Director, Software Engineering

Position: Director, Software Engineering

Location: La Ciotat, France

Responsibilities

• Lead multiple distributed software engineering teams across France, USA and India ensuring disciplined and scalable delivery across the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).
• Champion people management, engineering effectiveness, process governance, and quality engineering to ship reliable software predictably.
• Establish consistent delivery standards, embed quality-by-design, shift-left testing, and improve development methodologies to drive measurable improvements in productivity, predictability and product quality.
• Partner with Product and Operations to align engineering execution and technical strategy with business outcomes such as cost-efficiency, security, high availability and innovation objectives.
• Oversee BU-owned platforms, tools and local IS services while excluding Customer Support.
• Challenge and enable QA teams to adopt methods that reduce production incidents and improve upstream quality through testing automation, quality gates and shift-left testing.
• Create a culture of engineering excellence: CI/CD, documentation, code reviews, code health, static analysis, linting, reliability, learning and continuous improvement.
• Mature quality engineering through test strategy, automation, non-functional testing, defect prevention and measurable quality metrics.
• Establish and govern release-management practices, including participation in release committees and cross-functional readiness reviews.
• Support operational excellence through improved monitoring, alerting and incident prevention mechanisms in partnership with DevOps and Platform teams.
• Lead non-functional testing efforts covering performance, reliability, security, accessibility and maintainability.
• Foster accountability, continuous learning and innovation across multi-site teams.
• Promote structured collaboration with local and global engineering organisations to improve efficiency and reuse.
• Manage engineering budget collaboratively with relevant leadership teams.
• Lead coaching, development, recruitment, succession planning, performance management and hire high-performing teams.
• Establish SDLC standards and governance across teams: requirements, quality, acceptance criteria, ADRs, branching strategies, change management, traceability and compliance readiness.
• Improve delivery predictability through effective planning, estimation practices, sprint/flow management, backlog readiness, capacity planning, retrospectives and dependency management (SAFe/Scrum Agile principles).
• Maintain lifecycle tools that support development to deployment.
• Translate strategy into roadmaps, release plans, prioritisation and delivery commitments in partnership with Product Directors/Owners.
• Define and report engineering KPIs (throughput, cycle time, escaped defects, availability, reliability, technical debt, release frequency) for executive and operational steering.
• Coordinate cross-functional alignment across Architecture, DevOps, QA, Security and Product to ensure vision and execution are aligned.
• Ensure delivery meets agreed standards for quality, security, scalability, performance and maintainability.
• Define and roll out a modern testing strategy based on testing pyramid principles and practical application; automate regression strategy (UI/API/unit) based on risk and ROI; integrate testing and contract testing where appropriate.

Qualifications

• Over 10 years of experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a management role (engineering, QA leadership or multi-team leadership).
• Proven track record improving delivery predictability and product quality at scale.
• Strong expertise and active experience in SDLC governance, Agile/Lean delivery and modern engineering practices.
• Deep understanding of quality engineering: test strategy, automation approaches, non-functional testing and quality metrics.
• Demonstrated capability in performance management, coaching and building a healthy team culture.
• Excellent stakeholder-management skills; ability to communicate trade-offs and influence executives.
• Experience leading change across multiple teams, particularly process adoption, tooling improvements and operating-model changes.
• Strong track record delivering complex programs (re-engineering, modernization, scalability, reliability).
• Financial acumen within engineering environments.
• Preferred: experience conducting structured engineering audits/health checks, identifying bottlenecks and risk areas, and driving corrective actions through measurable improvement plans and follow-up reviews.
• Experience with distributed teams and scaling organisations.
• Experience improving engineering productivity using evidence-based metrics such as DORA, flow metrics, responsibly.
• Experience implementing quality gates and pipeline controls.

Benefits

• Competitive salary and rewards package.
• Competitive benefits and annual leave offering to support work-life balance.
• A vibrant, welcoming and inclusive culture.
• Extensive career development opportunities and resources to maximize your potential.

Equal Opportunity Employer

HID is committed to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workforce that reflects the global communities we serve. As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.