[Hiring] Systems Technical Director @ICF

Role Description

At ICF Next, we are fearless in finding new ways to solve problems, relentless in making sure it pays off for our clients and committed to making a positive change in the world. Join our community of mission-driven creatives, communicators, strategists, and technologists to challenge the status quo.

The Team

You'll serve as the senior engineering leader for a cross-functional program that includes:

• Engineering team leads
• Software engineers
• Solution and cloud architects
• Database administrators
• DevSecOps engineers
• Quality assurance specialists
• User experience professionals
• Business analysts
• Product managers
• Data analysts
• Accessibility and security specialists
• Behavioral health subject matter experts

We partner with federal stakeholders to operate and modernize a mission-critical data collection and performance reporting platform used by grantees and program staff.

The Work

In this program-level role, you will serve as the overall technical authority for platform operations and maintenance and for development, modernization, and enhancement. You will:

• Connect architecture, delivery, operations, and modernization into a coherent plan.
• Guide multiple engineering workstreams and team leads.
• Make and document consequential technical decisions.
• Establish shared standards.
• Ensure releases are secure, testable, supportable, and aligned with program priorities.
• Evaluate designs, challenge assumptions, troubleshoot difficult issues, and advise the client on options and tradeoffs.
• Balance reliable operation of the current .NET platform with incremental modernization, improved cloud and deployment practices, stronger data quality, better observability, and a sustainable path for reducing technical debt.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and maintain the program engineering strategy, technical roadmap, architecture guardrails, and incremental modernization approach.
• Lead engineering team leads and multiple development workstreams by aligning priorities, capacity, dependencies, standards, and delivery expectations.
• Provide technical direction for .NET applications, APIs, domain and data models, SQL Server solutions, system integrations, and cloud-hosted services.
• Establish program-wide practices for secure development, automated testing, code review, CI/CD, release readiness, documentation, and production support.
• Evaluate technical options and communicate recommendations, costs, risks, dependencies, and tradeoffs to program leadership and federal stakeholders.
• Partner with product and delivery leaders to shape release plans, estimates, staffing needs, and acceptance criteria that are technically achievable.
• Coordinate architecture and delivery across cloud, DevSecOps, database, security, quality assurance, accessibility, data, user experience, and operations teams.
• Identify and manage technical debt, performance constraints, reliability risks, integration dependencies, and modernization sequencing.
• Oversee response to complex production issues, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and improvements to monitoring and operational readiness.
• Mentor engineering leads and senior engineers, strengthen technical decision-making, and build consistent engineering practices across the program.
• Maintain technical roadmaps, decision records, interface documentation, standards, and executive-ready status reporting.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, information systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• 7+ years delivering and supporting resilient, well-tested production web applications, including 3+ years working with C#, .NET or .NET Core, ASP.NET MVC or Web API, and SQL Server.
• 5+ years designing and delivering APIs or distributed application services using .NET or another modern language and framework.
• 3+ years leading engineering teams, technical leads, or multiple engineering workstreams, including Agile delivery, estimation, dependency management, and technical risk management.
• 3+ years making and documenting architecture decisions across applications, data, integrations, cloud infrastructure, security, and operations, and communicating tradeoffs to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• 3+ years establishing or improving engineering practices for automated testing, code quality, source control, CI/CD, release management, and production support.
• 3+ years guiding the design or implementation of authentication, authorization, role-based access, privacy protections, and secure handling of sensitive data.
• Authorization to work in the United States, ability to perform all work within the United States, and ability to obtain and maintain a favorable Public Trust determination and complete required background screening.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading incremental modernization of a large legacy .NET platform, including sequencing technical debt reduction while maintaining reliable production service.
• Experience guiding AWS or AWS GovCloud architecture and operations, including cost optimization, capacity planning, observability, and service reliability.
• Experience establishing deployment and security automation using CI/CD platforms, containers, infrastructure as code, and repeatable environment configuration.
• Experience supporting federal authorization efforts, including NIST Moderate controls, FedRAMP, ATO processes, and preparation of technical evidence.
• Experience overseeing architecture for high-volume data collection, batch ingestion, ETL, data quality, reporting, or business intelligence integrations.
• Experience guiding federated identity architecture, including single sign-on, multifactor authentication, and fine-grained access controls.
• Experience leading complex production incident response, root-cause analysis, and improvements that prevent recurring issues.
• Experience providing technical leadership for federal government, public health, grants management, behavioral health, or performance measurement programs.

Pay Range

The pay range for this position based on full-time employment is: $158,819.00 - $269,993.00.

***Please note this role is contingent.