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GENERAL FUNCTION
The Director, Software Engineering has responsibility for people leadership, with all the responsibilities that people management and leadership entail, and interacts with and influences leaders across the organization while drawing connections to strategic priorities. The primary responsibilities include developing and coaching employees, removing impediments to performance, enabling collaboration, serving as a leader of the software engineering craft, sharing best practices, and executing insourcing strategies. The Director handles performance review, compensation, and other core human resources processes for their team, and works collaboratively across the Technology team and other internal groups. The incumbent typically supervises a number of individual contributors and may at times have managers of others reporting to them.
This role also provides strategic and organizational leadership for engineering capabilities related to AI-enabled software delivery, internal developer tools, intelligent automation, and agentic workflows. The Director partners across architecture, product, security, risk, data, and engineering leadership to define standards, operating models, talent strategies, governance, and execution approaches that enable teams to safely and effectively adopt AI technologies in support of business and engineering outcomes.
Responsible and accountable for the identification of risk by openly exchanging ideas and opinions, elevating concerns, and personally following policies and procedures as defined. Accountable for always doing the right thing for customers and colleagues, ensuring that actions and behaviors drive a positive customer experience. While operating within the Bank’s risk appetite, the role achieves results by consistently identifying, assessing, managing, monitoring, and reporting risks of all types.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:
Develop and coach current employees to meet the needs of the organization while balancing the personal development of the employee
Actively participate in the hiring of experienced and college graduate-level employees
Solicit feedback from key team members to understand performance of team members and provide that feedback to employees in a timely manner
Work with other leaders within the organization to identify and solve issues that are preventing employees from performing effectively
Identify organizational needs and gaps and propose solutions to resolve them
Be a leader of the software engineering craft, providing insight on best practices and future direction of the craft for the organization
Apply and deploy multiple approaches to remove organizational impediments such as cultural barriers, logistical challenges, and mindset shifts
Facilitate communication, cooperation, and collaboration across the organization, including continuous feedback loops
Work to improve the effectiveness of all roles of the organization, fostering self-organization, learning, and growth
Challenge current processes, identifying opportunities for process improvement, efficiency, effectiveness, and consistency to drive continuous improvement in results
Build a trusting and safe environment where issues are resolved constructively
Define and communicate the engineering strategy for AI-enabled software capabilities, intelligent automation, internal developer tooling, and agentic workflows
Lead teams responsible for building, integrating, and operationalizing AI-powered tools and workflow capabilities that improve developer productivity, software quality, and engineering effectiveness
Establish and reinforce enterprise standards, guardrails, and best practices for responsible AI engineering, including security, privacy, model usage, human oversight, observability, and risk management
Partner with enterprise architecture, security, infrastructure, product, and delivery leaders to align AI engineering capabilities with strategic priorities and enterprise constraints
Drive the evaluation, adoption, and scaling of AI platforms, model providers, orchestration frameworks, and reusable engineering patterns across teams
Ensure teams are equipped with the skills, tooling, and operating discipline required to build and support AI-enabled systems and agentic workflows in production
Develop measures of success and accountability for AI-enabled delivery, including productivity gains, quality outcomes, operational performance, and risk controls
Promote reuse of patterns, services, integrations, and governance mechanisms that allow AI capabilities to scale consistently across the organization
Lead organizational change related to AI adoption, including talent development, role clarity, process updates, and alignment of engineering practices with emerging technologies
Influence cross-functional leaders on the responsible use of AI in software engineering and operational workflows
Other duties as assigned
SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: Duties include, but are not limited to performance management, focused investment in people growth and direction, feedback coaching and disciplinary activities (if needed), succession planning, recognition of employees, etc.
MINIMUM KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS AND ABILITIES REQUIRED:
Typically has at least 6–10 years of combined people leadership and hands-on experience in software engineering or a related technical craft
Bachelor’s or advanced degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent combination of education and experience
Passion for guiding, teaching, mentoring, and leading people
Ability to establish self as a leader, not only by performing in a leadership role, but by being recognized by other divisions and business partners as a leader
Strong presence and credibility with excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills that are effective and impactful to a range of audiences
Demonstrated ability to communicate complex information in a simplified way and meet fast-paced deadlines
Experience communicating and removing impediments at both the team and organizational level, fostering collaboration across organizational boundaries
Deep understanding of software lifecycle development disciplines, including project management, requirements management, analysis and design, quality assurance and testing, implementation, deployment, configuration, and change management
Critical thinking and creative problem-solving skills
Understanding of agile principles and ability to reinforce the establishment of teams with the right people
Ability to lead self-organizing teams and drive change through influence
Ability to build trust and rapport that creates a sustainable and effective workplace
Experience leading engineering organizations through platform, tooling, or transformational change
Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and modern AI application patterns, including large language models, intelligent automation, orchestration frameworks, retrieval patterns, and agentic workflows
Experience establishing standards, governance, and operating models for new engineering capabilities across multiple teams
Understanding of responsible AI principles, including security, privacy, resiliency, human oversight, model risk, and compliance considerations
Ability to evaluate tradeoffs across technology, risk, operating model, talent, and execution when implementing AI-enabled capabilities
Experience influencing senior leaders and cross-functional partners on engineering strategy, technology adoption, and organizational change
Ability to build high-performing teams capable of delivering both traditional software engineering outcomes and emerging AI-enabled capabilities at scaleRevised Job Profile Summary
At Fifth Third, we understand the importance of recognizing our employees for the role they play in improving the lives of our customers, communities and each other. Our Total Rewards include comprehensive benefits and differentiated compensation offerings to give each employee the opportunity to be their best every day.
The base salary for this position is reflective of the range of salary levels for all roles within this pay grade across the U.S. Individual salaries within this range will vary based on factors such as role, relevant skillset, relevant experience, education and geographic location. In addition to the base salary, this role is eligible to participate in an incentive compensation plan, with any such payment based upon company, line of business and/or individual performance.
Our extensive benefits programs are designed to support the individual needs of our employees and their families, encompassing physical, financial, emotional and social well-being. You can learn more about those programs on our 53.com Careers page at: https://www.53.com/content/fifth-third/en/careers/benefits.html or by consulting with your talent acquisition partner.
LOCATION -- Auburn Hills, Michigan 48326Attention search firms and staffing agencies: do not submit unsolicited resumes for this posting. Fifth Third does not accept resumes from any agency that does not have an active agreement with Fifth Third. Any unsolicited resumes – no matter how they are submitted – will be considered the property of Fifth Third and Fifth Third will not be responsible for any associated fee.
Fifth Third Bank, National Association is proud to have an engaged and inclusive culture and to promote and ensure equal employment opportunity in all employment decisions regardless of race, color, gender, national origin, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, military status, veteran status or any other legally protected status.