Engineering Director - Digital Services (0932)

City and County of San Francisco•San Francisco, CA

13h

About The Position

Our goal is to become the source of standards and platforms that allow the City to make services for residents accessible online. This will be achieved through training, support, standardization, shared platforms, and citywide policies. We aim to make platforms the easiest, fastest, most accessible, and most cost-effective way to deliver services to ensure that platforms not only meet the needs of San Franciscans, but also make City staff’s work easier. You will join the team at a pivotal moment when we face big questions raised by the increasing power of generative AI. As a small software team serving a huge city, we are excited by the opportunity to use AI tools that scale our impact. As the stewards of the city’s service-delivery platforms, we see lots of potential to improve resident experience. At the same time, we also take seriously our responsibility to introduce new technology in ways that earn the public trust. As we enter this new phase, the Engineering Director will play a crucial role as part of the Chief Digital Services Officer’s senior leadership team.

Requirements

Education: Possession of a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university
Experience: Five (5) years of professional experience in developing mission-critical software, of which 3 years must include experience supervising professionals
Substitution: Additional experience as described may be substituted for the required degree on a year-for-year basis. One (1) year is equivalent to thirty (30) semester units/forty-five (45) quarter units.

Nice To Haves

Extensive experience developing software products for government agencies or other regulated environments
Recent experience leading private industry software teams
Thoughtful perspective on AI coding and implementation, based on direct experience
Experience managing engineers across multiple projects
Experience managing engineering managers
Experience with iterative, user-centered product development
Experience as part of cross-disciplinary teams
Strong communication skills – articulate, clear, and transparent
Experience teaching and leading development of modern engineering practice

Responsibilities

Oversees ongoing development, technical quality, and reliability of SF.gov , its integrations, DAHLIA (the City’s affordable housing portal), 40+ independent permit and grant applications, and supporting infrastructure.
Guides the team’s adoption of AI and other emerging technologies, identifying high-impact use cases beyond traditional solutions like chatbots.
Serves as a resource for engineering best practices and evaluating technical proposals from vendors and internal teams.
Acts as a Citywide example of modern engineering leadership and a national model for government technology practice.
Supports Citywide hiring of modern engineering disciplines, collaborating with DHR, DT, and other technical teams to update technical classifications.
Influences technology policy through participation in COIT subcommittees and other strategic bodies.
Supervises and mentors a team of 15+ Engineers, including Engineering Managers
Assigns projects to engineers, leads recruiting and selection processes for engineering positions, fosters career growth through mentoring, actionable feedback, and coaching a team with a wide range of levels and backgrounds approaches
Builds and supports an inclusive, high-performing team culture that values diverse perspectives and approaches
Participates in budget development by providing clear justification for staffing, proposals, or initiatives
Ensures that the Engineering team’s software, contracting, and cloud budgets are used appropriately and provides the CDSO early warning and practical options to mitigate potential cost overruns
Defines and maintains technical standards and best practices for the Digital Services team, expanding these standards citywide
Ensures quality of engineering work by implementing appropriate testing, code review and pairing practices, and identifying training needs.
Oversees development of appropriate technical architecture for services
Collaborates with the DS engineering team to establish infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and socio-technical practices that improve the team’s ability to deliver reliable & useful software
In collaboration with the City’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) develops policy for security and compliance of applications and ensure that policy is followed within Digital Services and shared/implemented citywide where appropriate
Analyzes potential technology builds for strategic importance and makes recommendations for engagement, architecture, and success criteria
Makes procurement recommendations and help develop technology procurement expertise in partner departments
Presents regularly to committees, division heads, and partner department heads and CIOs, as assigned
Collaborates with CCSF technical leaders to shape a Citywide architectural vision and modern tech stack, Partners with other technical teams within SF City Government including large department technology teams plus DataSF and the Department of Technology’s Cloud, Network, Cybersecurity, and Emerging Tech teams.
Collaborates with the Delivery Director to scope partnership engagements and identify technical opportunities
Collaborates with technical teams in state and federal governments as appropriate
Establishes and leads a Community of Practice for modern engineering within City Government
Works with domain experts and other staff to make architectural decisions
Helps stakeholders understand when the problem is service or program design, not software