Director, Research and Development
Harris Computer · Remote · $125,000–$135,000 (stated in the posting)
Key Responsibilities
- Define and execute the technology and development strategy for the LocalGov business unit.
- Provide leadership and oversight for all software development activities across eight product lines and approximately 40+ development professionals.
- Advance LocalGov's development teams along the Harris AI-SDLC maturity model - from AI-assisted work, to AI-directed work, to agentic delivery in which AI agents own bounded work end to end while engineers set goals, define guardrails, and review outcomes.
- Lead modernization efforts across IBM i, RPG, and modern technology platforms while preserving customer stability and business continuity.
- Establish engineering standards, development methodologies, and governance processes to improve quality, predictability, and delivery performance.
- Partner with Product Management, Client Services, Professional Services, Sales, and Business Unit leadership to align development priorities with customer and business needs.
- Develop and maintain multi-year product and technology roadmaps across the LocalGov portfolio.
- Build, develop, and mentor engineering leaders and technical teams while fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement.
- Oversee development capacity planning, resource allocation, and prioritization across competing initiatives and product lines.
- Use AI development tools personally and daily, and champion their use across the organization - including GitHub Copilot, Project Bob, large language models, and agentic coding tools - holding a current, practical command of what they can and cannot do rather than relying on secondhand reporting.
- Establish and monitor KPIs that measure outcomes rather than activity - cycle time, development throughput, escaped defect and escalation rates, delivery predictability, customer satisfaction, and development cost as a percentage of revenue - and report AI delivery maturity and the business outcomes it produces on a recurring executive cadence.
- Own the LocalGov AI delivery-maturity roadmap across all eight product lines, applied stage by stage across the software lifecycle rather than as a single business-unit rating, and deliver against the maturity targets agreed with executive leadership.
- Stand up the governance that makes delegated agent work safe, including review gates, validation, and security review of AI-generated code, with quality standards applied equally to human-written and AI-generated code.
- Make the LocalGov codebase and delivery pipeline accessible to AI agents through documentation, test coverage, CI/CD, and structured context.
- Apply AI directly to the IBM i and RPG estate - legacy code comprehension, documentation generation, and modernization analysis - as a primary mechanism for preserving knowledge held by an aging and retiring RPG skillset.
- Build the tooling and training program that moves engineers from AI-assisted work, to AI-directed work, to supervised agent execution, and give them the access and time to get there.
- Lead strategic modernization and transformation initiatives including cloud adoption, customer-facing AI solutions, and automation efforts.
- Ensure appropriate architecture, security, compliance, and technical governance practices are maintained across all products.
- Serve as the executive escalation point for critical development issues and strategic customer initiatives.
- Develop succession planning and knowledge preservation strategies for aging legacy technology skillsets.
- Manage OpEx Financial Forecast for R&D department to include monthly forecast updates, reporting on Monthly Business Unit Review Calls, & attendance/participation Annual Businesss Strategy Meeting.
- Attendance to key customer events in markets where large-scale development motions are occurring
Required Qualifications
- 10+ years of progressive software development leadership experience.
- 5+ years of experience leading managers, technical leaders, and software development teams within a multi-product software organization.
- Demonstrated experience leading software modernization initiatives involving both legacy and modern technology platforms.
- Experience managing geographically distributed development teams and cross-functional technical organizations.
- Strong understanding of software development lifecycles, Agile methodologies, and engineering best practices.
- Experience with enterprise software delivery, product strategy, and technical roadmap development.
- Proven ability to align technology investments and development priorities with business objectives and customer needs.
- Demonstrated experience driving organizational change and technology transformation initiatives.
- Experience implementing or leading AI-assisted development practices, automation initiatives, or engineering productivity improvements.
- Demonstrated hands-on use of AI development tools in daily work, with a clear point of view on where they help, where they fail, and how quickly that is changing.
- Experience raising an engineering organization's way of working from individual AI assistance toward agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery, including the governance and validation that makes it safe.
- Exceptional communication, organizational, stakeholder management, and executive leadership skills.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with IBM i, AS400, RPG, COBOL, or legacy platform modernization initiatives.
- Experience with local government, public sector, ERP, tax, financial, records management, or government technology solutions.
- Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Project Bob, LLMs, or similar technologies.
- Experience establishing engineering KPIs, delivery metrics, and AI adoption measurement programs.
- Experience leading engineering organizations through large-scale modernization or digital transformation efforts.
- Familiarity with cloud technologies, APIs, automation frameworks, and modern application architectures.
- Experience building and scaling high-performing engineering teams across multiple product lines.
- Experience integrating AI into engineering workflows, customer solutions, or business operations.
- Experience with Jira, DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and modern software delivery methodologies.
- MBA, advanced technical experience, or equivalent executive leadership experience preferred.
Performance Measurement
Success in this role is measured on the following:
- AI-SDLC maturity: development teams advancing toward Level 3 of the Harris AI maturity model, measured stage by stage across the software lifecycle and by product line, rather than as a single business-unit rating.
- Team capability: a training and upskilling program in place and taken up, moving engineers from AI-assisted work, to AI-directed work, to supervised agent execution.
- Continuity and succession depth: no product line dependent on a single individual, with documented knowledge, cross-coverage between engineers, and succession identified for every critical technical role.
- Retention: key engineering talent retained across all eight product lines.
- Modernization progress: a published modernization plan covering the legacy IBM i, RPG, and COBOL estate, and demonstrated progress against it, with knowledge captured in durable documentation rather than individual memory.
- Financial performance: R&D spend held to plan, with demonstrable optimization of development cost against delivered output.
- Cross-functional standing: Product Management, Client Services, Professional Services, and Sales report a working, transparent relationship with R&D.
Salary range: $125,000 - $135,000 USD per year.