Sr Director of Engineering

How will you make a difference?

As our new Sr Director – Engineering, you will be responsible for the global engineering teams supporting our KinetiX product lines in the Logistics, Analytics and Digital Mine Business Unit. KinetiX is a product family that includes wayside inspection systems including vision-based technologies. As the leader for KinetiX engineering, you will lead a diverse and global team of engineers building products supporting our Industrial Internet of Thing platform and applications, wayside mounted predictive maintenance products, and other advanced inspection technologies for our global customer base. This role reports to the Group Vice President, Logistics, Analytics and Digital Mine.

What do we want to know about you?

Desired Characteristics:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or in "STEM" Majors (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) or Business.
• Strong business analysis, problem solving, and strategy development skills.
• A minimum of 10 years of software engineering experience and/or analytics domain
• Minimum 8 years of experience in an engineering leadership/management role
• Willingness to travel to up to 25% of your time both inside/outside to support customer discovery and product sessions.
• Experience delivering large-scale secure, stable, scalable, and observable cloud-based microservice-based solutions
• Ability to influence from both a strategic and technical standpoint across the function and business
• Strong problem-solving skills. Identify problems and solve them.
• Strong Knowledge of professional software engineering best practices including coding standards, code reviews, SCM, CI, build processes, testing, and operations
• Experience with AWS or Azure cloud infrastructure and IIoT services

Business Acumen:

• Strong business analysis, problem solving, operations, project management and/or prior product management experience.
• Evangelizes new technology and identifies new opportunities based on product trends.
• Experience with direct customer engagement and commercial evangelizing.

Leadership:

• Strong oral and written communication skills and presentation skills
• Proactively engages with cross-functional teams to resolve issues and design solutions using critical thinking and analytical skills and best practice.

What will your typical day look like?

• Lead the team with a thorough understanding of product development practices and successful problem definition, decomposition, estimation, and resolution
• Responsible for building a world-class software development team to support the system integration of the platform
• Work collaboratively with partners on technology delivery and have a relentless desire to drive value for our Rail customers through technology and analytics-based solutions.
• Manage strategic business partnerships and relationships through Technical, Financial, Contractual, and Relationship Management, including customer interfacing.
• Deliver application and services to validate and ensure the platform meets all operational standards
• Influence decision making through an active partnership with cross-functional teams, especially Product Management and Commercial
• Coach, mentor, and lead a diverse group of software engineers
• Work with product management to understand market needs & vision; quickly translate that vision into demonstrable software
• Work with product owners and architects to develop software development plans
• Collaborate directly with customers to understand business and technical needs
• Drive increased efficiency across the teams, eliminating duplication, leveraging product and technology reuse. Focus the engineering teams on areas of highest value to the customer and ensure that everything we do is in direct support of customer value and business growth.
• Support process improvements which guide the development, sustaining & support activities
• Maintain compliance with RAILS, Cyber Security Standards, and Quality expectations across our product lines and ensure the team is educated on those expectations and operates efficiently to achieve them.
• Keep project data relating to tracking and financials current, especially driving rigor and detail in engineering demand planning using Clarity and PowerBI. Make data driven decisions on costs and resources to support given initiatives.
• Deliver resource strategy and plans, including use of 3rd parties/partners, etc., in support of development and support activities
• Evaluate the current team footprint and then develop/execute on a location strategy ensuring we can hire and maintain top talent engineers at the appropriate costs and in the appropriate locations to support our business and customer objectives.
• Communicate effectively both within the immediate team and Wabtec leadership. Ensure team receives consistent messages and has a clear understanding of business direction, strategy, and results
• Build a world-class software development team to consistently deliver complex software platforms and research projects of varying size and duration.

You may also be asked to perform other duties outside of your function or trade, for which adequate training will be provided if necessary.

This role is also eligible for a performance bonus. More information on offered benefits, which include health, welfare, and retirement, is available at mywabtecbenefits.com.

Relocation assistance may be provided if eligibility requirements are met.

Wabtec will only employ those who are legally authorized to work in the U.S. for this opening. Any offer of employment is conditioned upon the successful completion of a drug screen (as applicable) and fitness for duty test (as applicable).