Director of Engineering

The Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) is the state’s lead office for information technology. We provide enterprise level information technology services and infrastructure, including network management and security; computer operations; application hosting; desktop provisioning and management; and modern and responsive digital services to 40,000 internal stakeholders plus the residents, business owners and visitors to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Are you interested in solving meaningful problems and transforming the journeys and experiences of millions of diverse constituents interacting with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts government services? We’re looking for a collaborative and purpose driven Director of Engineering to lead, grow and mature our established engineering organization within the Massachusetts Digital Service and improve the design and delivery of state services through the development modern digital products.

The Massachusetts Digital Service (Mass Digital), a division of EOTSS, partners with organizations across state government to transform how residents, visitors, businesses, and government agencies interact with the Commonwealth.

Mass Digital has established its track record of delivery through recent work with the Department of Family and Medical Leave (DFML) and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We helped DFML launch the Commonwealth’s first digitally native service, Paid Family and Medical Leave and PaidLeave.mass.gov. During the pandemic, we supported the Department of Unemployment Assistance in expanding their capacity to process unemployment claims in multiple languages and designed content for rapidly evolving pandemic unemployment benefits. We also supported the Department of Public Health and the Governor’s Office in launching and operating the state’s vaccine preregistration system.

Now, we’re turning our attention to implementing a vision of statewide digital experiences that are more accessible, simple, and secure: the Commonwealth Digital Roadmap. Our roadmap calls for transforming state services so that they meet the diverse needs of the people we serve. We’ll achieve this through initiatives to create a single identity and profile for users of Commonwealth services, expand channels of communication, and create seamless, responsive and personalized engagement experiences across different state services. We will develop new products and services, establish new policies and standards, and build capacity within agencies.

To make this vision a reality, we are expanding our engineering team to dedicate technical staff to each of these initiatives.

About The Role

As Director of Engineering, you’ll work closely with the Chief Digital Officer and Deputy Chief Digital Officer to set our technical vision, strategy and direction, assess our needs and recruit to fulfill them, and support the team’s learning and development. You’ll lead our application and infrastructure engineering teams to help ensure Mass Digital and our partners are building meaningful, accessible, inclusive, and secure digital services, and drive us to take advantage of and develop reusable code, tools, and resources. You will refine best practices for how our engineers and architects work and set a high standard for what successful digital service projects look like and how we deliver.

You’ll advise our partners across state government on technology decisions, bringing agile practices and culture to legacy systems, and drive alignment to enterprise standards set by EOTSS and Mass Digital. Where relevant, you will help our partners prepare to own, maintain and continuously improve the services we deliver with them.

Come join Mass Digital as our Director of Engineering and help us build the future of constituent services for Massachusetts If you are a proven technical leader with experience working on large, complex systems and who wants to make a meaningful public impact for millions of Massachusetts constituents, this role might be for you.

This position is a full-time opportunity. The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00AM to 5:00PM EST, in a hybrid remote arrangement with 2-4 days per month spent at the primary work location: One Ashburton Place, Boston, Massachusetts 02108. Applicants should be located within reasonable commuting distance from the primary work location.

We strive to create a culture of belonging in EOTSS and Mass Digital. We are committed to building a workforce that reflects the diversity of the Commonwealth and to celebrating our differences. All applicants and employees drawn to serve our mission will enjoy equal opportunity and fair treatment. We will recruit, hire, compensate, train and promote without regard to race, color, gender (identity and expression), sex, sexual orientation, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, disability status, veteran’s status, or anything else that describes your identity as a human being.

Duties and Responsibilities

Objective #1: Vision, strategy and leadership

• Set a vision for how our team of engineers and architects can advance our goal of improving users’ experiences with state services.
• Define Mass Digital’s technology strategy, ensuring major architectural decisions and technology choices support future possibilities for our team and work, and mitigate critical risks.
• Communicate our strategy and champion modern technology development practices within Mass Digital, EOTSS and across state government.
• Collaborate with state agencies to successfully solve technology problems so that the services we deliver can meet the changing needs of those we serve.

Objective #2: Maturing and managing our engineering practice

• Refine and uphold Mass Digital’s best practices to improve overall code quality, maintainability, security, scalability, team collaboration, and velocity.
• Identify and champion improvements to the processes, practices, and tools that support our engineers and architects.
• Collaborate with EOTSS technical leadership to align the technical direction for our products with the Commonwealth’s standards while advocating for the best technical approaches and solutions where those standards might not be a fit.
• Oversee workload management and work with Mass Digital Product and Engagement Managers and our vendor partners to define, estimate, and resource work, plan implementation efforts and help define and iterate on our products’ technical roadmaps.

Objective #3: People and team management

• Develop and lead a high-performing engineering team, fostering cohesion and trust.
• Coach and support engineers and architects in developing their skills and define frameworks for future growth.
• Empower team members to succeed through regular feedback and evaluation.
• Develop training, promote knowledge sharing, and seek out expertise within and outside the organization to share with the engineering team.
• Build a diverse and inclusive team, ensuring that diversity, equity and inclusion principles are embedded in the attraction, recruitment, development and retention of the team and within the delivery of our services.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• At least ten (10) years of experience in software engineering and development.
• At least five (5) years of modern engineering leadership experience demonstrating progressively increasing scope and responsibility, with an adaptive, empathetic, and collaborative leadership style.
• Enthusiastic about solving problems facing public-sector agencies and promoting equitable access to public services.
• Ability to develop strong relationships, including with senior stakeholders and business and technical leaders.
• Experience scaling engineering teams and managing diverse, distributed teams.
• Experience delivering multi-year large-scale projects, especially in a government context.
• Extensive experience building applications that are highly scalable, available, and performant using industry best practices.
• Experience solving complex problems involving multiple organizations, processes, cultures, and technologies.
• Familiarity with government processes and procedures, including procurement and contracting is a plus.

MINIMUM ENTRANCE REQUIREMENTS:

Applicants must have at least (A) seven (7) years of full-time or, equivalent part-time, professional, administrative, supervisory, or managerial experience in IT administration or IT management, of which (B) at least three (3) years must have been in a managerial capacity.

Comprehensive Benefits

When you embark on a career with the Commonwealth, you are offered an outstanding suite of employee benefits that add to the overall value of your compensation package. We take pride in providing a work experience that supports you, your loved ones, and your future.

Want the specifics? Explore our Employee Benefits and Rewards

An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Commonwealth is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. Research suggests that qualified women, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) may self-select out of opportunities if they don't meet 100% of the job requirements. We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.