Senior Director, Technology Engineering & Site Lead
Fortrea · Warsaw
Job Overview:
The Senior Director, Technology Engineering & Site Lead serves as the senior engineering leader for Fortrea's engineering organization, the primary Foundry leadership representative for the site, and a strategic partner to the Head of the Global Digital Foundry. This role is responsible for providing strategic and operational leadership across engineering teams, driving delivery excellence, organizational effectiveness, workforce strategy, technology execution, and engineering innovation aligned to enterprise priorities.
The incumbent partners closely with Product, Technology, Architecture, Data & AI, and business leaders to ensure the successful delivery of scalable, reliable, secure, and compliant technology solutions. This leader will help build and scale Fortrea's Global Digital Foundry by advancing modern software engineering capabilities, platform engineering, developer experience, AI-assisted engineering practices, shared services, and common delivery standards across the organization.
As a member of the Technology leadership team, the Senior Director contributes to technology strategy, organizational planning, engineering maturity, AI adoption across the software development lifecycle, engineering excellence, developer productivity, and capability development efforts that support Fortrea's digital transformation and business objectives.
Summary of Responsibilities:
Strategic Leadership
- Lead multiple engineering organizations within the Global Digital Foundry, ensuring alignment with enterprise technology and Foundry priorities.
- Translate business and technology objectives into actionable engineering strategies and delivery plans.
- Partner with senior Technology, Product, and business leaders to drive execution of critical initiatives and organizational goals.
- Contribute to long-term technology and workforce planning efforts that support organizational growth and scalability.
- Serve as the senior Foundry leader for the hub site, representing engineering interests in global leadership forums.
- Partner with the Head of the Global Digital Foundry to support engineering standards, reusable platforms, shared services, engineering governance, and common delivery practices across the organization.
- Contribute to technology strategy across Product Development & Engineering, including engineering maturity, innovation, AI adoption, developer productivity, and organizational scalability.
Engineering Delivery & Operational Excellence
- Lead engineering teams responsible for delivering scalable, reliable, and secure technology solutions that support business objectives.
- Lead the adoption and implementation of AI-assisted software engineering practices across the organization, including AI-enabled requirements analysis, software development, testing, quality engineering, documentation, and release management.
- Partner with Product, Data & AI, and Architecture teams to identify, prioritize, and operationalize AI capabilities that accelerate software delivery while maintaining regulatory compliance and engineering quality.
- Ensure the successful execution of engineering initiatives through effective governance, prioritization, resource allocation, and performance management.
- Establish and monitor key operational and delivery metrics to assess performance, identify risks, and drive continuous improvement.
- Promote engineering best practices, quality standards, operational excellence, and technology lifecycle management.
- Establish engineering standards, best practices, and governance across software engineering teams.
- Drive predictable and efficient delivery across multiple initiatives, balancing business priorities, capacity, and technical requirements.
- Champion Developer Experience initiatives that improve engineering productivity through automation, reusable frameworks, AI-assisted development, self-service platforms, CI/CD optimization, and engineering tooling.
- Drive engineering innovation by evaluating and adopting emerging technologies, AI capabilities, developer productivity tools, automation frameworks, and modern engineering practices.
People Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead, develop, and inspire a diverse organization through multiple levels of leadership.
- Create and execute talent strategies focused on workforce planning, capability development, succession planning, and employee engagement.
- Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, accountability, and continuous learning.
- Establish a culture of innovation that encourages experimentation, rapid prototyping, technical learning, and continuous improvement across engineering teams.
- Coach and develop leaders, ensuring strong leadership pipelines and organizational readiness.
- Mentor engineering leaders and strengthen leadership capability across the Poland site and broader Product Development & Engineering organization.
- Drive employee retention and engagement initiatives while creating an inclusive and high-performing work environment.
Capacity Planning & Resource Management
- Oversee organizational design, staffing strategies, and capacity planning activities to ensure alignment with current and future business needs.
- Monitor workforce utilization and resource allocation to optimize delivery effectiveness and operational efficiency.
- Partner with leadership teams to identify skill gaps and implement strategies to build critical engineering capabilities.
- Support budget planning and investment decisions related to engineering resources and organizational growth.
Stakeholder Management
- Build strong relationships with executive leaders, cross-functional stakeholders, and global technology partners.
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior leadership on engineering performance, talent strategy, and organizational effectiveness.
- Communicate organizational priorities, risks, and opportunities effectively to executive audiences.
- Foster collaboration across geographically distributed teams and global delivery organizations.
Qualifications (Minimum Required):
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field required.
- Fortrea may consider relevant and equivalent experience and successful project outcomes in lieu of educational requirements.
Experience (Minimum Required):
- Minimum of 12 years of progressive experience within software engineering, technology, or digital organizations.
- Minimum of 7 years of leadership experience managing large engineering teams through multiple levels of management.
- Demonstrated experience leading global or geographically distributed engineering organizations.
- Proven track record overseeing complex technology delivery portfolios and operational excellence initiatives.
- Experience developing talent strategies, workforce plans, and organizational capability models.
- Strong experience partnering with Product and Technology leadership teams to drive business outcomes.
- Demonstrated experience leading engineering modernization, organizational transformation, AI adoption, and large-scale engineering excellence initiatives.
Preferred Qualifications Include:
- Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, Business Administration, or a related discipline.
- Experience leading large, globally distributed engineering organizations within complex matrixed environments.
- Demonstrated success serving as a site leader or senior location leader with responsibility for organizational culture, employee engagement, and operational performance.
- Experience supporting technology transformation, modernization, cloud adoption, platform engineering, or digital enablement initiatives.
- Experience building or scaling digital foundry, platform engineering, developer experience, shared services, or engineering excellence capabilities.
- Proven track record of scaling engineering organizations through periods of growth, organizational change, and business transformation.
- Experience partnering with Product Management, Architecture, Data & AI, and Technology leaders to deliver strategic business and technology outcomes.
- Strong understanding of software development methodologies, Agile delivery practices, DevOps principles, and engineering performance metrics.
- Experience leading workforce planning, organizational design, succession planning, and leadership development initiatives.
- Demonstrated ability to influence executive stakeholders and drive decision-making across global, cross-functional teams.
- Experience managing large-scale engineering delivery portfolios with accountability for resource planning, financial stewardship, operational effectiveness, and delivery outcomes.
- Experience establishing and driving engineering best practices related to quality, reliability, security, compliance, and continuous improvement.
- Experience implementing AI-assisted software delivery practices, automation frameworks, CI/CD optimization, and modern engineering tooling to improve developer productivity and quality outcomes.
- Prior experience within regulated industries such as clinical research, healthcare, life sciences, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, or other highly regulated environments is preferred.
Physical Demands / Work Environment:
Office/Home-Based:
Work Environment:
- Work is performed in an office environment with exposure to electrical office equipment.
- Occasional drives to site locations with occasional travel both domestic and international.
Physical Requirements:
- Frequently stationary for 6-8 hours per day.
- Repetitive hand movement of both hands with the ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Occasional crouching, stooping, with frequent bending and twisting of upper body and neck.
- Ability to access and use a variety of computer software developed both in-house and off-the-shelf.
- Light to moderate lifting and carrying, or moving of objects, including luggage and laptop computer with a maximum lift of 15-20 lbs.
- Regular and consistent attendance.
- Varied hours may be required.
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