Vice President of Research & Development

About the Role

We are seeking a seasoned engineering leader to drive AI-driven transformation across our Corrections and Law Enforcement product lines. This role will spearhead the adoption of AI tools and agentic delivery models, set the technical roadmap, and ensure high-quality, secure product delivery while modernizing our platform and fostering a culture of innovation.

Responsibilities

• AI Fluency and Agentic Delivery:
  • Use AI development tools daily, maintaining a practical understanding of their capabilities and limitations.
  • Research and experiment with new AI tooling, models, and workflows, integrating proven methods into standard practices.
  • Lead teams toward agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery, where AI agents handle bounded tasks end-to-end, with engineers setting goals and guardrails.
  • Develop and execute an AI delivery-maturity roadmap across all products, ensuring staged implementation.
  • Establish governance for safe AI-delegated work, including review gates, validation, security reviews, and outcome reporting.
  • Make the codebase and delivery pipeline AI-accessible through documentation, test coverage, CI/CD, and structured context.
  • Build tooling and training programs to transition engineers from AI-assisted to fully delegated agent execution.
  • Report AI delivery maturity and business outcomes to executives regularly.
• Technical Roadmap and AI-Driven Opportunity:
  • Set a multi-year technical roadmap for Corrections and Law Enforcement products, leveraging AI-driven acceleration.
  • Rebuild roadmap assumptions, pulling forward AI-enabled work and redirecting capacity to previously out-of-reach customer problems.
  • Plan the roadmap around customer problems, prioritizing AI-driven outcomes over conventional build cycles.
  • Decide where AI should be embedded in products versus applied as a fast path to outcomes, treating both as revenue opportunities.
  • Balance acceleration with customer commitments and the pace of change for the installed base.
  • Own technology standards, architectural direction, and technical documentation across the portfolio.
  • Evaluate build, buy, and consolidation options for overlapping product lines, presenting recommendations to the Executive Vice President.
  • Monitor industry trends, competitor capabilities, and emerging technologies relevant to law enforcement and corrections software.
• Delivery and Execution:
  • Own release commitments across all development teams, including scope, sequencing, and customer/sales communication.
  • Establish a unified reporting cadence for status, blockers, and slips to surface risks early.
  • Standardize development processes, tooling, and metrics across independently operating companies.
  • Resolve cross-team dependencies and resource contention, escalating trade-offs requiring executive decisions.
• Product Quality and Security:
  • Set and enforce quality standards for code review, testing, defect thresholds, and release readiness, applying them equally to human and AI-generated code.
  • Maintain high levels of product and platform security, fostering a culture of security awareness.
  • Ensure compliance with regulatory, contractual, and industry requirements for public safety and justice customers.
  • Partner with Support Services to align engineering priorities with escalated customer issues.
• Team Leadership and Development:
  • Lead, mentor, and develop development managers and directors, setting clear goals and expectations.
  • Recruit and retain engineering talent, building succession depth in key roles.
  • Ensure all engineers use AI tools as part of their daily work, providing training and access.
  • Structure the organization to balance onshore, offshore, and contract capacity, leveraging agentic delivery.
  • Promote transparency and collaboration by making priorities, progress, and decisions visible.
• Financial and Resource Ownership:
  • Own the R&D budget, including headcount, capitalization, AI tooling spend, and vendor commitments.
  • Provide R&D inputs for monthly forecasts and quarterly executive reporting, explaining variances.
  • Drive measurable improvement in development cost as a percentage of revenue without compromising delivery or quality.
  • Allocate engineering capacity to initiatives with the strongest return, defending choices with data.
• Platform Modernization:
  • Lead platform migration and modernization programs, sequencing phases to minimize customer impact.
  • Retire technical debt and legacy dependencies on a published schedule, improving AI accessibility.
  • Measure adoption and business impact of new capabilities, halting investment in underperforming areas.
• Stakeholder and Executive Communication:
  • Act as the primary liaison between R&D and Operations, Support, Product Management, Sales, and Finance.
  • Present roadmap progress, AI maturity, risk, and investment recommendations to executives in non-technical terms.
  • Engage with customers, partners, and user groups to validate direction and address product shortcomings.
  • Support due diligence and technical integration for acquisitions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
• Ten+ years in software development, with three+ years leading engineering organizations at the director level or above.
• Demonstrated hands-on use of AI development tools, with a clear understanding of their strengths, limitations, and evolution.
• Experience transitioning engineering organizations to agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery, including governance and validation.
• Strong understanding of software architecture, cloud technologies, modern development methodologies, and enterprise software delivery.
• Track record of translating AI capabilities into customer-facing value and revenue, not just internal efficiency.
• Proven ownership of multi-product or multi-company development portfolios, including budget accountability.
• Experience delivering enterprise software to public sector, public safety, or regulated markets preferred.
• Success modernizing legacy platforms while supporting an installed customer base.
• Working knowledge of modern architecture, cloud delivery, and secure development practices, including AI-generated code review.

Performance Measurement

• AI Delivery Maturity: Teams advancing to agentic, human-on-the-loop delivery on the published plan.
• Roadmap Acceleration: Committed work delivered ahead of conventional timelines, with recovered capacity redeployed.
• AI-Driven Revenue: Customer problems solved and revenue generated through AI capability.
• Release Predictability: Committed releases delivered on promised dates.
• Product Quality: Escaped defects and escalations trending downward.
• Financial Performance: R&D spend held to plan, with development cost as a percentage of revenue improving.
• Organizational Health: Retention of key talent and depth in critical roles.
• Cross-Functional Standing: Support, Sales, and Operations report a transparent, effective relationship with R&D.

Salary range: $125,000 - $135,000 USD per year.