VP, Platform Services

VP, Platform Services

Our Fortune 500 company is driving a digital transformation and looking for forward-thinking innovators to disrupt how our industry thinks about and uses technology. As one of the world's leading employee benefits providers, we help millions of people gain affordable access to benefits that help them protect their families, their finances and their futures.

Are you an asker of questions, a solver of problems, and a challenger of the status quo? Our mission is to provide a differentiated customer experience and exceed the expectations people have of technology at any company not just insurers.

We are seeking individuals to join our team of talented IT professionals who share never-ending passion and an unwavering focus on our customer experience. Team members comfortable working in an agile, fast-paced, and delivery-focused environment thrive in our environment where we value an entrepreneurial spirit and those who challenge the status-quo.

Unum is changing, and we're excited about what's next. Join us.

The VP, Platform Services is responsible for defining, building, and operating enterprise-scale shared platforms that enable speed, consistency, and quality across the organization. This role leads a unified platform strategy spanning digital capabilities, integration services, engineering excellence, enterprise workflow systems, and AI-enabled platforms, including agentic AI capabilities. This leader operates at the intersection of infrastructure and software engineering, ensuring platform reliability, scalability, and developer productivity while enabling business transformation. The role oversees a complex ecosystem of approximately 120 platforms, tools, and applications supporting enterprise-wide capabilities. Will partner closely with business and technology leaders to deliver reusable, secure, and highly available platform services that accelerate digital delivery and innovation. This leader is responsible for delivering technology solutions to meet Unum's business needs and goals. They will provide direction, guidance, and strategic insights to senior leadership teams with the objective of maximizing growth, profitability, and stability. This leader is a significant contributor to the development and implementation of the organization's three to five year road map and provides the day-to-day leadership to ensure business and technology outcomes are achieved. The leader in this role must be able to effectively partner, negotiate, and influence business and IT senior leadership to ensure the successful delivery of enterprise solutions. The leader will possess amazing drive, a can-do/will-do attitude, innovation, love of technology, leading edge thinking, and be inspirational and able to have a positive impact on the organization. This leader sets technology direction for a certain scope of Unum Group, and is responsible for delivering the technology that the company depends on to be successful.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities

• Engineering Excellence - Lead CI/CD, DevOps, and platform engineering practices
• Enterprise Integration Services - Lead API strategy and integration architecture
• ServiceNow Platform - Own ServiceNow ecosystem including ITSM, CMDB, and workflow capabilities
• Validation and Testing Services - Lead enterprise testing strategy and automation
• Delivery and Operations - Ensure reliability, performance, and resilience of platforms. Establish KPIs and SLAs.
• Identify, design, and implement state-of-the art technology solutions to meet Unum's current and future business needs. Manage the overall direction of the company's technology through strategic planning and evaluation.
• Evaluate technology trends and developments for business opportunities and risks, and introduce strategies to capitalize on these opportunities and to mitigate risks.
• Partners closely with business leaders to understand Unum's business, the external marketplace, and the needs of our customers. Leads the IT governance activities to ensure close partnership with the business and transparency in all IT initiatives.
• Analyze and effectively communicate complex business and IT issues/needs and act as a consultant to help business leaders identify technology solutions to improve their operations efficiency and effectiveness and support growth goals.
• Keeps innovation at the forefront. Leverages fresh perspectives, breakthrough ideas, and new paradigms to create business technology value.
• Monitor information technology performance and recommend continual improvements; continuously focuses on improving process and practices that create the most value.
• Build, lead, develop, mentor, and coach a high performing, empowered staff of business and IT professionals across various locations.
• Support the identification and implementation of a flexible technical architecture to support growth.
• Effectively manage operating expenses within the established budget; continually reviewing opportunities for reducing expenses and driving efficiencies. Identifies and recommends strategic investments that have positive ROI.
• Oversee creation of IT business plans in support of business needs and technology strategy, partnering closely with business leadership. Consistently delivers results against defined plans.
• Leverages external partners effectively in all aspects of IT, from strategy through delivery. Able to manage complex vendor relationships and hold vendors accountable for results.
• Ensure the security and protection of data, information system and equipment; actively implements security, privacy, risk management and disaster recovery initiatives and best practices.
• Takes bold actions and is a change leader. Advocates for change with confidence; takes ownership and personal responsibility for implementing change, and leverages communications, goals, resources, and metrics to ensure broader understanding and accountability.
• Effectively communicate upward and across business and technology teams; builds strong partnerships with senior leaders and IT stakeholders, both internal and external.
• Create KPIs, goals, and metrics across the portfolio in order to drive continuous improvement throughout the organization.
• Leads large organizations in the delivery of all responsibilities for the role, promoting a culture based on our guiding principles of customer, agility, and empowerment.
• Other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Job Specifications

• 15+ years of technology leadership including Shared Platform, infrastructure and software engineering
• Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree preferred
• Experience leading large-scale platform ecosystems
• Expertise in Cloud, DevOps, APIs, and enterprise platforms such as ServiceNow, Pega, OpenText, MuleSoft, and GitHub
• Expertise in GenAI assisted software development pipeline
• Proven change leadership and transformation experience
• Significant experience in leading the strategic and operational direction of an IT organization
• Strong communication and influencing skills; able to communicate with all levels of organizational leadership and deliver impactful presentations
• Demonstrated ability to lead and manage a mixture of highly specialized technical and operational resources across a range of locations
• Experience leading teams who deliver integrated solutions to meet customer needs
• Budget and financial management; ability to maximize resources and manage capacity
• Change agent; advocate for ever needing change across the organization and able to create followership
• Able to elevate the performance of empowered teams
• Ability to act with an owner-mindset, responsible for all aspects of the business' success including customer satisfaction, financial returns, and continued growth
• Budgeting and financial management; ability to maximize resources and manage capacity
• Demonstrated track record for attracting and developing strong leadership talent
• Proven ability to look strategically and creatively at complex problems and systems and identify practical solutions to solve those challenges
• Ability to motivate and hold people accountable for delivering results