# Director, Engineering Excellence & Enablement

**Company:** [Shield AI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/shield-ai)
**Location:** Washington, DC
**Role:** Technical Program Management
**Salary:** $210k – $320k/yr
**Experience:** 10+ years
**Skills:** engineering leadership, Technical Program Management, engineering operations, agile development, DevOps, engineering metrics, cross-functional initiatives, operating models, governance, developer productivity, ai enablement, organizational scaling
**Posted:** 2026-07-22

> Strategic leader reporting to VP Engineering who builds engineering operating systems, drives excellence initiatives, establishes execution cadences, and leads cross-functional programs to improve productivity, predictability, and organizational maturity in an Aerospace & Defense technology environment. Requires 10+ years leadership experience influencing without authority.

## Job Description

## What you'll do

### Engineering Strategy & Organizational Enablement
- Partner with the VP of Engineering to translate business and product strategy into engineering capabilities, operating models, and execution plans.
- Develop and evolve the engineering operating system, including planning processes, governance, decision-making frameworks, and organizational rhythms.
- Identify capability gaps and recommend investments in people, processes, tooling, and organizational structure.

### Engineering Excellence
- Define and drive engineering excellence initiatives focused on developer productivity, quality, reliability, operational maturity, and continuous improvement.
- Establish engineering effectiveness metrics and dashboards that provide visibility into organizational health, delivery performance, and engineering productivity.
- Champion adoption of modern engineering practices, standards, and continuous improvement methodologies.

### Operational Cadence & Execution
- Establish and facilitate consistent engineering operating cadences including strategic planning, quarterly planning, roadmap reviews, engineering leadership meetings, business reviews, and operational retrospectives/after-action reviews.
- Drive accountability for execution across engineering leadership while identifying and resolving organizational bottlenecks.
- Improve planning accuracy, prioritization, dependency management, and execution predictability.

### Enterprise Engineering Initiatives
- Lead complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives that span multiple teams and organizations.
- Drive strategic programs such as AI enablement, developer experience improvements, technical governance, and organizational scaling initiatives.
- Coordinate executive communications, status reporting, risk management, and stakeholder engagement for enterprise programs.

### Organizational Effectiveness
- Partner with engineering leaders to improve organizational health, team effectiveness, and leadership maturity.
- Standardize engineering processes where appropriate while preserving team autonomy.
- Foster a culture of operational excellence, continuous learning, and data-informed decision making.

## Required qualifications
- 10+ years of engineering leadership, technical program management, engineering operations, or related experience.
- Demonstrated success leading large-scale cross-functional initiatives in complex technology organizations.
- Experience establishing engineering operating models, governance, planning processes, and execution frameworks.
- Strong understanding of modern software engineering organizations, Agile development, DevOps, and engineering metrics in the Aerospace & Defense industry.
- Proven ability to influence senior leaders without relying on direct authority.
- Exceptional communication, facilitation, organizational, and executive presentation skills.
- Strong analytical mindset with experience using data to drive organizational improvements.

## Preferred qualifications
- Experience partnering directly with VP or C-level technology executives.
- Experience scaling engineering organizations through periods of rapid growth or transformation.
- Familiarity with developer productivity and organizational effectiveness measurement.

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