Director of Technology - Engineering

The Director - Engineering is generally autonomous in their oversight and active management for a Technology program and/or practice area and most often reports directly to a Senior Director or Vice President

Essential Job Functions:

Directly manage and influence technology teams to deliver high-quality results across key disciplines including strategy, software development, operations, and engineering,

Technical Leadership

• Deep expertise in enterprise software architecture and server-side technologies with proven ability to set technical direction, make critical architectural decisions, and guide design and implementation of scalable, high-performance systems. Requires deep technical fluency in modern Java frameworks, RESTful and GraphQL APIs, microservices architectures, and event-driven systems, with experience across the full stack from API layer through data persistence to inform architectural decisions, conduct technical reviews, and establish engineering standards.
• Strong expertise in providing technical leadership for comprehensive data storage strategies across relational databases, NoSQL systems, and/or graph databases. Requires deep technical fluency to guide teams through data modeling decisions, evaluate architecture options, and deliver expert technical direction for implementing persistence solutions.

​Engineering Delivery & Execution

• Build and lead a high-performing engineering team capable of delivering complex software initiatives on time and within budget. Establish accountability structures, clear delivery commitments aligned to OKRs and foster a culture that balances fast-paced delivery timelines with engineering excellence and sustainable practices.
• Drive agile development practices focused on iterative delivery of measurable value against OKRs and strategic initiatives. Break down objectives into executable sprints with clear milestones, optimize delivery velocity and predictability, proactively manage risks, and hold teams accountable to committed timelines while maintaining quality standards.
• Establish rigorous quality gates, testing requirements, code review standards, and performance benchmarks to ensure all deliverables meet organizational standards. Manage technical debt proactively, ensure compliance with security controls and technology policies, and minimize production incidents through proactive quality and risk management practices.
• Direct engineering budget activities including cloud costs, tooling, and resource allocation—tracking spending against project budgets and identifying optimization opportunities.
• Partner with product management, architecture, and business stakeholders to align technical execution with strategic priorities. Provide transparent, data-driven reporting to senior leadership on initiative status, delivery metrics, budget utilization, risks, and progress toward OKRs with clear mitigation plans when needed.

Resource Management

• Recruit, interview, and hire top engineering talent with skills aligned to technical roadmap and delivery needs.
• Establish clear performance expectations tied to goals, conduct regular performance reviews with actionable feedback, and continuously assess team capabilities to identify skill gaps and training investments needed for current and future technical requirements.
• Foster a collaborative, high-performance engineering culture that embodies FINRA’s values, promotes knowledge sharing and mentorship across distributed teams, and creates an environment where engineers deliver their best work in support of FINRA’s mission.

Education/Experience Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline with at least ten (10) years of related experience, or equivalent training and / or work experience; Master’s degree and past Financial Services industry experience preferred.

• Minimum of 5 years of technical project, program and / or practice area oversight.

• Past experience influencing decisions and building conscience across internal and external partners

• Knowledge of business, technology and management principles involved in strategic planning, organizational change management, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership technique, and coordination of people and resources.

• Experience must include direct experience in one of the following areas: strategy, software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and / or compliance.

• Extensive knowledge of industry leading technology best practices including familiarity with technology methodologies including at least one of ISO-9000, ITIL, Agile and iterative.

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