Director, Engineering Excellence & Enablement

Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit www.shield.ai. Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube. 

The Director of Engineering Excellence & Enablement is a strategic leader responsible for improving the effectiveness, efficiency, and execution maturity of the engineering organization. Reporting to the VP of Engineering, this leader partners closely with Engineering, Product, Program Management, and other cross-functional leaders to translate company and product strategy into scalable engineering capabilities, operational rhythms, and enterprise-wide initiatives. 

This role is equal parts strategy, execution, organizational design, and operational excellence. Success is measured by enabling engineering teams to deliver predictably, operate efficiently, and continuously improve while maintaining alignment across the broader organization. 

 Partner with the VP of Engineering to translate business and product strategy into engineering capabilities, operating models, and execution plans. 

Develop and evolve the engineering operating system, including planning processes, governance, decision-making frameworks, and organizational rhythms. 

Identify capability gaps and recommend investments in people, processes, tooling, and organizational structure. 

Define and drive engineering excellence initiatives focused on developer productivity, quality, reliability, operational maturity, and continuous improvement. 

Establish engineering effectiveness metrics and dashboards that provide visibility into organizational health, delivery performance, and engineering productivity. 

Champion adoption of modern engineering practices, standards, and continuous improvement methodologies. 

Establish and facilitate consistent engineering operating cadences including strategic planning, quarterly planning, roadmap reviews, engineering leadership meetings, business reviews, and operational retrospectives/after-action reviews. 

Drive accountability for execution across engineering leadership while identifying and resolving organizational bottlenecks. 

Improve planning accuracy, prioritization, dependency management, and execution predictability. 

Lead complex, cross-functional engineering initiatives that span multiple teams and organizations. 

Drive strategic programs such as AI enablement, developer experience improvements, technical governance, and organizational scaling initiatives. 

Coordinate executive communications, status reporting, risk management, and stakeholder engagement for enterprise programs. 

Partner with engineering leaders to improve organizational health, team effectiveness, and leadership maturity. 

Standardize engineering processes where appropriate while preserving team autonomy. 

Foster a culture of operational excellence, continuous learning, and data-informed decision making. 

10+ years of engineering leadership, technical program management, engineering operations, or related experience. 

Demonstrated success leading large-scale cross-functional initiatives in complex technology organizations. 

Experience establishing engineering operating models, governance, planning processes, and execution frameworks. 

Strong understanding of modern software engineering organizations, Agile development, DevOps, and engineering metrics in the Aerospace & Defense industry. 

Proven ability to influence senior leaders without relying on direct authority. 

Exceptional communication, facilitation, organizational, and executive presentation skills. 

Strong analytical mindset with experience using data to drive organizational improvements. 

Experience partnering directly with VP or C-level technology executives. 

Experience scaling engineering organizations through periods of rapid growth or transformation.

Familiarity with developer productivity and organizational effectiveness measurement.