Sr Director, Application Engineering

About the role

Skillsoft is seeking an Application Engineering Lead to build, run, and evolve our enterprise application landscape in support of company strategy and business transformation priorities. The role is based driving distance from Boston, MA.

Responsibilities

• Own engineering delivery and operational health for the enterprise applications portfolio supporting critical business capabilities and processes
• Translate approved business solutions into scalable, maintainable engineering execution plans
• Ensure delivery aligns to business priorities, architecture standards, security requirements, and governance frameworks
• Partner with PMO and Solutions leaders on prioritization, capacity planning, sequencing, and execution transparency
• Drive consistent execution that balances run, enhancement, and transformation initiatives
• Lead end-to-end lifecycle management, including build, release, operate, enhance, and retire
• Maintain high availability, reliability, and performance of production systems
• Oversee incident, problem, and change management processes
• Maintain a strong focus on operational resilience, uptime, and business continuity
• Drive structured lifecycle planning including upgrades, patching, and decommissioning of legacy systems
• Reduce application complexity through rationalization, standardization, and modernization
• Enable adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices to improve productivity, quality, and cycle time
• Streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and lower total cost of ownership
• Identify and scale opportunities for AI and automation within enterprise applications in a controlled manner
• Ensure adherence to enterprise architecture, security, and engineering standards
• Support compliance requirements including audit readiness (e.g., SOX where applicable)
• Maintain disciplined release, change, and environment controls
• Ensure solutions are well-documented, testable, and supportable
• Partner with Security and Risk teams to proactively mitigate technical and operational risks
• Build and lead a high-performing, modern engineering organization
• Develop a skills-based team with strong capabilities across platforms, automation, quality, and AI
• Define clear roles, responsibilities, goals, and development plans
• Foster a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and enterprise thinking
• Develop talent that can operate across technologies and business domains
• Build strong, trust-based partnerships with business stakeholders and cross-functional IT teams
• Ensure delivery outcomes translate into measurable business impact
• Support adoption and value realization post-implementation
• Contribute to a management cadence that tracks outcomes beyond deployment
• Communicate clearly with senior stakeholders on progress, risks, and value delivered

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional application engineering, delivery, or enterprise systems leadership experience
• Proven track record leading engineering teams supporting enterprise applications (e.g., ERP, CRM, HRIS, finance, or similar platforms)
• Strong experience across application lifecycle management, release governance, and production operations
• Experience driving modernization, simplification, and automation initiatives
• Demonstrated ability to partner across business, architecture, PMO, data, and security teams

Skills

• Strong understanding of SaaS platforms, integrations, and enterprise system architectures
• Experience with modern development practices, DevOps, CI/CD, and automated testing
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to influence across functions

Benefits

We offer Enterprise benefits including but not limited to: medical, dental, vision, and paid time off. The company may modify salaries, salary ranges and/or Pay Plans from time to time as it deems necessary.

Pay

Target base salary range for this job requisition is anticipated to be approximately $220,000 - $240,000 annualized.

Schedule

N/A