Sr. Dir, Digital Experience Engineering

The Sr Director, Digital Engineering will lead the Digital Experience Engineering portfolio for Royal Caribbean’s Digital organization, ensuring the Technology strategy and Delivery of Digital initiatives are delivered across web and mobile.

This leader is responsible for Build the business function.  This role manages a dedicated engineering development capacity across internal and contract partners focused on Planning and Execution.  This is a hands-on role where the leader is expected to actively support the Engineering teams.  This role also carries executive accountability for the Capital initiatives.

• Overall Expectations
  • Coach, mentor and develop the Digital Engineering team to achieve desired goals, fostering a culture of empowerment and trust within the team
  • Establishes and ensures best practices for the software development lifecycle including solution architecture, build, and test, deploy, run and operate
  • Ensures that systems are stable, reliable, available and performing per SLAs, in collaboration with Platform & Operations
  • Brings in AI led thinking to support the strategic roadmap for Engineering -  Operate smartly, Engineer efficiently and build a platform for growth.   
  • Works collaboratively with Delivery and Product teams to ensure on-time, on-budget delivery of projects
  • Ensures that appropriate quality processes are in place to deliver high quality applications, in compliance with all regulatory requirements
  • Efficiently report operational status to stakeholders and internal teams, including objectives, priorities, risks, and metrics. Simultaneously, communicate plans and progress to senior leadership
  • Fosters a culture of creativity, collaboration, speed, innovation, and excellence while continuously elevating the quality and caliber of our digital engineering organization
  • Work with product and business teams to continue evolving digital products to provide amazing guest experience and unlock new capabilities that fuel growth
• Technology & Engineering
  • Should be conversant across the following Digital stack:
    • Mobile: Native iOS, Android, and cross-platform frameworks.
    • Web: React, Angular, and modern web technologies.
    • Backend Services: Microservices, APIs, and integration layers.
    • Commerce: SAP Commerce cloud platform.
    • Cloud Infrastructure: AWS (EC2, ECS, S3, API Gateway), DKP/on-prem clusters, and observability pipelines.
  • Experience leveraging Copilot, Claude Sonnet and similar tools that can bring in Engineering Efficiency
  • Champion good Development and observability practices leveraging platforms such as Splunk, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Quantum Metric / RUM tools.
  • Promote AI led unlocks in in Design, Development and QA, chaos engineering, and AI-driven anomaly detection to strengthen system resilience.
• Team Development & Leadership by Example
  • Recruit, mentor, and develop global Digital talent while modeling hands-on technical engagement.
  • Encourage engineers to take ownership and proactively solve problems, supported by direct involvement when needed.
  • Manage vendor and partner teams with the same “roll-up-your-sleeves” approach as internal teams.
  • Deliver executive-ready dashboards and insights to communicate the health of digital initiatives.

QUALIFICATIONS AND EDUCATION

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 15+ years of experience in Digital Engineering, including 8+ years in global leadership roles.
• Engineering Management: Experience leading software engineering teams delivering large initiatives.
• Strategic thinking and effective management implementation on complex projects
• Proven track record building and stabilizing large-scale digital/commerce platforms with high transaction volumes and direct customer impact.
• Experience managing fast-paced 24x7 environments, demonstrating adaptability and confident decision-making.
• Strong technical background in App & web development,  cloud platforms (AWS, hybrid/on-prem clusters), container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, DKP), and microservices (including Graph QL).
• Proficiency in scripting: Bash, Python, JavaScript.
• Experience running and scaling commerce platforms (preferably SAP Hybris or equivalent).
• Advanced knowledge of observability, performance engineering, telemetry, automation, and incident management frameworks.
• Strong troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, and application design skills.
• Demonstrated ability to lead through crisis situations with composure, speed, and clear communication.

Knowledge & Skills

• Technical Depth & Breadth: Mobile, web, backend, and commerce systems at enterprise scale.
• Leadership by Example: Hands-on, willing to engage directly with engineers in solving problems.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to drive long-term improvements while ensuring short-term incident readiness.
• Engineering Collaboration: Skilled at bridging operations and engineering to ensure production issues are treated as high-priority deliverables.
• Communication: Executive presence with the ability to brief leadership on outcome, activities and Results.
• Global Experience: Skilled at leading distributed teams and managing vendor partnerships.

FINANCIAL/QUANTITIVE RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own and manage the Capital and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) budget for Digital Engineering, ensuring efficient allocation of resources while balancing Timeliness, Quality, and cost optimization.
• Provide transparency into operational spend through regular reporting and executive updates.
• Partner with Finance and Procurement to negotiate, track, and optimize vendor contracts and third-party services.
• Ensure budget discipline while identifying opportunities for automation and efficiency improvements to reduce operational costs without compromising Quality.