Director Next Generation Architecture - Aerospace & Defense

About the role

IFS is looking for an Engineering Leader who is both a technical and people leader, acting as a player-coach for one or more autonomous product teams while keeping the depth of a Principal Engineer or Architect. The role is centred on AI fluency: driving AI adoption across teams, from AI-assisted development workflows to AI-powered product capabilities, and embedding AI as a practical part of how software is built.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and grow engineers: hire, onboard, coach and develop Software Engineers across the career ladder, from associate to senior lead.
• Own delivery outcomes: ensure teams deliver high-quality software at a sustainable pace, balancing technical quality with business value.
• Drive technical quality: take part in architectural reviews, guide technology choices and ensure teams follow modern practices (CI/CD, automated testing, observability, infrastructure as code).
• Champion AI fluency: drive adoption of AI-assisted development, ensure engineers can build and validate AI-powered features, and foster a culture where AI is a practical tool.
• Remove obstacles: resolve cross-team dependencies, protect teams from organisational noise and keep them focused.
• Shape engineering culture: foster continuous learning, healthy debate and a "you build it, you run it" mindset.
• Partner with Product Management, Design, Architecture and senior leadership to align technical execution with product strategy.
• Help engineers develop specialisms such as front-end, back-end, data engineering, applied AI, platform/SRE, security and more.

Required profile

• Significant software engineering experience with a track record at Principal Engineer or Architect level.
• Proven experience managing and developing engineering teams of typically 5+ engineers, including hiring and career development.
• Demonstrated AI fluency: hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools and a record of driving AI adoption in engineering teams.
• Experience leading teams that own the full delivery lifecycle, from development and testing to deployment and production operations.
• Excellent communication skills and a coaching mindset.

Required skills

• Cloud-native architectures, microservices, API-first design, CI/CD, containerization and infrastructure as code.
• Proficiency in one or more modern languages such as Go, Python, Java, C# or TypeScript.
• AI/ML integration patterns (RAG, agents, evaluation harnesses) and AI-assisted development tools.
• Preferred: enterprise software or SaaS experience, MLOps and AI safety/governance, event-driven architectures, security practices (OWASP, threat modelling) and familiarity with team topologies.

The role is full-time. IFS offers flexibility and hybrid work opportunities.