Director, Applications, DevOps & Engineering

Closing Date: May 18, 2026

Salary Range: $76,821.60 - $101,879.70

 Salary will be commensurate with education and experience

Job Code: ITM023

Pay Grade: P

Location: Atlanta, GA (Hybrid)

Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning is responsible for meeting the childcare and early education needs of Georgia's children and their families.  The agency administers the nationally recognized Georgia's PreK Program, licenses childcare centers and home-based childcare, administers Georgia Childcare and Parent Services (CAPS) program, federal nutrition programs, and manages Quality Rated, Georgia's community powered childcare rating system.

The department also houses the Head Start State Collaboration Office, distributes federal funding to enhance the quality and availability of childcare, and works collaboratively with Georgia childcare resource and referral agencies and organizations throughout the state to enhance early care and education.

Job Description

Own the full lifecycle of DECAL’s application portfolio—roadmap, reliability, upgrades, and end-of-life decisions.

Drive delivery velocity across .NET and Salesforce development teams using disciplined Agile and DevOps practices in Azure DevOps.

Set and enforce engineering standards: code quality, security, documentation, and architecture review.

Lead technical design reviews for new systems, integrations, and major enhancements.

Architect and execute the shift from legacy .NET systems toward modern, cloud-native patterns on Azure.

Lead Salesforce platform governance—org health, technical debt, release cadence, and ISV vendor management.

Embed AI and automation where it delivers measurable value—not as experiments, but as production capabilities.  This portfolio includes mission-critical SaaS/PaaS components that demand uncompromising architectural rigor.

Job Duties:

•       The DELL Boomi iPaaS: Impose a strict consolidation mandate. All new point-to-point integrations must be blocked. Existing integrations must be re-architected into reusable APIs managed through a Boomi/Azure API Gateway combination, driving down vendor lock-in risk and simplifying integration monitoring.

•       DocuWare/DocuSign Workflow Integrity: Eliminate all manual hand-offs for legal and compliance documents. Ensure document workflows are fully automated, metadata immediately ingested into the Microsoft Fabric data estate, and digital signature chain-of-custody is auditable via Purview lineage.

•       GitHub/External Code Governance: Establish an ironclad security and governance framework for any external code contribution or vendor-supplied IP stored in GitHub. Mandate integration with Azure security tools for dependency scanning and code review standards that exceed internal .NET/Salesforce code. Ensure no external code bypasses DECAL’s CI/CD and deployment gates.

•       Operational Productivity SOPs: Institute a mandatory “Latency Audit” for all critical support function SOPs. Any process with cumulative human decision-making exceeding 30 minutes or requiring more than 3 manual hand-offs is classified as “Bloatware” and must be fully automated or eliminated within one quarter.

•       Application Penetration Testing: Transition from annual PEN testing to a continuous, aggressive security posture. Mandate weekly automated DevSecOps scanning integrated into the CI/CD pipeline. Quarterly external black-box penetration tests are treated as surprise “Crisis Override” events, requiring the team to remediate any CVSS Medium or higher vulnerability within a 48-hour execution window.

•       ADA/WCAG Compliance (Non-Negotiable Gate): Elevate ADA compliance (WCAG 2.1 AA) from a design suggestion to a hard deployment gate. Implement automated accessibility scanning (e.g., Axe, Lighthouse) that runs against every code check-in. Any failure must automatically block the pull request from merging.

•       Grow and mature the existing team of engineers, focusing on their craft, accountability, and impact.

•       Define career ladders, performance standards, and hiring criteria that attract strong engineers to public sector work.

•       Instill a culture of ownership: engineers who debug production issues at 9 PM because the mission demands it, not because they were told to.

•       Coach senior technical staff to become force multipliers, not individual contributors with titles.

•       Own release management: CI/CD pipelines, environment governance, and deployment quality across dev, UAT, and production.

•       Establish and maintain SOC 2-aligned controls for application security, access management, and change management.

•       Be the technical voice in executive presentations, steering committees, and regulatory discussions.

•       Hold vendors—SIs, SaaS providers, and staffing firms—to delivery, quality, and security commitments.

•       Own the applications technology budget: make defensible tradeoffs between build, buy, and maintain.

•       Evaluate and onboard new technology with rigor: POC to pilot to production, not POC to shelf.

•       Lead the full lifecycle of DECAL’s application portfolio across .NET, Salesforce, data pipelines, and AI-powered platforms.

•       Drive Agile delivery discipline and DevOps maturity across all engineering teams using Azure DevOps.

•       Architect and execute the migration from legacy .NET systems to cloud-native patterns on Azure.

•       Govern Salesforce platform health, release cadence, and ISV vendor relationships.

•       Enforce integration governance across DELL Boomi, DocuSign/DocuWare, and GitHub-managed vendor code.

•       Own CI/CD pipeline design, environment governance, and release quality across dev, UAT, and production.

•       Manage team hiring, career development, performance standards, and succession planning.

•       Hold SaaS vendors, staffing firms, and system integrators to delivery, quality, and security commitments.

•       Serve as the technical voice in executive presentations, steering committees, and GTA/regulatory discussions.

•       Define and manage the applications technology budget, making defensible tradeoffs between build, buy, and maintain.

Physical Position Requirements

•                 Ability to receive detailed information through oral communication. The ability to speak clearly and hear at a normal conversational level is required.

•                 Close visual acuity required to perform activities such as: preparing and analyzing data and figures; viewing a computer terminal; and extensive reading and visual inspection.

•                 Requires the ability to exercise judgment, decisiveness, and creativity in situations involving the evaluation of information against sensory, judgmental, or subjective criteria.

Entry Qualifications:

Associate degree in a related field from an accredited college or university and five (5) years in a managerial or supervisory role; or seven (7) years in a managerial or supervisory role; or one (1) year of experience at the lower level Mgr 3, Information Technology (ITM022) or position equivalent.

Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field from an accredited college or university. MBA or advanced degree preferred. Ten (10) or more years of directly related experience, with at least five (5) years leading engineering teams of 10 or more.

•                 Proven delivery record with .NET application platforms in production environments.

•                 Salesforce platform experience—governance, release management, and technical oversight (not just configuration).

•                 Azure DevOps fluency: designed CI/CD pipelines and sprint governance frameworks, not just approved them.

•                 Track record of executing modernization or migration programs—not just scoping them.

•                 Ability to translate technical decisions for executive and non-technical audiences without dumbing them down.

•                 Experience leading application development initiatives to serve programs and customers through digital, mobile, and cloud services.

Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning is an equal opportunity employer.  A background check will be completed upon hire, which may consist of any of the following: criminal history, credit history, employment history, educational records, IRS records and driving records.

If you are an individual with a disability who may require assistance or other reasonable accommodation in order to participate in the selection process for this position, you may contact our HR department at 678-879-2993.  Due to the volume of submissions received by this office, information concerning application or interview status cannot be provided in writing, over the phone, or in person. All applicants who submit a complete application package will be considered but may not necessarily receive notification or an interview.  The job posting may be subject to being closed at any time without notice.  Only those qualified candidates who are selected for an interview shall receive notification upon the filling of this vacancy.

Bright from the Start: Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning is an equal opportunity employer.