Desktop Development Manager

ABOUT THE ROLE

Carestream Dental builds the software that runs the working day of dental and oral surgery practices — the schedule, the patient chart, the ledger and the claim. Thousands of practices across North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland and France open our software first thing in the morning and close it last thing at night.

We are hiring a Desktop Development Manager to lead the development teams behind our established practice management products: SoftDent and PracticeWorks for general dentistry in the United States, OrthoTrac for orthodontics, WinOMS for oral and maxillofacial surgery, R4 for NHS and private practices in the United Kingdom and Ireland, and Gestion for French-speaking practices in France and Canada.

Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer, you will own predictable delivery, code quality, and the health and growth of the engineers who build these products. You will work alongside Quality Assurance, Product Management, DevOps and our global support organisation.

WHY YOU MIGHT WANT THIS JOB

This is a role for an engineering leader who is genuinely interested in long-lived software. These are mature products with substantial installed bases and real clinical dependence — the work is to raise the engineering bar on them, reduce risk steadily, and build teams that ship with confidence. If you would rather improve software that thousands of practices already depend on than start again from an empty repository, you will enjoy this.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

• Lead, coach and grow the desktop development teams — line management, weekly one-to-ones, clear goals, honest performance conversations, and thoughtful hiring and onboarding.
• Manage a distributed organisation spanning the United States, the United Kingdom, France and offshore delivery partners, holding employees and partners to the same expectations and giving them the same support.
• Own predictable delivery across several independent product release trains: what the team committed to, what it delivered, and a clear account of any difference.
• Raise the engineering quality bar — code review standards, impact assessment before change, and regression coverage where it matters most.
• Manage technical debt deliberately, with a prioritised, tracked and funded paydown plan rather than good intentions.
• Partner with Quality Assurance on test strategy, automation and reducing the number of issues that reach customers.
• Deliver compliance and regulatory work to fixed external dates, including United Kingdom NHS dental contract requirements.
• Own build and release health for desktop software together with DevOps — build, packaging, installers and upgrade paths.
• Work closely with Product Management on intake, scope and release readiness, negotiating clearly and early when dates and scope are in tension.
• Partner with the global support organisation on customer-reported issues: triage, prioritisation, and commitments the team can genuinely stand behind.
• Represent the desktop products to senior stakeholders, including delivery and quality reporting.

WHAT YOU’LL BRING

• Proven line management of software development teams, including remote and distributed engineers across multiple time zones.
• A genuine appetite for owning mature, business-critical codebases — improving what is there and retiring risk incrementally.
• Working technical fluency in one or more of C++, Visual Basic, C# / .NET, or a comparable Windows desktop technology. Enough to read a diff, challenge a design and assess the risk of a change — you will not be the one at the keyboard.
• Solid grounding in relational databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, and comfort with schema change, data migration and conversion risk.
• Azure DevOps or an equivalent work-tracking platform, and branching strategy for several release trains running concurrently.
• Continuous integration, and the specifics of shipping desktop software: build, packaging, installers, upgrade paths and code signing.
• Risk-based defect triage, root-cause analysis, and running a controlled hotfix process under real customer pressure.
• Test-automation and regression strategy, and the judgement to invest coverage where the risk is greatest.
• Agile delivery at scale — sprints, planning increments, and working alongside Product Owners.
• Leading a blended workforce of employees and delivery partners to one standard of quality, documentation and accountability.
• Excellent written communication — notes, status and design rationale a colleague in another time zone can pick up and act on.

EXPERIENCE

• 8+ years in software development, with 3+ years directly managing developers.
• Demonstrated ownership of at least one long-lived production codebase, with real customers depending on it daily.
• A track record of measurably improving software quality and reducing customer-reported issues.
• Experience managing multiple concurrent product release trains, and leading distributed international teams including offshore or partner teams.
• Experience delivering into a regulated market against fixed external dates.
• Experience utilizing large language models to enhance and/or support your work (especially Claude).
• Healthcare, dental or other regulated software an advantage.
• Excellent interpersonal, analytical, problem-management, presentation and communication skills.

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or Software Engineering, or equivalent practical experience. A master’s degree is preferred.

LOCATION & TRAVEL

This role is remote within the United States. Travel is occasional — up to 10% — including periodic visits to our Atlanta, Georgia office and occasional international travel to our development teams in the United Kingdom and France.

Salary Range (inclusive of bonus): $160,000 - $175,000