[Hiring] Senior Director, Global Head of Solution Development & AI Platforms @Unisys

Role Description

Unisys is an AI-first company — and this role is at the heart of that transformation. The Senior Director, Global Head of Solution Development & AI Platforms is a deeply technical, hands-on engineering leader responsible for architecting, building, and scaling the software platforms that power Unisys Digital Workplace Solutions worldwide.

This is not a purely strategic or managerial role. We are seeking a proven software engineering leader who can write and review code, set architectural direction, hold teams to engineering excellence, and accelerate the delivery of production-grade AI systems. You will own the full engineering lifecycle of the Service Experience Accelerator (SEA) — our flagship AI platform — alongside a broad portfolio of automation, data, and orchestration services delivered to enterprise clients globally.

• Software Engineering & Platform Development Leadership
  • Own the full software development lifecycle (SDLC) for the SEA platform and all Digital Workplace solution engineering.
  • Lead hands-on design and code review across microservices, APIs, and AI-integrated application layers.
  • Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality gates, test coverage thresholds, security practices, and CI/CD pipeline configuration in Azure DevOps (ADO).
  • Drive the architecture of cloud-native applications on Azure, including containerised services (Docker/Kubernetes), serverless functions, and event-driven patterns.
  • Define and evolve the ADO engineering workflow: branching strategy, pull request standards, build pipelines, release gates, and sprint cadence.
  • Own technical debt strategy — prioritising refactoring, deprecation, and modernisation alongside feature delivery.
  • Ensure engineering documentation is rigorous: system design docs, API contracts, runbooks, and architectural decision records (ADRs).
• AI/ML Engineering & AI-First Platform Development
  • Champion Unisys’ AI-first strategy by engineering AI capabilities that are production-grade, observable, and scalable.
  • Architect and oversee the engineering of LLM-powered applications, including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines, prompt engineering frameworks, and agentic orchestration patterns.
  • Lead integration of Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and related services into the SEA platform and client-facing solutions.
  • Build robust MLOps practices: model versioning, A/B testing, performance monitoring, drift detection, and automated retraining pipelines.
  • Evaluate and adopt AI frameworks including LangChain, Semantic Kernel, AutoGen, and vector database solutions (e.g., Azure AI Search, Pinecone, Weaviate).
  • Implement responsible AI engineering guardrails: content filtering, grounding, hallucination mitigation, audit logging, and bias monitoring.
  • Develop AI-powered capabilities including enterprise copilots, intelligent workflow automation, predictive analytics, and NLP-driven knowledge retrieval.
  • Establish engineering benchmarks for AI system performance: latency, token efficiency, recall/precision, and end-to-end task completion rates.
• Agile Engineering Delivery & Azure DevOps (ADO) Excellence
  • Own the ADO organisation: configure and govern boards, repos, pipelines, test plans, and artefact feeds across global engineering teams.
  • Drive sprint planning, backlog refinement, and velocity management with a data-driven approach.
  • Implement and continuously improve CI/CD pipelines: automated testing, code quality scanning (SonarQube or equivalent), security scanning (SAST/DAST), and progressive deployment strategies (blue/green, canary).
  • Enforce definition-of-done standards that include test automation coverage, security review, performance benchmarking, and documentation.
  • Lead post-sprint retrospectives that produce measurable process improvements.
  • Champion DevSecOps: integrate security into every pipeline stage, from dependency scanning to infrastructure-as-code (IaC) validation.
• Application Architecture & Full-Stack Development Standards
  • Define and own the application development standards across the engineering organisation.
  • Establish full-stack development standards: frontend (React/TypeScript or equivalent), backend APIs (REST/GraphQL, .NET, Python, or Node.js), and data layer (SQL/NoSQL, Azure Cosmos DB, Azure SQL).
  • Architect multi-tenant SaaS patterns for enterprise platform delivery.
  • Define API-first development practices: OpenAPI/Swagger standards, versioning strategy, backward compatibility policy, and developer portal tooling.
  • Own integration architecture: enterprise system connectors (ServiceNow, Microsoft 365, Azure AD), event streaming (Azure Service Bus, Event Grid), and data pipeline engineering.
  • Lead performance engineering: load testing frameworks, SLO/SLA definitions, capacity planning, and incident response engineering.
  • Drive platform observability: structured logging, distributed tracing (Azure Monitor, Application Insights), alerting standards, and on-call engineering culture.
• Global Engineering Team Leadership & Talent Development
  • Build, lead, and grow a world-class engineering organisation distributed across multiple geographies.
  • Hire, develop, and retain senior engineers, principal architects, and staff-level AI engineers.
  • Run rigorous engineering hiring: define levelling frameworks, design technical assessments, and conduct system design interviews personally.
  • Build an engineering culture of ownership, peer code review, RFC processes, and blameless post-mortems.
  • Establish engineering guilds or communities of practice for AI/ML, platform engineering, DevSecOps, and frontend disciplines.
  • Create clear engineering career ladders with objective promotion criteria tied to technical impact.
  • Mentor senior engineers into principal and staff roles; actively build succession depth for all critical technical positions.
• Technology Strategy, Product Alignment & Stakeholder Engagement
  • Define the multi-year engineering roadmap for SEA and Digital Workplace platforms.
  • Partner with Product Management to shape prioritisation through an engineering lens.
  • Serve as the primary technical voice in executive and client conversations.
  • Engage technology partners at an engineering and product level.
  • Represent Unisys engineering capabilities in RFP responses, client solution design sessions, and industry forums.

Qualifications

• 12–18+ years of progressive software engineering and platform development experience.
• 5+ years leading global engineering organisations.
• Demonstrable hands-on software development background.
• Deep expertise in cloud-native application development on Microsoft Azure.
• Production experience engineering AI/ML systems.
• Expert-level Azure DevOps (ADO) proficiency.
• Strong command of modern software engineering practices.
• Proven track record delivering complex enterprise SaaS or platform products at global scale.
• Experience operating in enterprise IT environments with security, compliance, and governance requirements.

Requirements

• Prior engineering or product engineering leadership at a hyperscaler, enterprise software company, or large system integrator.
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft AI/ML ecosystem.
• Experience with AI agent frameworks.
• Background in digital workplace, enterprise service management, or employee experience platforms.
• Experience building and operating multi-region, multi-tenant enterprise platforms with high availability.
• Familiarity with ServiceNow platform engineering and integration patterns.

Company Description

Unisys is proud to be an equal opportunity employer that considers all qualified applicants without regard to age, caste, citizenship, color, disability, family medical history, family status, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, parental status, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, transgender status, veteran status or any other category protected by law.

This commitment includes our efforts to provide for all those who seek to express interest in employment the opportunity to participate without barriers.