Vice President, Engineering — Cloud, DevOps & AI Modernization (Onsite) Overland Park, KS

At Netsmart, we are focused on moving healthcare forward through technology that supports providers, clinicians, clients, and communities. As healthcare continues to evolve, our engineering teams are modernizing platforms, strengthening cloud-based delivery, improving DevOps practices, and exploring responsible AI-enabled capabilities that create meaningful value across our solutions.

About the Role

Netsmart is seeking a Vice President, Engineering - Cloud, DevOps & AI Modernization to lead software engineering teams through the next stage of modernization and scale. This is a senior engineering leadership role for someone who has grown through software development, understands how complex applications are built and operated, and can lead teams through cloud transformation, DevOps maturity, and AI-aware product evolution.

This leader will provide strategic and operational leadership across engineering, partnering closely with Product, Architecture, DevOps, Cloud Infrastructure, Security, Compliance, Data, and business stakeholders. The right candidate will bring strong software development credibility, cloud experience, DevOps leadership, a strong culture-first mindset, and experience working with global/offshore engineering teams, including teams in India.

This role is onsite in Overland Park, KS, and candidates must live in or relocate to the Greater Kansas City metro area.

What You’ll Do

Engineering Leadership & Culture

• Lead and scale high-performing software engineering teams with a focus on accountability, collaboration, technical excellence, and delivery discipline.
• Build a strong engineering culture rooted in ownership, trust, transparency, continuous improvement, and practical innovation.
• Coach and develop engineering leaders and teams while creating clarity around priorities, expectations, decision-making, and execution.
• Partner across Netsmart’s matrixed organization to align engineering priorities with business goals, client needs, product strategy, and operational commitments.
• Serve as a credible, hands-on executive who can engage with teams at both the strategic and technical level.

Software Development & Modernization

• Lead engineering execution across complex enterprise software platforms, balancing current-state application realities with future-state modernization goals.
• Guide teams through legacy application modernization, platform scalability, service decomposition, API-first design, architectural simplification, and cloud-readiness.
• Strengthen engineering practices across design, development, code quality, testing, security, reliability, observability, and production support.
• Partner with architecture and engineering leaders to establish reusable patterns, standards, and practices that improve consistency and speed across teams.
• Ensure teams can deliver stable, secure, scalable solutions while continuing to modernize core platforms over time.

Cloud, DevOps & Operational Excellence

• Drive cloud and DevOps maturity across engineering teams, including CI/CD, automation, infrastructure-as-code, deployment reliability, monitoring, observability, and incident readiness.
• Partner with DevOps, Cloud, Hosting, Security, and Infrastructure teams to improve how software is built, deployed, operated, and optimized.
• Guide engineering teams in building cloud-enabled solutions with a strong understanding of AWS, distributed systems, scalability, performance, security, and cost awareness.
• Promote engineering practices that improve release confidence, production stability, operational efficiency, and developer productivity.
• Help teams move from project-based transformation toward sustainable cloud and DevOps operating models.

AI-Aware Engineering & Future-Ready Development

• Help engineering teams understand where AI, automation, analytics, and data-driven capabilities can responsibly improve products, workflows, development practices, and operational outcomes.
• Partner with Product, Data, Security, Compliance, and Architecture leaders to evaluate AI-enabled opportunities with appropriate governance, privacy, security, and risk considerations.
• Support practical adoption of AI concepts in engineering, including intelligent automation, developer productivity, data-driven decision-making, and responsible AI-enabled product capabilities.
• Balance innovation with execution discipline, ensuring AI opportunities are connected to measurable business, client, and product value.

Global Engineering Partnership

• Lead effectively across distributed and global engineering teams, including teams in India.
• Create strong alignment, communication rhythms, ownership models, and delivery expectations across U.S. and India-based teams.
• Build trust and accountability across locations while ensuring teams are connected to shared architecture, engineering standards, product priorities, and delivery outcomes.

• Operate successfully in a matrixed organization where influence, collaboration, and clarity are essential.

What You’ll Bring

• Senior engineering leadership experience, ideally at the VP, Senior Director, Director, or equivalent level leading software engineering teams at scale.
• Strong foundation in software development, software engineering leadership, application architecture, or technical delivery.
• Experience leading complex enterprise software development organizations through modernization, cloud adoption, DevOps maturity, or platform transformation.
• Strong understanding of AWS/cloud-based architecture, distributed systems, APIs, application modernization, cloud operations, scalability, reliability, and security.
• Demonstrated experience advancing DevOps practices, CI/CD, automation, observability, production readiness, and operational excellence.
• Ability to lead engineering teams through ambiguity while creating clear priorities, execution plans, success measures, and accountability.
• Experience partnering with Product, Architecture, DevOps, Security, Compliance, Data, and business leaders in a matrixed environment.
• Experience working with India-based offshore or global capability center teams.
• Practical understanding of AI concepts and how AI, automation, and data-driven capabilities can support product innovation and engineering optimization.
• Strong culture leadership, communication, stakeholder management, and people development skills.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant experience.
• Must be onsite in Overland Park, KS and based in or willing to relocate to the Greater Kansas City metro area.

Preferred Experience

• Healthcare technology, EHR, post-acute care, human services, behavioral health, revenue cycle, or regulated industry experience.
• Experience leading cloud modernization or application transformation across legacy enterprise platforms.
• Experience with AWS, Kubernetes, microservices, event-driven architecture, infrastructure-as-code, platform engineering, or modern data platforms.
• Experience improving engineering operating models across U.S. and India-based teams.
• Exposure to AI/ML, LLMs, MLOps, responsible AI practices, intelligent automation, or AI-assisted developer productivity.
• Experience leading through organizational change while maintaining delivery commitments and production stability.

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means becoming a trusted engineering executive who can lead people, technology, and transformation with clarity and credibility. You will help Netsmart strengthen software engineering execution, modernize complex platforms, improve cloud and DevOps maturity, and prepare teams for responsible AI-enabled innovation.

You will be known for building strong engineering culture, creating operational discipline, partnering effectively across a matrixed organization, and leading both U.S. and India-based teams with alignment, accountability, and trust.

Why Netsmart

At Netsmart, you will help shape technology that supports healthcare providers, clinicians, organizations, and communities. This role offers the opportunity to lead meaningful engineering modernization work in a mission-driven company where cloud, DevOps, and AI-aware innovation are central to how we continue moving healthcare forward.

Netsmart is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer, providing equal employment and advancement opportunities to all individuals. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all associates. All employment decisions at Netsmart, including but not limited to recruiting, hiring, promotion and transfer, are based on performance, qualifications, abilities, education and experience. Netsmart does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, physical or mental disability, past or present military service, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.

Netsmart desires to provide a healthy and safe workplace and, as a government contractor, Netsmart is committed to maintaining a drug-free workplace in accordance with applicable federal law. Pursuant to Netsmart policy, all post-offer candidates are required to successfully complete a pre-employment background check, including a drug screen, which is provided at Netsmart’s sole expense. In the event a candidate tests positive for a controlled substance, Netsmart will rescind the offer of employment unless the individual can provide proof of valid prescription to Netsmart’s third party screening provider.

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All applicants for employment must be legally authorized to work in the United States. Netsmart does not provide work visa sponsorship for this position.

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