Director, Software Engineering

Location: AZ_Mesa_HQ

VERRA MOBILITY · SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Who we are...

Verra Mobility is a global leader in smart mobility. We develop technology-enabled solutions that help the world move safely and easily. We are fostering the development of safe cities, working with police departments and municipalities to install over 4,000 red-light, speed, and school bus stop arm safety cameras across North America. We are also creating smart roadways, serving the world's largest commercial fleets and rental car companies to manage tolling transactions and violations for over 8.5 million vehicles. And we are a leading provider of connected systems, processing nearly 165 million transactions each year across 50+ individual tolling authorities.

Culture

Verra Mobility Corporation is a dynamic, entrepreneurial company that operates with a people-first philosophy and approach. The company lives by its core values—Do What’s Right, Choose Courage Over Comfort, Win Together, and Own It—in everything it does for its customers and team members. The company seeks to grow, both organically and through acquisition, to continue to be the undisputed market leader with a bias for action, customer focus, teamwork, drive for results, and commitment to excellence.

Position Overview

The Director, Software Engineering is the technical subject matter expert and engineering leader for the Platform portfolio, reporting to the SVP, Software Engineering and owning technology strategy and end to end delivery outcomes for the portfolio’s squads. This role requires deep domain expertise in the portfolio’s problem space, current fluency across modern engineering practices, and the operating pace expected of a modern software organization.

You will partner with the external Product Portfolio Director on product vision, engage directly with partner and customer technical teams on architecture and integration, and be responsible for evaluating and developing the technical leadership within your portfolio. Your work will determine how quickly a steady state organization can move, and whether the portfolio’s platforms are built once and reused, or rebuilt every time a new need arises.

Essential Responsibilities

Technical Strategy & Architecture

• Own Portfolio Technology Strategy: Define technology strategy and end to end delivery outcomes for the portfolio’s squads, maintaining deep domain expertise in the portfolio’s problem space and current fluency in the broader technology and competitive landscape, including modern AI and machine learning solution categories.
• Identify Reuse Before Rebuild: Identify where shared platform capabilities can be extended or reused rather than rebuilt, partnering with the Platform team and Senior Enterprise Architect to avoid duplicated effort.
• Maintain Domain and Integration Fluency: Maintain a working view of service boundaries, API contracts, and event driven or asynchronous processing patterns across the portfolio, recognizing a fragile integration or a duplicative build before it hardens into a dependency other teams must unwind.

Delivery, Migration & Operational Ownership

• Own End to End Delivery: Own predictable, high quality delivery across the portfolio’s squads, including roadmap commitments, release readiness, budget adherence, and operational stability.
• Raise Delivery Pace: Change how quickly a steady state organization moves, accelerating delivery pace and urgency within an existing, already staffed organization.
• Lead Platform Migrations: Lead live system migrations and legacy platform transitions, including cutover sequencing, data reconciliation, and rollback planning, as clients and workloads move off legacy platforms and onto current ones.
• Govern Data & Security: Apply data architecture and governance principles, including data lineage and stewardship for shared or regulated datasets, and ensure the portfolio’s systems meet security and compliance expectations for multi tenant, transaction heavy systems operating across multiple jurisdictions.
• Own Bid & Contract Review: Own final review and approval of new contracts and bids for the Platform portfolio, building on the Manager’s initial technical and compliance review to confirm proposed work is achievable within existing governance, architectural, and delivery constraints before commitments are made.

Talent & Organizational Leadership

• Develop Technical Leaders: Personally assess whether direct and indirect reports are functioning above or below the title held, and act on that assessment through coaching, role redefinition, or personnel change.
• Ensure Technical Succession: Treat technical succession as a stated priority, so no portfolio depends on a single person’s tenure for its technical continuity.
• Partner Across the Enterprise: Partner closely with the Portfolio Architect as the technical decision making pair for the portfolio, coordinate with peer Directors and the Senior Enterprise Architect to keep cross portfolio integrations coherent, and align regularly with the Product Portfolio Director function to reconcile product vision and technical reality.

We’re looking for a technical leader with a proven track record of owning outcomes, modernizing platforms, and raising delivery pace at scale. The ideal candidate will bring the following capabilities:

Portfolio Technology Strategy

Ability to define and sustain a coherent technology strategy across a multi squad portfolio, balancing standardization with legitimate portfolio specific divergence.

Architecture & Integration Judgment

Fluency in domain boundaries, API contract design, and event driven or asynchronous processing patterns, sufficient to judge whether a proposed integration is a durable seam or a future liability.

Migration & Modernization Leadership

Demonstrated experience leading a live system migration or legacy platform transition, including cutover sequencing, data reconciliation, and rollback planning.

Data & Governance Fluency

Working knowledge of data architecture, data lineage, and the security and compliance considerations relevant to multi tenant, transaction heavy systems.

Talent Development & Succession

Track record of assessing, coaching, and developing technical leaders, including making difficult talent calls when needed.

Executive & Partner Communication

Technical credibility sufficient to lead architecture and technology discussions directly with partner and customer engineering teams, and to evaluate a vendor pitch or build proposal critically.

Bid & Contract Ownership

Ability to review and approve contracts and bids for technical, architectural, and delivery feasibility, ensuring commitments are not made against a portfolio that cannot support them.

Qualifications

Experience: 10+ years in software engineering delivering enterprise systems, including 5+ years leading multiple teams or squads through Managers and Tech Leads. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience required.

Technical Fluency: Current fluency with modern engineering stacks relevant to the portfolio, including .NET/C#, Java, SQL, modern web frameworks, REST and GraphQL APIs, microservices, cloud platforms, and event driven or asynchronous processing patterns such as message queues and event streaming.

Migration & Legacy Transition: Demonstrated experience leading a live system migration or legacy platform transition, including cutover sequencing, data reconciliation, and rollback planning.

Data & Compliance: Working knowledge of data architecture and governance principles, including data lineage and stewardship, and fluency in security and compliance considerations for multi tenant, transaction heavy systems operating across multiple jurisdictions.

AI & Emerging Technology: Working knowledge of current AI and machine learning solution categories and their practical application in transaction heavy, government adjacent, or mobility industries, sufficient to evaluate a vendor pitch or build proposal critically and weigh build versus buy trade offs.

Talent Leadership: Demonstrated willingness and ability to make difficult talent calls, including role realignment or replacement, along with strong judgment on when to standardize across the enterprise versus allow portfolio specific divergence.

Contract & Bid Review: Ability to evaluate contracts and bids for technical, architectural, and compliance feasibility, owning final review and approval ahead of executive sign off.

Domain Expertise (Preferred): Experience in mobility, tolling, parking, or other transaction heavy, government adjacent industries is preferred, along with leading an organization through transformation from steady state maintenance to active platform investment.

Vendor & Partner Evaluation (Preferred): Experience evaluating or negotiating build versus buy decisions for major platform capabilities, including vendor and partner architecture reviews, and experience partnering with an external product organization on a shared roadmap, is also a plus.

Verra Mobility Values

An ideal candidate for this role naturally works in alignment with the Verra Mobility Core Values:

• Own It: We focus on high performance and drive toward breakthrough outcomes. Our employees ensure accountability, optimize and align work, focus on the customer, and cultivate innovation.
• Do What’s Right: We champion integrity and good character. Our team members model ethical behavior, demonstrate good judgment and are courageous.
• Choose Courage Over Comfort: We lean into the conversations, decisions and actions that move the business forward, even when they feel uncomfortable. We challenge assumptions, address issues early and prioritize progress over ease.
• Win Together: We believe in growing and inspiring people together. We seek people who collaborate, value differences, think and act globally, foster an engaging work environment, and recognize and develop others.

Verra Mobility Values

An ideal candidate for this role naturally works in alignment with the Verra Mobility Core Values:

• Own It. We focus on high performance and drive toward breakthrough outcomes. Our employees ensure accountability, optimize and align work, focus on the customer, and cultivate innovation.
• Do What’s Right. We champion integrity and good character. Our team members model ethical behavior, demonstrate good judgment and are courageous.
• Choose Courage Over Comfort. We lean into the conversations, decisions and actions that move the business forward, even when they feel uncomfortable. We challenge assumptions, address issues early and prioritize progress over ease.
• Win Together. We believe in growing and inspiring people together. We seek people who collaborate, value differences, think and act globally, foster an engaging work environment, and recognize and develop others.

Verra Mobility is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status.