Highlights for Children · 2 hours ago
Director, Software Engineering
Columbus, OH, US
Full-time
Hybrid
Director/Executive
10+ years expHighlights for Children is seeking a Director of Software Engineering who will be responsible for end-to-end digital delivery and reliability. This role oversees software engineering, DevOps, platform operations, quality engineering, user experience design, and business analysis to ensure high-quality digital solutions.
AssociationCommunitiesEducationLifestyleNewsPublishing
Responsibilities
Translate business and digital strategy into clear delivery priorities, roadmaps, and execution plans
Ensure alignment between business intent, user experience, technical execution, quality, and operational outcomes
Partner with Product, Digital, Marketing, and business leaders to prioritize initiatives and manage trade-offs
Serve as the escalation point for cross-functional delivery, automation, and operational risks
Own delivery outcomes for customer-facing digital platforms
Lead engineering teams to deliver scalable, secure, and maintainable software solutions
Establish and enforce engineering standards, architectural guardrails, and modern development practices
Promote automation-first development practices to reduce manual effort and rework
Leverage generative AI–assisted tools to improve developer productivity, code quality, documentation, and refactoring—within defined security and quality guardrails
Ensure strong collaboration between engineering, UX, QA, BA, and DevOps to accelerate delivery
Own accountability for CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, environments, and release practices
Ensure platforms meet standards for reliability, availability, performance, scalability, and security
Promote shared ownership of production outcomes across delivery teams
Leverage automation and AI-enabled tooling to reduce operational toil, improve release readiness, and surface risks earlier
Use operational metrics (availability, incident trends, deployment frequency) to drive continuous improvement
Partner with Infrastructure and Security teams to ensure operability and compliance
Ensure business needs are clearly articulated, prioritized, and translated into actionable requirements and acceptance criteria
Establish standards for requirements quality, clarity, and traceability
Leverage generative AI and automation to assist with requirements drafting, analysis, validation, and documentation—freeing analysts to focus on stakeholder engagement and decision-making
Partner with Product and business stakeholders to focus analysis on outcomes and value, not documentation volume
Ensure business analysis supports discovery, solutioning, and delivery throughout the lifecycle
Own accountability for the quality, consistency, and accessibility of user experience across digital platforms
Ensure UX/UI design is grounded in user needs, brand standards, and accessibility best practices
Promote early design involvement in discovery and solutioning
Leverage AI-assisted design and research tools to accelerate ideation, prototyping, usability analysis, and design iteration—while preserving human judgment and creativity
Balance usability, feasibility, performance, and delivery constraints in collaboration with engineering and DevOps
Own the overall quality strategy, including test automation, performance testing, security testing, and release readiness
Drive increased use of automated testing across unit, integration, and end-to-end levels
Leverage AI- and generative AI–assisted tools to accelerate test creation, maintenance, and defect detection
Reduce reliance on manual regression testing through automation and intelligent tooling
Ensure quality is embedded throughout the delivery lifecycle rather than treated as a downstream activity
Use quality and automation metrics to drive continuous improvement and release confidence
Own Agile delivery health, release planning, dependency management, and risk mitigation
Establish and monitor KPIs related to delivery predictability, quality, automation coverage, and operational performance
Balance delivery speed with operational risk and long-term sustainability
Identify and implement opportunities to use automation and AI to improve efficiency, reduce rework, and free capacity for innovation and roadmap execution
Lead multidisciplinary teams including engineers, DevOps professionals, QA, UX/UI designers, and business analysts
Recruit, develop, and retain high-performing digital delivery talent
Coach functional and technical leaders to operate with strong decision-making authority and accountability
Build a culture that embraces automation, continuous learning, and responsible AI use
Develop future leaders across engineering, DevOps, quality, design, and analysis disciplines
Qualification
Required
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Design, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
10+ years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, or digital delivery roles
7+ years of leadership experience managing senior professionals and cross-functional teams
Experience operating in complex, customer-facing digital environments
Understanding of Customer Journey and data to collect and monitor
5+ years' experience working in an e-com business
Preferred
3+ years working in a subscription business
Company
Highlights for Children
An American children's magazine who's motto is "Fun with a Purpose."
201-500 employees
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageLeadership Team
Nick Bryant
Sr. Director Marketing - Subscription Business
Recent News
Morningstar.com
2025-07-10
Company data provided by crunchbase