Senior Director of Engineering

About the Organization

The Campaign Finance Board is a nonpartisan, independent city agency that empowers New Yorkers to have a greater impact on their elections. Our mission is to make local democracy more open, transparent, and equitable by removing barriers to participation. We make it easier for New Yorkers to vote, meaningfully support candidates for city office, and run for office themselves.

NYC Votes, our voter engagement initiative, meets people where they are to share trustworthy election information and help New Yorkers make a plan to vote. We publish the citywide Voter Guide, which delivers information about candidates directly to voters’ doors. Our public matching funds program ensures small contributions can make a big difference, allowing regular people to run for office by relying on the support of other regular people, not just wealthy donors and special interests. We lift the veil on how candidates raise and spend money, increasing transparency and accountability in local government.

The Strategy, Products, and Innovation (SPI) division plans the agency's future and builds it. SPI brings together long-term planning, research and policy implementation, product development, and technology modernization to test new ideas and turn them into lasting improvements and new experiences. The division is committed to advancing a democracy that is more open, transparent, and equitable for all New Yorkers.

The Technology Department builds, maintains, and secures the systems that make New York City’s campaign finance program work. This team is behind CSMART, CFIS, FACTS, and the agency’s website—the platforms that power public matching funds, disclosure, and compliance for campaigns across the city. The department is modernizing core systems by migrating to the cloud, integrating modern software solutions, and building infrastructure engineered for security, reliability, and scale. Team members write and maintain custom software, strengthen cybersecurity, and transform a legacy environment into a modern one.

About the Role

The New York City Campaign Finance Board seeks a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the engineering function that builds and runs the technology behind New York City's public matching funds program, the Voter Guide, and the agency's campaign finance disclosure and compliance systems. This role shapes how campaign finance, voter education, and public matching funds are built for the next decade of New York elections.

The platforms powering every city election are in the middle of a multi-year modernization from legacy .NET onto cloud-native Python infrastructure, targeting completion in 2027. This senior leadership role owns the multi-year technical roadmap end-to-end, supervising software development, quality assurance, and Salesforce engineering. Data engineering operates as an agency-wide shared platform service supporting analytics and research teams. Within 6 to 12 months, the role expands to include direct oversight of Infrastructure and Cybersecurity, consolidating engineering accountability across the agency's technical stack.

This is a turnaround leadership role. The Senior Director will address inconsistent engineering practices, meaningful technical debt, and technical leaders who are growing their managerial capabilities. Building baseline engineering discipline, developing managerial capability, and delivering reliable services through active transformation are the core focus for the first two years. The role also involves standing up a Salesforce engineering function from scratch, maturing data engineering into a shared platform service, and reskilling the technical workforce alongside vendor knowledge transfer.

Responsibilities

• Leadership Development and Organizational Management
  • Build, supervise, and mentor a leadership team across engineering functions (software development, quality assurance, Salesforce engineering, data engineering, and infrastructure).
  • Establish clear accountability and develop managerial capability within the engineering organization.
  • Implement baseline people management practices, including hiring, performance management, career development, feedback, evaluation, and retention strategies tailored to the public sector.
  • Foster an engineering culture that prioritizes collaborative problem-solving, knowledge-sharing, accountability, and continuous improvement.
  • Partner with the Senior Director of Product to expand knowledge and engagement with the software development lifecycle, agile processes, and product thinking.
• Strategic Technology Planning and Engineering Standards
  • Set and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
  • Develop and maintain a multiyear technical roadmap aligned with the agency's product roadmap, digital priorities, and modernization goals.
  • Establish, document, and enforce engineering standards, including coding standards, branching strategy, security policies, compliance requirements, and architecture review practices.
  • Evaluate emerging technologies (cloud-based solutions, open-source tools, and AI applications) and recommend adoption decisions appropriate to public-sector constraints.
• Software Development, QA, and AI Implementation Leadership
  • Develop and maintain a standard tracking system and reporting standards for delivery flow, predictability, quality, and end-to-end traceability.
  • Lead the agency's software development and quality assurance functions, including supervision of engineering managers.
  • Own the software development lifecycle, DevOps, and CI/CD pipelines.
  • Drive agile delivery practices in coordination with product leadership.
  • Own the technical implementation of AI use cases, including building, integrating, and operating models in production, and evaluating model performance (capability, accuracy, latency, cost, and technical security).
  • Manage technical debt proactively and make sound architecture decisions.
• Infrastructure and Cybersecurity Oversight
  • Provide senior-level oversight of the agency's IT infrastructure and cybersecurity functions, including network architecture, cloud infrastructure, end-user computing, helpdesk operations, and cybersecurity posture.
  • Ensure alignment with citywide IT standards (NYC Office of Technology and Innovation) and cybersecurity requirements (NYC Cyber Command).
  • Lead disaster readiness and business continuity planning.
• Data Engineering Build and Operations
  • Oversee the agency's data engineering build-and-operations function, delivering secure, scalable data infrastructure to enterprise governance standards.
  • Oversee design, construction, and operation of modern data architecture (data lakehouse, real-time API integrations, and ETL/ELT pipelines).
  • Provide senior technical oversight of major data-architecture build decisions, including evaluating vendor-built data infrastructure for soundness and scalability.
  • Operate the function as an agency-wide shared platform service serving distributed analytics and research teams.
• Salesforce Engineering Buildout
  • Build an in-house Salesforce engineering function from the ground up, responsible for the codebase, configurations, documentation, and infrastructure of the agency's Salesforce instances.
  • Hire a Director of Salesforce Engineering and establish team structure, processes, and standards.
  • Establish in-house procedures for bug fixes, service requests, and feature enhancements.
  • Ensure Salesforce use aligns with NYC Cyber Command, internal security policy, and records retention requirements.
• Vendor Delivery Oversight and Workforce Development
  • Provide senior technical oversight of strategic technology vendors, evaluating what is being built rather than relying on vendor self-reporting.
  • Hold vendors accountable for scope, quality, and delivery commitments.
  • Lead the agency's technical workforce development strategy, including reskilling programs and structured, time-bound knowledge transfer from vendors to internal staff.
  • Manage technical hiring across engineering teams, in coordination with the agency's hiring prioritization plan.

Requirements

We're seeking individuals eager to make an impact, even if they don't tick every box on our job description. We value diverse perspectives, lived experiences, non-traditional education pathways, and practical know-how.

• Knowledge
  • Software development lifecycle, DevOps, and CI/CD practices applied to enterprise-scale systems.
  • Building, integrating, and operating AI/ML use cases in production as software delivery, and technical model evaluation (capability, accuracy, latency, cost, and technical security).
  • Modern data architecture build, including data lakehouse construction, ETL/ELT pipelines, and real-time API integrations.
  • Enterprise network architecture, cloud infrastructure, and the relationship between infrastructure decisions and application engineering outcomes.
  • Building a technical function from scratch (e.g., Salesforce, data engineering), including team structure, hiring plan, and operating model.
• Skills
  • Supervising and developing engineering managers and directors, including building managerial capability in technical leaders transitioning from individual contributors.
  • Establishing, documenting, and enforcing engineering standards across teams previously operating without consistent practice.
  • Providing senior technical oversight of vendor-built data infrastructure, evaluating architectural soundness rather than relying on vendor self-reporting.
  • Evaluating vendor-built technology to identify architectural or quality concerns before they become operational failures.
  • Diagnosing root causes across technical debt, organizational structure, and people capability, distinguishing between individual and systemic gaps.
  • Partnering with product, data, project management, design, and executive leadership at a peer level to build trust and alignment.
  • Communicating technical decisions, tradeoffs, and risks to non-technical executive audiences.