I work in IT. What should my title be?

June 13, 2010 9:00 AM

I work for a nonprofit organization and am moving to the IT department. I can choose my title, but I don't know what title accurately describes my work. Looking for suggestions!

I work for a nonprofit organization and was originally hired to do logistics/operations. The IT department consisted of only two people (the CTO and a network guy) and so they often needed assistance with their development projects. I frequently offered to help (my bachelor's degree is in computer engineering), and over time decided that I preferred to work in that department instead. I was unofficially moved to the IT department four months ago, and shortly it will become official and my title will be changed.

Because of the small size of the IT department, I do a wide variety of tasks, which makes it difficult to sum up my job in a few words. Also, because I have never worked in IT since finishing my bachelor's degree, I am not familiar with the commonly used and understood titles. I'm looking for your suggestions!

Here are the guidelines:
- I am currently a "Director", and this is a lateral transfer, so my title should include the word Director.
- If it's possible to include the word "engineer" or "engineering", I would prefer that.
- I would like it to sound impressive without being inaccurate.

And here is a description of what I actually do:

- We are developing a number of software tools that allow our donors to more efficiently donate to us, as well as tools that help our member charities to view and request products from us. These tools are mostly web-based and include an ecommerce site. We use outside developers to do the actual coding, and I coordinate that process, which means that I spend a lot of time on the following:
(1) talking with staff members to gather process requirements, and translating those into technical requirements
(2) explaining projects and processes to the developers
(3) testing the results
(4) training staff as new changes and tools are rolled out
(5) managing the development timeline

- Here are some other tasks I spend a decent amount of time on:
(1) creating, editing, and troubleshooting Jet Reports (a special programming language through which you can pull data from databases into Excel)
(2) other data gathering and analysis projects
(3) database troubleshooting (mostly Dynamics NAV)
(4) project management (for small and mid-size projects)
(5) basic coding in Dynamics NAV, SQL, and HTML

- Here are some "traditional" IT tasks that I DON'T do:
(1) anything network-related
(2) troubleshooting basic computer problems

I would be glad to answer any questions. Thanks!

posted by thedotorg to work & money (10 answers total)

Director of Information Services.
posted by tilde at 9:14 AM on June 13, 2010

Director, Software and Systems Engineering
posted by DarlingBri at 9:32 AM on June 13, 2010

I like tilde's suggestion above. First that came to mind for me was:

Director of Technology Integration
posted by CrayDrygu at 9:34 AM on June 13, 2010

+1 DarlingBri's suggestion, as it fits the engineering requirement.

+1 tilde's suggestion as it is a "standard" title.

No offense meant to CrayDrygu, but I hate the word "Integration". I'm sure that's because my company over- and mis-uses it.
posted by gjc at 9:41 AM on June 13, 2010

Development Director
posted by rhizome at 11:27 AM on June 13, 2010

Director of Technical Programmes?
posted by Happy Dave at 2:26 PM on June 13, 2010

Director of Information Engineering.

(One of my current job titles is something like "Director, Information Engineering Branch"; you may want to go for something more like that, depending on how much hierarchy you can get away with.)
posted by genehack at 4:04 PM on June 13, 2010

This sounds like a Director of IT Development to me.
posted by jimfl at 6:22 PM on June 13, 2010

Don't know if you're still looking for suggestions, but I'd go with Director of Infrastructure Engineering
posted by nokry56 at 8:23 AM on June 22, 2010

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the suggestions. In the end, I decided on "Director of Application Engineering", which became my official title yesterday!
posted by thedotorg at 7:04 PM on July 13, 2010