Director Software Services

Company Overview:

10Pearls is a global, purpose-driven AI-Native digital engineering partner helping businesses re-imagine, ‎digitalize, and accelerate. As an end-to-end digital technology partner, 10Pearls helps businesses create future-proof, ‎transformative ‎digital products that leverage emerging technologies. ‎10Pearls' clients ‎include Global 2000 enterprises, high growth mid-size ‎businesses, and some of the most exciting ‎start-ups from industries like healthcare, fintech, ‎energy, education, ‎real estate, retail, and hi-tech. ‎Headquartered in the Washington DC metro area, 10Pearls has product engineering and ‎software development centers in North America, Latin America, Europe, and South Asia. To learn more, visit https://10pearls.com. 

Role:

The Director Software Services is a senior portfolio leadership role responsible for the overall health, growth, and successful delivery of a portfolio of client engagements. This role brings together delivery, product, and engineering leadership into a single, discipline-neutral position. The Delivery Director partners with Engagement Leads to ensure delivery excellence, drive business growth, manage portfolio risks, and establish AI-native ways of working across engagements. They serve as the primary escalation point between client engagements and executive leadership while ensuring strong commercial, operational, and customer outcomes. 

Responsibilities:

• Own the delivery, operational, and commercial success of a portfolio of client engagements.
• Drive portfolio health by ensuring quality, predictability, customer satisfaction, and business outcomes.
• Manage cross-engagement priorities, resource allocation, and dependency management.
• Establish operating rhythms and governance mechanisms to support high-performing delivery teams. 
• Coach, mentor, and develop Engagement Leads.
• Build leadership capability and support succession planning across the delivery organization.
• Drive talent management, staffing strategies, performance management, and technical hiring decisions.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous learning, and excellence. 
• Translate organizational and regional strategy into portfolio execution plans.
• Build and maintain executive-level client and stakeholder relationships.
• Identify opportunities for account growth, operational improvements, and increased business value.
• Partner with leadership teams on strategic initiatives and portfolio expansion opportunities. 
• Establish and continuously improve delivery standards, governance frameworks, and operational processes.
• Promote engineering excellence, quality assurance, scalability, and maintainability across engagements.
• Use delivery metrics and data-driven insights to improve predictability and performance.
• Balance delivery speed, quality, technical debt, and customer expectations. 
• Proactively identify and mitigate delivery, technical, commercial, and organizational risks.
• Lead intervention efforts for at-risk engagements and major escalations.
• Ensure effective governance, reviews, controls, and portfolio visibility.
• Provide timely escalation, recovery plans, and strategic recommendations to executive leadership. 
• Drive AI adoption across delivery, engineering, and operational workflows.
• Leverage AI for portfolio reporting, forecasting, resource planning, and decision-making.
• Promote automation, workflow optimization, and agentic tooling across engagements.
• Establish governance practices for secure, responsible, and effective AI usage.
• Measure and enhance the business impact of AI-enabled delivery practices.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
• 12+ years of experience in software delivery, engineering, product, or technology leadership roles.
• Proven experience managing multiple client engagements, programs, or portfolios.
• Demonstrated success leading large cross-functional teams and developing senior leaders.
• Experience managing commercial performance, resource planning, budgeting, and client relationships.
• Prior experience in an Engagement Lead, Delivery Lead, Engineering Leader, Program Manager, or equivalent leadership role is highly preferred. 
• Strong understanding of software delivery methodologies, engineering practices, and Agile frameworks.
• Ability to manage complex portfolios across multiple clients and delivery teams.
• Expertise in risk management, governance, escalation handling, and operational excellence.
• Excellent stakeholder management and executive communication skills.
• Strong commercial acumen with experience driving account growth and profitability.
• Ability to translate business strategy into measurable delivery outcomes.
• Experience utilizing AI tools and platforms to improve delivery operations, reporting, and decision-making.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Proven ability to lead through influence, build high-performing teams, and drive organizational change. 
• Portfolio Leadership
• Leadership & Capability Building
• Business & Strategic Leadership
• Delivery Excellence
• Risk & Governance
• AI-Native Leadership