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Ascension · 19 minutes ago

Sr. Director, Software Engineering

United States

Full-time

Remote

Director/Executive

$146K/yr - $248K/yr

15+ years exp

Ascension is a leading non-profit, faith-based national health system dedicated to transforming healthcare. The Sr. Director of Software Engineering will lead engineering delivery across multiple digital products, driving operational excellence and the adoption of AI-enabled capabilities while ensuring high-quality technical delivery.

CharityHealth CareHospitalNon Profit

H1B Sponsor Likely

Responsibilities

Lead engineering teams for multiple strategic digital products, accountable for planning, delivery, quality, reliability, and operations

Partner closely with Product, Experience, Architecture, Data, Security, and Program leadership to drive outcomes, roadmaps, and release timelines

Own technical design decisions, including functional and non-functional requirements such as scalability, security, performance, and resiliency

Communicate engineering and AI vision, strategy, delivery plans, and progress to executive and senior stakeholders

Define and execute the AI engineering strategy for digital products, aligned with Ascension’s enterprise AI, data, privacy, and security strategies

Lead the design, development, and productionization of AI-enabled solutions, leveraging: + Generative AI (LLMs, copilots, conversational interfaces) + Intelligent search, personalization, and recommendations + Workflow automation and decision support

Establish best practices for LLMOps, including model lifecycle management, prompt engineering, evaluation, monitoring, and retraining

Ensure responsible AI practices, including explainability, bias mitigation, data privacy, regulatory compliance (HIPAA, healthcare AI guidance), and human-in-the-loop controls

Evaluate and govern AI platforms, tools, and vendors (cloud AI services, open-source frameworks, model providers)

Lead by example in building high-quality, maintainable, secure, and performant systems using cloud-native and AI-enabled architectures

Drive shift-left practices across testing, security, observability, performance, and AI quality evaluation

Foster strong peer review, architecture review, and model review cultures

Champion reuse of shared platforms, APIs, data products, and AI components

Embed DevSecOps, Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, and automated quality gates across software and AI pipelines

Drive a strong SRE and production ownership mindset, including incident response, reliability engineering, and cost optimization

Implement metrics-driven product and AI health reporting (availability, latency, quality, model performance, cost, and adoption)

Contribute to Ascension GMDx–wide engineering and AI strategy, standards, frameworks, and reference architectures

Stay current with emerging trends in software engineering, AI, and healthcare technology, translating them into practical solutions

Promote experimentation, rapid prototyping, and data-informed decision making

Represent Ascension engineering in internal forums and external communities through presentations, demos, and knowledge sharing

Build, mentor, and grow high-performing teams of engineering leaders, software engineers, and AI engineers

Upskill teams in AI literacy, modern engineering practices, and responsible innovation

Drive a culture of curiosity, learning, inclusion, and continuous improvement

Manage budgets, forecasts, and vendor contracts, including AI platforms, tooling, and service providers

Evaluate build vs. buy decisions for AI and digital capabilities

Qualification

AI engineering strategyCloud-native architecturesScalable digital platformsDevSecOps practicesAI systems experienceHealthcare interoperability standardsObservability platformsModern software engineeringCommunicationTeam leadershipContinuous learnerCollaborative mindset

Required

High School diploma equivalency with 5 years of applicable cumulative job specific experience required, with 2 of those years being in leadership/management OR Associate's degree/Bachelor's degree with 3 years of applicable cumulative job specific experience required, with 2 of those years being in leadership/management

Expertise in architecting and delivering scalable, highly available, consumer-facing digital platforms

Strong experience with AI systems, including model integration, inference services, vector databases, embeddings, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

Hands-on knowledge of AI and data platforms (e.g., GCP Vertex AI, Azure AI, OpenAI ecosystem, open-source ML frameworks)

Experience with modern search, integration, microservices, and data technologies (GraphQL/REST, Spring Boot, Cloud SQL, NoSQL)

Experience with observability platforms (e.g., Dynatrace, Datadog) and AI/model monitoring

Cloud-native experience in GCP and/or Azure, including healthcare-specific services

Experience with experimentation, feature flags, and A/B testing

Strong understanding of healthcare interoperability standards (FHIR, HL7) and regulations (HIPAA, Cures Act), especially as applied to AI

Deep computer science fundamentals and modern software engineering best practices across the full SDLC

Demonstrated experience leading large engineering organizations and complex transformations

15+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in senior engineering leadership roles

Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Benefits

Paid time off (PTO)

Various health insurance options & wellness plans

Retirement benefits including employer match plans

Long-term & short-term disability

Employee assistance programs (EAP)

Parental leave & adoption assistance

Tuition reimbursement

Ways to give back to your community

Company

Ascension

Glassdoor3.4

Answering God's call to bring health, healing and hope to all.

Founded in 1999

St Louis, Missouri, USA

10001+ employees

https://healthcare.ascension.org

H1B Sponsorship

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