Vice President – Research & Development

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Alabama, +44 more states.

📋 Description

• Utilize AI development tools on a personal and daily basis while maintaining a thorough understanding of their capabilities and limitations.

• Conduct research and experimentation with AI tools, models, and workflows and standardize successful methodologies.

• Guide development teams towards agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery, incorporating governance, review gates, validation, security assessments, and outcome reporting.

• Take ownership of the AI delivery-maturity roadmap across supported products.

• Ensure codebases and delivery pipelines are accessible to AI agents via documentation, test coverage, CI/CD, and structured context.

• Develop AI tooling and training initiatives for engineers.

• Report on AI delivery maturity and business outcomes to executive leadership.

• Define the multi-year technical roadmap for Corrections and Law Enforcement product lines.

• Maintain technology standards, architectural direction, and technical documentation throughout the portfolio.

• Assess build, buy, and consolidation options and provide informed recommendations to the Executive Vice President.

• Manage release commitments, reporting cadence, dependencies, resource contention, and executive escalations.

• Standardize development processes, tooling, and engineering metrics across portfolio companies.

• Establish and enforce quality, testing, defect, release-readiness, security, regulatory, and contractual standards.

• Collaborate with Support Services to align customer issues with engineering priorities.

• Lead, mentor, recruit, retain, and develop engineering managers, directors, and technical talent.

• Organize onshore, offshore, and contract capacity.

• Oversee the R&D budget, headcount planning, capitalization, AI tooling expenditures, and vendor commitments.

• Contribute to forecasts and executive reporting while enhancing development costs as a percentage of revenue.

• Spearhead platform migration, modernization, and technical-debt retirement initiatives.

• Serve as the liaison between R&D and Operations, Support, Product Management, Sales, and Finance.

• Present the roadmap, AI maturity, risk, and investment recommendations to executives.

• Engage with customers, partners, and user groups to validate product direction.

• Assist in acquisition due diligence and technical integration.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field; an advanced degree is preferred.

• A minimum of ten years of experience in software development.

• At least three years of experience leading engineering organizations at the director level or higher.

• Demonstrated hands-on experience with AI development tools in a daily capacity.

• Proven experience in advancing an engineering organization from individual AI assistance to agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery, including governance and validation.

• Strong knowledge of software architecture, cloud technologies, modern development methodologies, and enterprise software delivery.

• A track record of translating AI capabilities into customer-facing value and revenue.

• Proven responsibility for a multi-product or multi-company development portfolio, including budget oversight.

• Experience delivering enterprise software to public sector, public safety, or other regulated markets is highly desirable.

• History of modernizing legacy platforms while continuing to support an existing customer base.

• Proficient understanding of modern architecture, cloud delivery, and secure development practices, including security reviews of AI-generated code.

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based incentives.

• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance.

• Generous vacation and paid time off policies.

• Opportunities for professional development and continuing education.

• Flexible work arrangements and a supportive company culture.