Senior Director of Engineering

ABOUT THE CAMPAIGN FINANCE BOARD The Campaign Finance Board is a nonpartisan, independent city agency that empowers New Yorkers to have a greater impact on their elections. Our mission is to make local democracy more open, transparent, and equitable by removing barriers to participation. We make it easier for New Yorkers to vote, meaningfully support candidates for city office, and run for office themselves. NYC Votes, our voter engagement initiative, meets people where they are to share trustworthy election information and help New Yorkers make a plan to vote. We publish the citywide Voter Guide, which delivers information about candidates directly to voters’ doors. Our public matching funds program ensures small contributions can make a big difference, allowing regular people to run for office by relying on the support of other regular people, not just wealthy donors and special interests. And we lift the veil on how candidates raise and spend money, increasing transparency and accountability in local government. We believe that when every New Yorker is empowered to participate meaningfully in elections, candidates will better reflect the communities they serve, elected leaders will be more accountable to the public, and New Yorkers will have a democracy they can truly trust. ABOUT THE UNIT Strategy, Products, and Innovation Division The Strategy, Products, and Innovation (SPI) division is where the agency plans its future and builds it. SPI brings together long-term planning, research and policy implementation, product development, and technology modernization operating across the agency to test new ideas and turn them into lasting improvements and new experiences. Across all of its work, the division is committed to advancing a democracy that is more open, transparent, and equitable for all New Yorkers. Technology Department The Technology Department builds, maintains, and secures the systems that make New York City’s campaign finance program work. This is the team behind CSMART, CFIS, FACTS, and the agency’s website, the platforms that power public matching funds, disclosure, and compliance for campaigns across the city. The department is in the middle of an ambitious modernization migrating core systems to the cloud, integrating modern software solutions where they fit, and building infrastructure engineered for the security, reliability, and scale that high-stakes public systems demand. Members of the team write and maintain custom software, strengthen the agency’s cybersecurity posture, and turn a legacy environment into a modern one. For engineers who want their work to matter, the mission of this team is to build the technology that makes democracy work better for all. JOB DESCRIPTION The New York City Campaign Finance Board seeks a Senior Director of Engineering to lead the engineering function that builds and runs the technology behind New York City's public matching funds program, the Voter Guide, and the agency's campaign finance disclosure and compliance systems. For engineers who want their work to matter, this is the seat that shapes how campaign finance, voter education, and public matching funds get built for the next decade of New York elections. The platforms that power every city election are in the middle of a multi-year modernization from legacy .NET onto cloud-native Python infrastructure, targeting completion in 2027. This senior leadership role owns the multi-year technical roadmap end to end, supervising software development, quality assurance, and Salesforce engineering, with data engineering operating as an agency-wide shared platform service that supports analytics and research teams across the agency. Within 6 to 12 months of hire, the role expands to include direct oversight of Infrastructure and Cybersecurity, consolidating engineering accountability across the agency's technical stack. This is a turnaround leadership role. The Senior Director inherits a function with inconsistent engineering practice, meaningful technical debt, and technical leaders who are being tasked with growing their managerial capabilities. Building baseline engineering discipline, developing managerial capability, and delivering reliable services through active transformation are the core of the first two years. This is also a build role. The Senior Director stands up a Salesforce engineering function from scratch, matures a data engineering operation into a shared platform service, and reskills a technical workforce alongside vendor knowledge transfer. The role is designed for an engineering leader earlier in their leadership career, someone with the technical credibility to earn trust across engineering teams and the appetite to build practices where they do not yet exist. Key Responsibilities Leadership Development and Organizational Management - Build, supervise and mentor a leadership team across engineering functions (software development, quality assurance, Salesforce engineering, data engineering, and infrastructure), establishing clear accountability and developing managerial capability within the engineering organization. - Work with CFB leadership and internal partners to implement baseline people management practices, including hiring, performance management, career development, feedback, evaluation and retention strategies that attract and retain engineering talent in the public sector. - Foster an engineering culture that prioritizes collaborative problem-solving, knowledge-sharing, accountability, and continuous improvement across technical teams and agency-wide partnerships. - In partnership with the Senior Director of Product, work with CFB leadership and internal partners to expand knowledge, engagement and comfort with the software development lifecycle, agile processes and product thinking, to ensure a balanced mixture of maintenance and stability, quality-of-life improvements and am