Associate Director, Product Software Engineering

We are hiring an Associate Director, Product Software Engineering to lead multiple engineering teams responsible for building, modernizing, and operating business-critical customer and internal applications across FCC CLC. This leader will translate product and business priorities into executable engineering strategies, establish clear accountability for delivery and quality, and build durable teams capable of delivering measurable customer outcomes.

The role combines strategic leadership with strong technical judgment. The Associate Director will partner with Product Management, Architecture, Quality Engineering, UX, Operations, Security, and other technology leaders to guide initiatives from initial intent through specification, architecture, implementation, validation, deployment, and production operation. The leader will enforce Spec-Driven Development (SDD) and Agentic Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) practices to improve delivery speed, quality, traceability, and engineering effectiveness. The role will also build and lead AI engineering capability, including hiring, managing, coaching, and mentoring AI engineers responsible for agentic product workflows.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead multiple software engineering teams and establish clear goals, operating rhythms, ownership boundaries, and measurable outcomes.
• Translate portfolio strategy and product priorities into engineering roadmaps, staffing plans, delivery commitments, and technical investment decisions.
• Make critical decisions regarding prioritization, resource allocation, technical direction, delivery risk, and sequencing across concurrent initiatives.
• Build an engineering culture grounded in customer focus, accountability, psychological safety, technical excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Coach engineering managers, technical leads, AI engineers, and senior software engineers; strengthen succession plans and create opportunities for career growth.
• Hire, manage, coach, and mentor AI engineers, building the specialized skills and delivery practices needed to develop reliable agentic product capabilities.
• Enforce Spec-Driven Development (SDD) and Agentic Product Development Lifecycle (PDLC) practices, including reusable specifications, explicit acceptance criteria, evaluation strategies, and end-to-end traceability.
• Ensure architecture, security, privacy, accessibility, resilience, scalability, observability, and supportability are considered throughout the lifecycle.
• Ensure effective DevOps practices across CI/CD, IaC, hands-free deployments, telemetry, monitoring, and alerting, using DORA and operational metrics to drive delivery and production excellence.
• Establish quality as a shared accountability across engineering and quality functions, with appropriate automation, release criteria, and production validation.
• Improve engineering flow by identifying and removing systemic blockers, reducing avoidable handoffs, and strengthening cross-team dependency management.
• Use delivery, quality, reliability, customer, and engineering-effectiveness measures to identify trends and drive corrective action.
• Support production operations, incident response, root-cause analysis, and remediation of recurring reliability or quality issues.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. Master’s degree in a relevant technical or business discipline is preferred.

Required Experience / Skills:

• 10+ years of significant experience leading software engineering organizations responsible for enterprise or commercial software products.
• 1+ years of hands-on experience applying Agentic Product Development Lifecycle and Spec-Driven Development to product delivery.
• 1+ years of hands-on experience leading the development of agentic product workflows, including evaluation frameworks, context engineering, learning and feedback loops, end-to-end traceability, and architecture approaches that optimize token consumption and operating cost.
• Demonstrated experience hiring, managing, coaching, and mentoring AI engineers and building high-performing teams capable of delivering reliable AI-enabled product capabilities.
• Demonstrated experience managing managers or multiple engineering teams in a matrixed, globally distributed environment.
• Experience delivering and operating native, highly available, secure, and business-critical cloud software.
• Experience guiding modernization of legacy applications while sustaining production operations and customer commitments.
• Experience using metrics and evidence to improve delivery predictability, quality, reliability, and engineering effectiveness.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Strong people leadership, organizational design, coaching, conflict resolution, and talent-development capabilities.
• Strong technical judgment with the ability to challenge assumptions and facilitate sound architecture and engineering decisions.
• Ability to connect customer and business outcomes to technology strategy, delivery priorities, and investment choices.
• Executive-level communication and the ability to influence across Product, Engineering, Operations, Security, and business leadership.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity, establish structure, and make timely decisions using incomplete information.
• Commitment to inclusive leadership, use of AI, continuous learning, and responsible delivery.

Our Interview Practices

To maintain a fair and genuine hiring process, we kindly ask that all candidates participate in interviews without the assistance of AI tools or external prompts. Our interview process is designed to assess your individual skills, experiences, and communication style. We value authenticity and want to ensure we’re getting to know you—not a digital assistant. To help maintain this integrity, we ask to remove virtual backgrounds and include in-person interviews in our hiring process. Please note that use of AI-generated responses or third-party support during interviews will be grounds for disqualification from the recruitment process.

Applicants may be required to appear onsite at a Wolters Kluwer office as part of the recruitment process.

Compensation:

Compensation range listed is based on primary location of the position. Actual base salary offer is influenced by a wide array of factors including but not limited to skills, experience and actual hiring location. Your recruiter can share more information about the specific offer for the job location during the hiring process.

Additional Information:

Wolters Kluwer offers a wide variety of competitive benefits and programs to help meet your needs and balance your work and personal life, including but not limited to: Medical, Dental, & Vision Plans, 401(k), FSA/HSA, Commuter Benefits, Tuition Assistance Plan, Vacation and Sick Time, and Paid Parental Leave. Full details of our benefits are available upon request.