Digital Accessibility Director - Princeton, NJ Information Technology

Digital Accessibility Director needed for a DIRECT HIRE opportunity with SOC's client in Princeton, NJ

*Must have the ability to obtain a Top Secret with SCI or have an active TS/SCI

Job Description:

Our Client is seek a dynamic Digital Accessibility Director to lead and expand a highly visible client-facing and internal program ensuring our digital products and services are accessible to all users, including people across a broad spectrum of abilities, and in compliance with relevant laws and standards.

This role requires a leader with hands-on experience working in an environment where accessibility is imbedded early in the software development lifecycle-across design, development, and delivery. You will advise leadership and be a trusted partner to design, engineering, product, procurement, contracts, operations, sales, and other business teams. Your team's work mix will include both addressing internal enterprise accessibility matters as well as delivering accessibility services both stand-alone and as a part of larger professional services motions that are revenue-generating and client-facing, with the larger balance being professional services in nature. You will build on our existing base and scale our accessibility practice while maintaining a lean team of SMEs, with a framework of repeatable processes, templates, and toolkits to improve the efficiency of end-to-end testing and remediation projects across a global matrixed organization. You will drive organizational change to embed accessibility best practices into all internal development processes. Much of your team's focus will be on enabling other parts of the organization to perform the vast majority of hands-on work related to accessibility as a part of their existing workflows (e.g., Educating functional testers to assume responsibility for Accessibility testing, Business Analysts building accessibility into their acceptance criteria for user stories, Developers imbedding accessibility into their coding standards and pipeline, etc.). You will own the enablement of portfolio-wide compliance monitoring and reporting to stakeholders at all levels.

You will be a hands-on practitioner and team leader balancing primarily matrixed assignments of your staff with some direct management. As an advisor and advocate to the organization and to our clients, you will often facilitate in-person collaboration and engagement. You must live within a commutable distance of Princeton, NJ and regularly work on-site. You will be flexible when traveling to client offices and attending industry events.

Essential Duties:

• Strategic Leadership
  
• Lead a comprehensive accessibility strategy aligned with the organization's goals.
  
• Establish short- and long-term program objectives and drive organizational change.
  
• Create a framework of repeatable, scalable processes and templates to increase efficiency.
  
• Advocate for accessibility initiatives at the executive level and across the organization.
  

Team Building and Management

• Recruit, train, and lead a team of accessibility specialists, testers, and consultants in alignment with business and client demand-signals.
  
• Manage resource capacity, concurrent assignments, timelines and budget commitments.
  
• Provide ongoing mentorship and professional development opportunities for the team.
  
• Oversee tracking and reporting of accessibility-related task progress across the portfolio.
  

Accessibility Testing and Assessment

• Oversee the development and execution of accessibility testing protocols for digital products.
  
• Ensure compliance with relevant accessibility standards (e.g., WCAG, ADA, Section 508).
  
• Provide architectural guidance on:
  
• Semantic HTML structure and ARIA usage (aria-label, aria-hidden, aria-live, etc.)
  
• Keyboard navigation, focus management, and screen reader support
  
• Color contrast, alt text, skip links, and logical reading order
  
• Oversee and conduct manual and automated accessibility testing using tools such as evinced, Deque, BrowserStack, axe, WAVE, Lighthouse, and assistive technologies (JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver, TalkBack).
  
• Conduct regular accessibility assessments and audits to identify areas for improvement.
  
• Produce accessibility compliance reports following industry standard formats.
  
• Consulting and Remediation
  
• Provide revenue-generating consulting services to clients on accessibility best practices.
  
• Provide expert coaching and guidance to internal teams on accessibility best practices.
  
• Manage customer expectations for service delivery from start to finish; planning, estimating, staffing, and executing to meet all budget and timeline commitments.
  
• Identify and communicate barriers and trade-offs and recommend prioritization and an approach that balances business risk, needs, constraints, and impact.
  
• Develop and implement remediation plans to address accessibility issues while balancing client, contractual, commercial, and regulatory requirements and concerns.
  
• Collaborate with design, engineering, QA, and product teams to embed accessibility into the software development lifecycle from the outset.
  

Stakeholder Communication and Influence

• Communicate accessibility goals, progress, and outcomes to stakeholders at all levels.
  
• Build and maintain accessibility best practices documentation and role-based toolkits.
  
• Influence and educate senior leadership on accessibility and design priorities.
  
• Represent the organization at industry events, conferences, and forums.
  

Continuous Improvement

• Drive continuous improvement to enhance the accessibility of digital products and services.
  
• Monitor and report on key performance indicators related to accessibility efforts.
  
• Scale accessibility learning initiatives and curriculum across the organization.
  
• Stay current with emerging trends and industry research and implement new technologies and approaches to improve digital accessibility.
  
• Collaborate with our engineering teams to integrate accessibility into our CI/CD and general development practices.
  

Minimum Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software development, UX/UI architecture, or technical leadership, with 5+ years focused on digital accessibility (hands-on experience performing automated and manual testing and remediation of web and mobile applications, including iOS and Android native apps, and electronic media for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1/2.2, Revised Section 508 Standards, and other applicable standards and regulatory requirements.
  
• Proven track record of leading and growing a successful accessibility program with accessibility embedded early in the development lifecycle (shift-left).
  
• Familiarity with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, frameworks like React/Angular) and how they impact accessibility.
  
• Experience leading accessibility audits, remediation efforts, and embedding accessibility into Agile development processes.
  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex accessibility concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  
• BA/BS in information technology, computer science, information design, human computer interaction, engineering, interaction design, user experience, or related field.
  
• 2+ years of experience managing a team of professional individual contributors, including resource forecasting, assignment and tracking, performance management, and budget management.
  

Preferred Qualifications

• IAAP certifications such as CPACC, WAS, or CPWA.
  
• Experience with native mobile accessibility APIs and PDF remediation tools (Adobe Acrobat Pro, CommonLook).
  
• Background in financial sector, healthcare, or other regulated environments preferred.
  
• Experience authoring Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR) and Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), preferably in the context of contract procurements.
  
• Knowledge of WAI-ARIA, UAAG, ATAG and EPUB specifications.
  
• Knowledge of UI design patterns including SPA, RIA, and AI/chat/voice interfaces.
  
• Knowledge of accessible metadata and tagging best practices for Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems.
  

Employment Pre-requisites

The following requirements must be met to be eligible for this position: successful completion of a background investigation, and drug urinalysis.

SOC, a Day & Zimmermann company, is an Equal Opportunity Employer, EOE AA M/F/Vet/Disability.

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Estimated Min Rate: $117,600

Estimated Max Rate: $180,000

Estimated Min Rate: $117600.00

Estimated Max Rate: $168000.00