Director, Software Engineering

It All Starts with Our People

As the leader in automotive preventive maintenance, Valvoline has a proven track record of growth. We continue to invest in our people, processes, and technology to strengthen our ability to efficiently deliver Quick, Easy, Trusted service across all our stores – every day. We're not just in the car business; we're in the people business. And we're looking for humble, hungry, and smart people to help us shape the future of mobility. If you're hungry to drive change and seek a dynamic, collaborative environment that fuels both personal and professional growth, you've found your place with us.

Our highest priority is creating a welcoming workplace with team members from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds and experiences.

How You’ll Make a Difference

The Director, Software Engineering is responsible for the strategy, delivery, budget, and continuous improvement of Valvoline's software engineering capabilities across customer-facing, store operations, enterprise, and digital platforms. This leader pairs strategic leadership with deep technical credibility to influence enterprise technology direction and build a high- performing engineering organization of architects, engineers, and agile delivery professionals. The role partners with DevOps and Infrastructure teams to deploy and operate the solutions built by the team.

A central expectation of this role is to shape Valvoline's future Store platform in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture, Digital Product, Infrastructure, and Security leaders. Together, they set technical direction and architectural standards and evaluate tradeoffs to keep the platform scalable and aligned to store operations.

The Director also grows engineering talent and establishes development standards, continuing the adoption of cloud-native solutions and augmenting teams with agentic frameworks to deliver high-quality solutions at speed.

Key Responsibilities

Strategy & Delivery

• Define and execute the software engineering strategy aligned with enterprise technology and business objectives and translate Digital Product roadmaps into executable engineering plans.
• Own engineering delivery of the future Store platform roadmap, from architecture through release and ongoing support.
• Ensure teams deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and supportable solutions, with governance for software lifecycle management and technical debt reduction.
• Manage budget, delivery capacity, prioritization, and resource allocation across initiatives and product teams.
• Drive modernization using cloud-native architectures, APIs, microservices, automation, and AI-assisted development.

Architecture & Technical Excellence

• Lead technology selection, design patterns, integration approaches, and build, buy, or integrate tradeoffs for the future Store platform.
• Lead the enterprise and senior solution architects who report to this role, align with
• Enterprise Architecture on technology standards, and document architectural decisions so teams adopt them consistently.
• Set the standard for technical quality through architecture and design reviews, code quality standards, peer reviews, automated testing, CI/CD practices, and observability, while ensuring solutions meet cybersecurity, compliance, and data governance requirements.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-assisted engineering approaches that create business value, and support simplification across legacy and modern platforms.

Cloud & Platform Engineering Partnership

• Partner with DevOps and Infrastructure leaders to mature cloud engineering practices, platform reliability, and automation across build, testing, deployment, monitoring, and support processes.
• Champion Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), DevSecOps, and Infrastructure-as-Code principles, and drive adoption of engineering tooling and developer productivity solutions.

Talent Leadership & Organizational Development

• Lead, coach, develop, and retain a high-performing software engineering organization, with clear career paths, technical growth opportunities, and leadership development plans.
• Build succession pipelines for critical technical and leadership roles.
• Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, and customer focus, and drive workforce planning and organizational design aligned with future technology needs.

Cross-Functional Partnership

• Partner with Digital Product, Quality Engineering, Data & AI, Infrastructure, Security, Enterprise Architecture, and PMO leaders to align on priorities, and communicate engineering strategy, risks, tradeoffs, and progress to technology and business leadership.
• Make and own technical decisions within the scope of the Store platform and engineering organization, in collaboration with Enterprise Architecture and Digital Product, while influencing senior leadership and enterprise decision-making on technology investments and product delivery.
• Support vendor selection, strategic partnerships, and third-party delivery teams when applicable.

Success Measures

Success in this role will be demonstrated through:

• Reliable delivery of technology roadmaps, including Store platform architecture and milestones on schedule.
• Documented architectural decisions that are adopted across teams and produce a scalable, secure, and maintainable platform.
• Improved engineering velocity and predictability, with reduced technical debt and production defects.
• Increased automation and cloud adoption, with strong operational stability and platform availability.
• Enhanced developer productivity and employee engagement.
• Development of future engineering leaders and key successors.

Leadership Competencies

• Strategic Thinking & Logical Problem Solving | Technical Leadership | Architectural Judgment & Technical Decision-Making | Talent Development | Collaboration & Influence | Change Management & Adoption Mindset | Business Acumen

What You’ll Need to Succeed

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including 5+ years leading managers, architects, and engineering teams.
• Experience making and owning architectural and technical decisions for large-scale, business-critical platforms.
• Experience leading enterprise application development and cloud modernization initiatives, and building and scaling software engineering organizations.
• Experience influencing senior leadership and enterprise-level technology decisions.
• Experience partnering with Product, Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, and business stakeholders, and managing customer, business owner, vendor, and delivery partner relationships.
• Experience working within Agile product delivery environments.
• Budget and financial management experience.
• Technical experience in cloud platforms (AWS), platform and solution architecture (including APIs and microservices), and DevOps and CI/CD practices.
• Technical experience in modern software engineering methodologies with agentic augmentation, engineering governance and quality practices, and application security and secure development principles.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.
• Experience in retail service environments with large-scale field organizations, such as automotive maintenance or quick-service restaurants.
• Experience in North American business and compliance environments.

We Take Care of the WHOLE You

• Health insurance plans (medical, dental, vision)
• HSA and flexible spending accounts
• 401(k)
• Incentive opportunity*
• Life insurance
• Short and long-term disability insurance
• Paid vacation and holidays*
• Employee Assistance Program
• Valvoline Instant Oil Change discounts
• Tuition reimbursement*
• Adoption assistance* 

*Terms and conditions apply, and benefits may differ depending on position.

Your Path to Valvoline

Valvoline provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Join us in revolutionizing the automotive aftermarket industry while enjoying competitive benefits, a supportive work culture, and opportunities for advancement. Apply now and become an integral part of our journey at Valvoline.

The Company endeavors to make its recruitment process accessible to any and all users. Reasonable accommodations will be provided upon request to applicants with disabilities to facilitate equal opportunity throughout the recruitment and selection process. Please contact Human Resources at 1.833.VVV.Report or email ECC@valvoline.com to make a request for reasonable accommodation during any aspect of the recruitment and selection process. The contact information is for accommodation requests only; do not use this contact information to inquire about the status of applications.

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