Director of Application Engineering

Who We AreJoin a team that puts its People First! Since 1889, First American (NYSE: FAF) has held an unwavering belief in its people. They are passionate about what they do, and we are equally passionate about fostering an environment where all feel welcome, supported, and empowered to be innovative and reach their full potential. Our inclusive, people-first culture has earned our company numerous accolades, including being named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® list for ten consecutive years. We have also earned awards as a best place to work for women, diversity and LGBTQ+ employees, and have been included on more than 50 regional best places to work lists. First American will always strive to be a great place to work, for all. For more information, please visit www.careers.firstam.com.

What We Do**Remote Work Welcome**
The Director of Application Engineering provides strategic and operational leadership over all application engineering and modernization functions within Sentinels. This leader oversees multiple pods responsible for sustaining proprietary and legacy applications, ensuring secure CI/CD pipelines, driving modernization readiness, and embedding developers within sustainment teams to reduce risk and improve velocity.
This role will collaborate closely with peers across Platform & Cloud Infrastructure, Operations & Support, and Service Delivery & Governance and with our internal partners in Foundational Services, Cloud and Server Engineering to deliver a unified, SLA-driven managed service experience.
You’ll be part of a strategic transformation that’s redefining how First American sustains, secures, and optimizes its digital platforms. This is a chance to lead an elite team in building a centralized sustainment model that blends engineering excellence, operational discipline, and financial performance — while shaping the next generation of secure, automated hosting.

What You'll Do

Strategic Leadership

• Define and execute the application sustainment and modernization strategy for 200-250 enterprise and proprietary apps in AWS.

• Partner with Platform and Operations Directors to align build vs. run ownership models and drive automation-based efficiency gains.

• Develop and manage quarterly objectives (OKRs) for application engineering aligned to Sentinels’ cost, compliance, and availability targets.

• Lead engineering participation in app intake, migration readiness, and sustainment transitions.

• Represent application development at enterprise governance and audit reviews.

Application & Engineering Management

• Lead engineering managers and developers embedded within sustainment and modernization pods.

• Oversee CI/CD pipelines, version control, and secure deployment frameworks (GitHub Actions, Terraform, Liquibase, etc.).

• Drive codebase quality and standardization across legacy and modern app stacks (AngularJS, ReactJS, Python, .NET, C#, COTS customizations, etc.).

• Champion reusable modules, IaC patterns, and modernization accelerators (containerization, API gateways, etc.).

• Maintain alignment to compliance control library (e.g., code signing, vulnerability scanning, TLS 1.2+).

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Partner with the Platform Director on Terraform/IaC integration, AWS architecture, and patch readiness.

• Work with the Ops Director on incident triage, observability (Kibana/StatusCast/XMatters), and defect management.

• Collaborate with the Governance Director to ensure code and configuration audit readiness.

• Contribute to unified dashboards for executive metrics and SLA compliance reporting.

Team Development & Leadership

• Manage 3–4 Engineering Managers and 5–6 onshore application sustainment pods and partner closely with offshore leadership/teams.

• Establish technical mentorship programs and career paths for engineers and pod leads.

• Drive culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and automation-first mindset.

• Support upskilling to drive removal of application SMEs across the portfolio

Operational Excellence

• Ensure incident and change management compliance with divisional tools and procedures

• Develop the operational discipline and proactive resiliency strategy to ensure 99.9%+ application availability for sustained apps

• Drive toil reduction initiatives across pods.

• Collaborate on vulnerability remediation, library updates, and secure patching initiatives.

• Enforce deployment quality gates, rollback validation, and post-release health checks.

What You'll Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related discipline (Master’s preferred).

• 10+ years of experience leading application development, sustainment, or DevOps teams in enterprise-scale environments.

• Proven leadership in hybrid cloud (preferably AWS) environments

• Strong experience with CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Terraform, Liquibase) and modern development practices (IaC, containers, microservices).

• Solid understanding of ITIL-based service management, incident/change/release processes, and SLAs.

• Demonstrated success managing hybrid teams (U.S. + offshore) with high performance and collaboration.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management across technical and business functions.

Preferred Experience

• Experience leading teams within a Managed Service Provider or internal shared service model.

• Hands-on familiarity with legacy modernization (e.g., .NET, SQL Server migrations to AWS RDS, containerization).

• Knowledge of security and compliance frameworks (SOX, SOC2, NIST, CIS benchmarks).

• Background in application cost optimization and TCO reduction initiatives.

• Exposure to governance tools (ServiceNow, SailPoint, CMDB, Security Hub).

Key Performance Indicators

• App coverage ratio: # apps sustained per FTE

• SLA adherence rate (≥99.9% uptime)

• Compliance coverage (≥80%)

• Reduction in toil and manual release tasks (% automated)

• Vulnerability remediation SLA compliance (%)

What We OfferBy choice, we don’t simply accept individuality – we embrace it, we support it, and we thrive on it! Our People First Culture celebrates diversity, equity and inclusion not simply because it’s the right thing to do, but also because it’s the key to our success. We are proud to foster an authentic and inclusive workplace For All. You are free and encouraged to bring your entire, unique self to work. First American is an equal opportunity employer in every sense of the term.

First American will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest or conviction records, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws (e.g., the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act).

First American intends to conduct a review of an applicant’s criminal history in connection with a conditional offer. First American reasonably believes that a criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following material job duties for this position potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment: handling of confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to First American or its customers, administrating or facilitating financial transactions, and the ability to meet customer-imposed criminal history requirements.

Based on eligibility, First American offers a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401k, PTO/paid sick leave and other great benefits like an employee stock purchase plan.