Director of Software Engineering

Quick Facts

• Role: Director of Software Engineering

• Focus: Fifth Third Direct replatforming and modernization for commercial digital banking

Description

Own the engineering strategy and multi-year modernization roadmap for a primary digital entry point for commercial clients. Lead phased modernization from discovery and architecture through implementation, production readiness, adoption, migration, and legacy retirement—transforming legacy capabilities into modular, cloud-native solutions. Partner across Product, Architecture, Operations, Risk, Security, Data, and other technology groups to deliver secure, scalable, and reliable client experiences.

Responsibilities

• Lead engineering for Fifth Third Direct replatforming and modernization

• Modernize the commercial digital experience by reducing client friction and improving workflows and consistency

• Decompose tightly coupled legacy applications into modular components (front-end, back-end, APIs, shared services)

• Define cloud-native hosting strategies, promoting containerization, automation, scalability, resilience, security, and efficient cloud/enterprise platform use

• Operate today while building the replacement; maintain stability, security, and delivery commitments while sequencing migrations and legacy retirement

• Design end-to-end commercial client journeys across onboarding, navigation, entitlements, servicing, transactions, approvals, reporting, support, and channel transitions

• Lead engineering for high-volume digital channels with demanding availability, performance, reliability, security, and scalability needs

• Coordinate enterprise modernization dependencies across products, shared services, data platforms, security capabilities, and related enterprise programs

• Enable reusable commercial banking capabilities via shared services and platform components

• Establish production-readiness expectations (observability, performance/capacity, resiliency, support procedures, incident response, recovery, release controls, operational ownership)

• Manage outcomes using engineering, product, and client measures (delivery predictability, availability, performance, defects, flow efficiency, adoption, satisfaction, legacy reduction)

• Identify organizational gaps and remove impediments across cross-team dependencies

• Lead engineering craft by setting standards, strengthening technical leadership, and influencing engineering direction

• Coach and develop engineering managers and contributors; hire and build teams using appropriate delivery models

Requirements

• 8-12 years progressive software engineering experience with significant people leadership and accountability

• Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience)

• Demonstrated success modernizing large, customer-facing legacy platforms while maintaining production commitments

• Deep experience decomposing monolithic applications into modular front-end, back-end, API, event-driven, and shared-service components

• Strong understanding of containerized and cloud-native engineering, including orchestration, automated infrastructure, CI/CD, secure development, observability, resilience, and production operations

• Experience defining hosting and migration strategies across user interfaces, services, integrations, and data components, including hybrid environments

• Experience leading high-volume digital platforms with demanding availability, performance, security, and scalability requirements

• Experience leading multi-team programs with cross-functional dependencies and translating complex technical information into clear decisions

• Strong working knowledge of authentication, authorization, entitlements, security, privacy, fraud, risk, and control considerations

• Ability to shape roadmaps, sequence migration/retirement, manage technical debt, and make tradeoffs across outcomes, risk, cost, capacity, and time

• Proven ability to coach leaders, grow technical talent, build succession, and create accountability

Benefits

• Total Rewards with comprehensive benefits and differentiated compensation; eligibility for an incentive compensation plan

• Benefits programs supporting physical, financial, emotional, and social well-being