First American Financial Group, Inc. · 1 month ago
Director of Application Engineering
Santa Ana, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$192K/yr - $257K/yr
10+ years expFirst American Financial Corporation is a company that values its people and is dedicated to creating an inclusive work environment. The Director of Application Engineering will provide strategic leadership over application engineering and modernization functions, overseeing teams responsible for sustaining and modernizing applications while ensuring operational excellence and collaboration across departments.
Customer ServiceFinancial ServicesLending
Responsibilities
Define and execute the application sustainment and modernization strategy for 200-250 enterprise and proprietary apps in AWS
Partner with Platform and Operations Directors to align build vs. run ownership models and drive automation-based efficiency gains
Develop and manage quarterly objectives (OKRs) for application engineering aligned to Sentinels’ cost, compliance, and availability targets
Lead engineering participation in app intake, migration readiness, and sustainment transitions
Represent application development at enterprise governance and audit reviews
Lead engineering managers and developers embedded within sustainment and modernization pods
Oversee CI/CD pipelines, version control, and secure deployment frameworks (GitHub Actions, Terraform, Liquibase, etc.)
Drive codebase quality and standardization across legacy and modern app stacks (AngularJS, ReactJS, Python, .NET, C#, COTS customizations, etc.)
Champion reusable modules, IaC patterns, and modernization accelerators (containerization, API gateways, etc.)
Maintain alignment to compliance control library (e.g., code signing, vulnerability scanning, TLS 1.2+)
Partner with the Platform Director on Terraform/IaC integration, AWS architecture, and patch readiness
Work with the Ops Director on incident triage, observability (Kibana/StatusCast/XMatters), and defect management
Collaborate with the Governance Director to ensure code and configuration audit readiness
Contribute to unified dashboards for executive metrics and SLA compliance reporting
Manage 3–4 Engineering Managers and 5–6 onshore application sustainment pods and partner closely with offshore leadership/teams
Establish technical mentorship programs and career paths for engineers and pod leads
Drive culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and automation-first mindset
Support upskilling to drive removal of application SMEs across the portfolio
Ensure incident and change management compliance with divisional tools and procedures
Develop the operational discipline and proactive resiliency strategy to ensure 99.9%+ application availability for sustained apps
Drive toil reduction initiatives across pods
Collaborate on vulnerability remediation, library updates, and secure patching initiatives
Enforce deployment quality gates, rollback validation, and post-release health checks
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline (Master's preferred)
10+ years of experience leading application development, sustainment, or DevOps teams in enterprise-scale environments
Proven leadership in hybrid cloud (preferably AWS) environments
Strong experience with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Liquibase) and modern development practices (IaC, containers, microservices)
Solid understanding of ITIL-based service management, incident/change/release processes, and SLAs
Demonstrated success managing hybrid teams (U.S. + offshore) with high performance and collaboration
Excellent communication and stakeholder management across technical and business functions
Preferred
Experience leading teams within a Managed Service Provider or internal shared service model
Hands-on familiarity with legacy modernization (e.g., .NET, SQL Server migrations to AWS RDS, containerization)
Knowledge of security and compliance frameworks (SOX, SOC2, NIST, CIS benchmarks)
Background in application cost optimization and TCO reduction initiatives
Exposure to governance tools (ServiceNow, SailPoint, CMDB, Security Hub)
Benefits
Medical
Dental
Vision
401k
PTO/paid sick leave
Employee stock purchase plan
Company
First American Financial Group, Inc.
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2-10 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Early StageRecent News
Orange County Business Journal
2025-04-18
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