managerial - Category: Technology, Data & Innovation - Work Location: 100 Church St., N.Y. (Manhattan) - Benefits: Comprehensive city benefits. - Loan Forgiveness: Eligible for federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness and state repayment assistance programs. - EEO Statement: The City of New York is an inclusive equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse workforce and a discrimination-free environment.