Director - IT Application Development, Airport Ops Technology

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Description

United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job overview and responsibilities

The Director leads end to end technology strategy and execution for Above-the-Wing Airport Operations platforms, powering mission-critical systems across 300+ airports worldwide. Drive transformation toward an AI-first delivery strategy, embedding intelligence, automation, and real-time decisioning into applications. Own delivery and performance of applications ensuring high availability, resilience, and operational continuity. Serve as a liason between business and technology, shaping strategy in partnership with business and technology partners.

Champion a modern engineering culture grounded in continuous improvement to accelerate innovation while reducing risk.

• Strategy, vision, and stakeholder management:
  • Define and execute a multi-year technology roadmap aligned to Airport Operation's strategic goals
  • Proactively identify and evaluate new strategic IT capabilities, including AI tools and processes, to enhance the delivery and performance of the programs
  • Shape the future of airport technology through emerging capabilities infused with telemetry & sensor data
  • Establish governance that balances speed, risk, and value delivery, ensuring alignment to enterprise architecture and security standards
  • Act as a strategic advisor to senior leadership, influencing investment decisions, prioritization, and long-range planning
  • Stay abreast of industry trends and introduce innovative technologies and partnerships that create competitive advantage
• Communication and Stakeholder management:
  • Serve as the point of accountability for Above the Wing technology delivery for Airport Operations leadership
  • Translate complex technical concepts into clear business outcomes, risks, and tradeoffs for executive audiences
  • Build deep partnerships with business, product, and cross-channel teams
  • Drive alignment across engineering, product, infrastructure, security, and vendor teams to ensure seamless execution at scale
  • Lead executive-level communications including roadmaps, performance metrics, incident reviews, and funding investments
• Strategic Project Delivery and technology management:
  • Lead delivery of complex, enterprise-scale programs ensuring on-time, on-budget, high-quality execution aligned to business outcomes.
  • Own and evolve the software development lifecycle (SDLC) with a focus on AI-augmented development and embedding security into every stage
  • Compliance with TSA, PCI, and enterprise security standards
  • Establish best in class observability and reliability practices with full instrumentation and real-time analytics
  • Lead data-driven decision making, identifying and evaluating key metrics to drive program success criteria
  • Ensure system reliability and resilience with systems designed for high availability, fault tolerance, modern release strategies, and a goal of zero downtime
  • Lead cloud transformation initiatives leveraging AWS, microservices, and distributed architectures
  • Optimize delivery through agile and continuous improvement frameworks
  • Manage vendor partner ecosystem to ensure performance, accountability, and innovation
• Leadership:
  • Build, lead, and inspire high-performing teams across engineering, product, and delivery functions.
  • Develop a next-generation workforce skilled in AI, cloud, automation, and modern engineering practices.
  • Foster a culture of ownership and accountability, innovation and experimentation, continuous learning and improvement
  • Lead organizational design and workforce strategy to support scalability, speed, and evolving business needs.
  • Balance operational excellence with innovation, ensuring teams can run the business while transforming it.

This role is Hybrid to Chicago or Houston.

QualificationsWhat's needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree in Computer science, Supply Chain or related field
• 8+ years of relevant experience
• 5+ years of management experience in an IT or leadership-related role Requires advanced technical and business knowledge in software development life cycle, quality assurance, project management, and other related disciplines/processes
• Experience with application development or product ownership
• Experience with Agile development
• Experience with cloud delivery
• Experience with REACT, HTML, JavaScript, .net, and document…