Director of Software Engineering

The Role

Agilent is seeking an experienced Director of Software Engineering to lead software engineering teams responsible for build out of a unified software platform. This leader will build and develop high-performing engineering organizations, deliver high-quality commercial software, establish strong technical and architectural practices, and improve execution across the product lifecycle.

The role requires deep software engineering experience, strong technical judgment, people leadership, life-sciences domain expertise, and the ability to operate across a global, multi-business organization. The successful candidate will partner closely with Product Management, R&D, Systems Engineering, Architecture, Quality, and business leadership to translate customer and market needs into software strategies and roadmaps, while helping teams adopt AI-enabled and automated engineering practices where they improve productivity, quality, and speed.

Key Responsibilities

• Own software engineering execution across the complete product lifecycle, from concept through development, verification, release, sustaining engineering, and lifecycle management.
• Partner with Product Management and R&D leadership to translate customer needs and business priorities into executable software strategies and roadmaps.
• Establish predictable planning, development, and release processes while balancing new-product development, platform investment, technical debt, sustaining engineering, and regulatory commitments.
• Lead, develop, and scale a high-performing software engineering organization responsible for analytical products as part of a larger portfolio.
• Provide leadership across software domains that may include instrument and embedded software, desktop applications, enterprise informatics, cloud services, APIs, and data platforms.
• Develop engineering managers, senior technical leaders, and individual contributors; attract and retain strong software engineering talent.
• Manage dependencies across software, firmware, hardware, systems engineering, automation, and scientific workflows; provide senior leadership clear visibility into risks, tradeoffs, and investment needs.
• Lead globally distributed teams and create an operating model that enables teams across regions to work as one integrated engineering organization.
• Ensure software development practices meet the quality and regulatory expectations of life-science, diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and other regulated customer environments.
• Partner with Quality and Regulatory teams to strengthen lifecycle practices, design controls, verification and validation, documentation, traceability, and audit readiness.

Skills and Competencies

• Deep software engineering and architecture credibility with strong systems thinking and technical problem-solving capability.
• Proven ability to lead and develop engineering organizations and other engineering leaders.
• Ability to balance technical quality, speed, customer needs, regulatory requirements, and business priorities.
• Strong understanding of software quality, cybersecurity, reliability, and regulated development.
• Strong product and customer orientation, change-leadership capability, executive communication, and stakeholder management.
• Ability to influence across a distributed, multi-business organization and openness to new technologies and engineering approaches.