Senior Director Engineering – Manufacturing

We are looking for a Senior Engineering Leader to lead in the Manufacturing Product organization at IFS. This role operates at a strategic and organizational level, overseeing a multi-layered engineering organization comprising Engineering Directors, Architects, and Principal Engineers.  You will be responsible for defining and executing engineering strategy across multiple teams and domains, ensuring alignment with product vision, architecture direction, and business priorities.  While this is a senior leadership role, technical depth and sound engineering judgment remain critical. You are expected to guide architectural direction, influence key technical decisions, and ensure strong engineering discipline across the organization.  AI is a core enabler and strategic priority in this role. You will drive enterprise-wide adoption of AI-assisted engineering and AI-powered product capabilities, ensuring measurable impact on both engineering productivity and customer value.     What You’ll Do  Organizational Leadership  Lead a multi-layered engineering organization, including Engineering Directors, Architects, and Principal Engineers  Define and execute the engineering strategy for Manufacturing, aligned with product and company-wide technology direction  Drive organizational design, capability building, and succession planning  Build a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous improvement  Scale leadership capability by coaching and developing leaders of leaders   Delivery and Execution  Own delivery outcomes across multiple teams, ensuring predictability, quality, and timely execution at scale  Establish and evolve consistent engineering operating models and execution practices  Balance business priorities, technical investments, and operational excellence  Ensure teams operate with a “you build it, you run it” mindset     Technical & Architectural Leadership  Provide strategic technical direction across teams, in close collaboration with Architecture  Influence and governing architecture decisions, platform evolution, and system design standards  Ensure high standards across:   Cloud-native architecture  CI/CD and DevOps practices   Automated testing, observability, and security  Maintain strong technical credibility and intervene hands-on where it adds the most value    AI Leadership  Drive organization-wide adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices  Enable teams to improve delivery speed, quality, and confidence using AI   Guide development of AI-enabled Manufacturing capabilities   Ensure AI usage is practical, responsible, and outcome-driven     Cross-functional Collaboration  Partner closely with Product Management, Architecture, and Manufacturing domain leaders   Aligning engineering execution with business priorities and customer outcomes  Represent Engineering in senior leadership and strategic forums    Manufacturing Domain Leadership  Provide strong leadership across key Manufacturing domains, including:   End-to-end Manufacturing lifecycle (Plan, Build, Quality, Maintain  Regulatory and industry-specific requirements   Large-scale, configurable, multi-tenant Manufacturing Solutions   Aligning Manufacturing strategy with platform, data, and integration capabilities     Required Background  Strong foundation in software engineering and enterprise application development   Extensive experience leading leaders (Directors/Managers) and senior technical experts  Proven track record delivering large-scale, complex software systems across multiple teams  Deep understanding of modern architectures (cloud-native, APIs, distributed systems, agentic workflows)  Ability to operate effectively at both strategic and technical levels  Strong communication, decision-making, and stakeholder management skills   Customer obsession, ability to work hands on with customers on site, including travel to key manufacturing customer locations.  Preferred Experience  Manufacturing, ERP, or industrial enterprise software   Platform or multi-product engineering leadership  Experience scaling engineering organizations and driving transformation  AI-enabled enterprise product development   Executive-level stakeholder engagement    What We’re Looking For  You balance strategic leadership with strong technical depth   You lead leaders and build high-performing organizations  You create clarity and alignment while empowering teams to succeed  You care deeply about quality, sustainability, and customer value   You see AI as a practical enabler of transformation   You scale impact by enabling others, not controlling them IFS is a billion-dollar revenue company with 7000+ employees on all continents. Our leading AI technology is the backbone of our award-winning enterprise software solutions, enabling our customers to be their best when it really matters–at the Moment of Service™. Our commitment to internal AI adoption has allowed us to stay at the forefront of technological advancements, ensuring our colleagues can unlock their creativity and productivity, and our solutions are always cutting-edge.  At IFS, we’re flexible, we’re innovative, and we’re focused not only on how we can engage with our customers but on how we can make a real change and have a worldwide impact. We