Director Java Jobs in Highlands Ranch, CO (NOW HIRING)

About DAT

Job Application Deadline: 08/31/2026

The Opportunity

The Engineering Manager for the Carrier Services Board (CSB) team is a critical leadership role at the heart of DAT's freight intelligence platform. CSB is the backbone of how carrier rate contributions flow into and power DAT's market analytics-data that brokers, shippers, and carriers rely on every day to make confident pricing decisions.

In this role you will lead a team of software engineers responsible for the systems that ingest, process, and publish carrier-contributed rate data at scale. You will own a multi-year initiative to migrate CSB's legacy codebase to a modern, cloud-native architecture on Kubernetes, while continuing to ship value for customers without disruption. You will partner closely with Product Management, operating within DAT's Product Operating Model, to align engineering delivery with roadmap priorities and keep the team moving with purpose.

This is a role for a technically grounded leader who is as comfortable debating architectural trade-offs as they are running a sprint retrospective or writing a career growth plan for a mid-level engineer.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership & Development

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 5-8 software engineers across different levels, fostering a culture of ownership, craftsmanship, and continuous improvement.
• Conduct regular 1:1s, set clear performance expectations, and write rigorous, development-focused performance reviews.
• Recruit, interview, and hire exceptional engineers; build a diverse, high-performing team.
• Create individualized growth plans that align personal career goals with team and business needs.
• Resolve team conflicts and ambiguity proactively; protect the team's focus and psychological safety.

Product & Delivery

• Operate within DAT's Product Operating Model-partnering with Product Managers on discovery, prioritization, and roadmap planning to ensure engineering is a proactive voice in product direction.
• Own sprint planning, backlog refinement, and delivery forecasting; hold the team accountable to commitments while managing scope responsibly.
• Translate high-level business goals into well-scoped engineering milestones, removing blockers and managing dependencies across teams.
• Drive a culture of high-quality engineering practices: code review standards, test coverage, observability, and on-call readiness.
• Report on team health, delivery velocity, and technical health metrics to Engineering leadership.

Technical Strategy & Modernization

• Lead the multi-phase migration of CSB's legacy codebase to a modern, cloud-native architecture deployed on Kubernetes, with a disciplined approach to risk management and zero customer-impacting regressions.
• Collaborate with senior engineers and architects to define target-state architecture, sequencing migration work alongside new feature delivery.
• Champion containerization, infrastructure-as-code, and GitOps practices across the team.
• Drive adoption of modern observability and deployment tooling (CI/CD, Helm, Argo, or equivalent).
• Evaluate technical trade-offs with an eye toward long-term maintainability, developer experience, and operational cost.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with peer engineering managers, platform teams, and data engineering to ensure CSB systems integrate reliably with downstream consumers and upstream data sources.
• Represent the CSB team in engineering leadership forums; contribute to org-wide engineering standards, hiring committees, and technical guilds.
• Communicate technical status, risks, and decisions clearly to non-technical stakeholders including Product, Data, and Business leadership.

The Skills and Experience You'll Bring

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in an engineering management or technical lead role managing direct reports.
• Demonstrated experience delivering complex software products end-to-end-from requirements through production.
• Strong working knowledge of the Product Operating Model or equivalent modern product development frameworks (continuous discovery, dual-track agile, outcome-based roadmaps).
• Hands-on experience leading a migration from a legacy codebase or monolith to a modern, service-oriented or microservices architecture.
• Practical experience with Kubernetes: deploying, scaling, and operating containerized workloads in a production environment.
• Fluency with CI/CD pipelines, DevOps practices, and the tooling ecosystem (Docker, Helm, Argo CD, Terraform, or equivalents).
• Solid understanding of cloud platforms (AWS) and distributed system design patterns.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; ability to operate at both strategic and tactical levels.
• Track record of recruiting and retaining strong engineers; skilled at providing direct, growth-oriented feedback.

Bonus Skills 

• Experience in data-intensive systems-stream processing, high-throughput ingestion pipelines, or real-time analytics platforms.
• Background in freight, logistics, marketplace, or fintech domains.
• Familiarity with event-driven architecture, Kafka, or similar messaging infrastructure.
• Experience working with Snowflake, dbt, or modern data stack tooling.
• Exposure to ML/AI-adjacent engineering (model serving, feature pipelines, or experimentation infrastructure).
• Active participation in engineering communities-open-source contributions, writing, conference talks, or internal thought leadership.

Why DAT?
DAT is an award winning employer of choice.

For starters, we have a hybrid work environment, but we also know what makes a great workplace. We have a time-tested and resolute set of operating values predicated on integrity, mutual respect, open communication, and executing with excellence. These values inform our strategic vision as much as any one of our products does. We've been an employer of choice in the Portland metropolitan area for four decades, and within one year of opening our Denver office, DAT was #26 on Built In Colorado's 100 Best Places to Work In Colorado.

• Medical, Dental, Vision, Life, and AD&D insurance
• Parental Leave
• Flexible Vacation Time (FVT)
• An additional 10 holidays of paid time off per calendar year
• 401k matching (immediately vested)
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Short- and Long-term disability sick leave
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Health Savings Accounts
• Employee Assistance Program
• Additional programs - Employee Referral, Internal Recognition, and Wellness
• Free TriMet transit pass (Beaverton Office)
• Competitive salary and benefits package
• Work on impactful projects in a cutting-edge environment
• Collaborative and supportive team culture
• Opportunity to make a real difference in the trucking industry
• Employee Resource Groups

*This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship**

For Washington-based candidates, in compliance with the Washington State Pay Transparency Law, the salary range for this role is $190,000.00 - $226,000.00 + target bonus.  DAT considers factors such as scope and responsibilities of the position, candidate's work experience, education and training, core skills, internal equity, and market and business elements when extending an offer.

DAT embraces the value of a diverse workforce, and believes it is a core strength of our company that we encourage those values in every DAT employee, at every level of our organization, regardless of tenure or rank. We provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)

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