Director, Research and Development (AI)

Location: Remote - Georgia, United States

Salary: $125,000–$135,000 USD per year

Company

hirify.global develops enterprise software solutions, including products serving local government and public-sector organizations.

What you will do

• Define and execute the technology and development strategy for the LocalGov business unit across eight product lines and more than 40 development professionals.
• Lead modernization across IBM i, RPG, COBOL, cloud, and modern application platforms while preserving customer stability and business continuity.
• Advance engineering teams from AI-assisted work to AI-directed and supervised agentic delivery using tools such as GitHub Copilot, Project Bob, large language models, and agentic coding tools.
• Establish engineering standards, governance, review gates, security validation, CI/CD practices, and KPIs covering delivery predictability, quality, throughput, customer satisfaction, and cost.
• Develop multi-year product and technology roadmaps, allocate development capacity, manage R&D operating expenditure forecasts, and align priorities with Product Management, Client Services, Professional Services, Sales, and business leadership.
• Build and mentor engineering leaders, lead succession and knowledge-preservation programs, and act as the executive escalation point for critical development and customer initiatives.

Requirements

• 10+ years of progressive software development leadership experience, including 5+ years leading managers, technical leaders, and development teams in a multi-product organization.
• Experience leading modernization initiatives across legacy and modern technology platforms and managing geographically distributed, cross-functional development organizations.
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycles, Agile methodologies, engineering best practices, enterprise software delivery, product strategy, and technical roadmaps.
• Hands-on daily experience with AI development tools and a clear understanding of their capabilities, limitations, governance, and validation requirements.
• Experience moving engineering organizations from individual AI assistance toward human-supervised agentic delivery, including training, review, security, and quality controls.
• Exceptional communication, organizational, stakeholder management, and executive leadership skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with IBM i, AS400, RPG, COBOL, or legacy platform modernization.
• Background in local government, public-sector, ERP, tax, financial, records management, or government technology solutions.
• Experience with GitHub Copilot, Project Bob, LLMs, engineering KPIs, AI adoption measurement, cloud technologies, APIs, automation frameworks, Jira, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience scaling high-performing engineering teams across multiple product lines and leading large-scale digital transformation.
• MBA, advanced technical experience, or equivalent executive leadership experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Remote work within Georgia, United States.
• Leadership scope across distributed engineering teams and eight product lines.
• Opportunity to shape AI-assisted and agentic software delivery practices.
• Focus on continuous improvement, accountability, innovation, succession planning, and durable technical knowledge.
• Participation in key customer events and annual business strategy meetings.