Director of Software Engineering & AI Innovation | Hybrid | Reston, VA

About the job

About Ellucian

Ellucian powers innovation for higher education, partnering with approximately 3,000 customers across 50 countries, serving more than 21 million students. Ellucian's AI-powered platform, trained on the richest dataset available in higher education, drives efficiency, personalized experiences, and strengthened engagement for all students, faculty and staff. Fueled by decades of experience with a singular focus on the unique needs of learning institutions, the Ellucian platform features best-in-class SaaS capabilities and delivers insights needed now and into the future. These solutions and services span the entire student lifecycle, including data-rich tools for student recruitment, enrollment, and retention to workforce analytics, fundraising, and alumni engagement. Ellucian's innovative solutions, vast ecosystem of partners and user community of more than 45,000 provides best practices leading to greater institutional success and achieving better student outcomes.

About the Opportunity

Ellucian is seeking a Director, Software Engineering & AI Innovation to lead high-performing engineering and customer-facing technical teams delivering innovative enterprise software solutions for higher education institutions.

In this role, you will shape engineering strategy, drive technical excellence, and lead the evolution toward scalable, cloud-based, and standardized solutions. You will oversee software engineering and customer-specific development and integration teams, balancing existing customer commitments with long-term platform modernization and product innovation.

Partnering with Product Management, Architecture, Professional Services, and Customer Success, you will drive measurable improvements in software quality, engineering productivity, delivery predictability, and customer outcomes.

The ideal candidate combines strong technical judgment, proven engineering leadership, and the ability to guide teams through technology transformation while building an organization positioned for future growth.

Where you will make an impact

Engineering and Technical Leadership

• Define and execute engineering strategy aligned with product priorities, customer needs, and Ellucian's long-term technology roadmap.

• Lead software engineering teams delivering secure, reliable, and scalable enterprise SaaS solutions.

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices, cloud-native architectures, APIs, DevSecOps, and automated testing to improve quality and delivery speed.

• Advance platform engineering capabilities, reusable components, and standardized integration patterns that reduce technical complexity and accelerate development.

• Partner with Product Management and Architecture to translate business priorities into technical roadmaps and sustainable product capabilities.

• Establish clear technical standards and architectural governance while reducing technical debt and improving platform performance and maintainability.

Customer Leadership and Consulting Excellence

• Lead customer-facing technical teams responsible for customer-specific development, enterprise integrations, and complex technical solutions.

• Ensure successful delivery of existing customer commitments while maintaining technical quality, delivery predictability, and customer satisfaction.

• Guide the transition from customer-specific development toward standardized, reusable, and product-aligned engineering solutions.

• Partner with Product Management and Architecture to identify recurring customer requirements and incorporate them into scalable product capabilities.

• Establish reusable integration frameworks, automation accelerators, and technical delivery standards that reduce implementation complexity and improve customer outcomes.

• Serve as a senior technical escalation point for complex customer challenges, delivery risks, and critical integration issues.

Operational Excellence and Business Impact

• Establish outcome-driven engineering metrics that improve software quality, delivery speed, platform reliability, and developer productivity.

• Drive measurable improvements in engineering performance using indicators such as delivery cycle time, deployment frequency, defect trends, and service reliability.

• Balance engineering investments, resource allocation, and capacity planning across product development, customer commitments, and modernization priorities.

• Partner with Professional Services leadership to manage consulting capacity, delivery performance, and resource utilization while supporting the evolving delivery model.

• Improve operational efficiency through engineering automation, standardized processes, reusable solutions, and effective technical governance.

• Translate engineering performance and technology investments into measurable business outcomes, including faster delivery, reduced technical complexity, improved customer satisfaction, and operational scalability.

AI and Engineering Innovation

• Lead responsible adoption of AI-assisted software development, intelligent code analysis, automated testing, and engineering workflow automation.

• Establish practical measures to evaluate AI-driven improvements in developer productivity, software quality, and delivery efficiency.

• Partner with technical leaders to identify opportunities for AI-enabled engineering capabilities and reusable automation across development and integration workflows.

• Ensure AI-assisted engineering practices incorporate appropriate security, data protection, quality validation, and human oversight.

• Foster experimentation with emerging technologies while prioritizing measurable business value, technical sustainability, and customer impact.

Talent Development and Organizational Evolution

• Build, lead, and develop high-performing engineering managers, software engineers, technical leads, and customer-facing technical consultants.

• Guide teams through evolving engineering and delivery models, building capabilities aligned with cloud technologies, platform engineering, automation, and modern integration practices.

• Develop engineering leaders through coaching, performance management, succession planning, and clear accountability for technical and business outcomes.

• Strengthen collaboration between product engineering and customer-facing teams to accelerate knowledge sharing, innovation, and reusable solution development.

• Foster an inclusive, accountable, and collaborative engineering environment that encourages continuous learning, technical ownership, and high performance.

• Lead organizational change effectively while maintaining team engagement, delivery continuity, and customer confidence.

What you will bring

• Demonstrated experience leading multiple software engineering teams, including engineering managers, technical leaders, and customer-facing technical delivery teams.

• Strong background in enterprise software engineering, SaaS platforms, cloud technologies, and complex systems integration.

• Proven ability to define engineering strategy, establish technical direction, and deliver measurable improvements in software quality, productivity, and operational performance.

• Experience managing customer-specific software development, enterprise integrations, and complex technical delivery commitments.

• Demonstrated success modernizing engineering practices, adopting reusable architectures, and reducing dependency on custom development.

• Strong understanding of software architecture, cloud-native development, APIs, integration frameworks, DevSecOps, and automated software delivery.

• Experience with enterprise ERP, SIS, CRM, or similarly complex business application environments.

• Ability to lead technology transformation and organizational change while balancing existing customer commitments with future engineering priorities.

• Experience managing engineering capacity, resource allocation, delivery performance, and competing business priorities.

• Practical understanding of AI-assisted software development, engineering automation, and responsible adoption of emerging technologies.

• Strong business acumen and the ability to connect engineering investments and technical decisions to customer value and measurable business outcomes.

• Proven ability to develop engineering leaders, build collaborative teams, and foster technical excellence across distributed organizations.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, including the ability to influence technical and business leaders and navigate complex customer challenges.

What makes #Ellucianlife

• Comprehensive health coverage: medical, dental, and vision

• Flexible time off

• Thrive Flex Lifestyle Account (LSA) that allows you to contribute towards your health, financial or learning interests

• 401k w/ match & BrightPlan - to help you save for the future

• Parental Leave

• 5 charitable days to support the community that supports us

• Telemedicine

• Wellness

• Headspace Care (mental health)

• Wellbeats (virtual fitness classes)

• RethinkCare & Wellthy– caregiver support

• Diversity and inclusion programs which provide access to internal employee resource groups

• Employee referral bonuses to encourage the addition of great new people to the team

• We Foster a learning culture with:

• Education Assistance Program

• Professional development opportunities

• LinkedIn Learning

#LI-JG1 #LI-Hybrid