Manager Engineering

Manager, Engineering

The Manager, Engineering leads a product team focused on building and maintaining platforms that enable account management, portfolio tracking, and wealth management services. This leader accomplishes results through the management of experienced technologists who operate with independence, while still providing technical leadership and strategic direction, establishing operating policies and procedures, and interpreting company-wide standards. The role is responsible for schedules and departmental objectives aligned with organizational goals, and collaborates frequently with internal and external stakeholders, including senior business partners, on projects and operational decisions. The ideal candidate brings hands-on experience with AWS cloud, Python, Lambda, and Postgres, and demonstrates technical expertise in data engineering and solution architecture. Success in this position requires mentoring and upskilling a growing team, driving adoption of modern engineering practices, and leading briefings and technical meetings to support IT objectives and deliver business value across the organization.

Duties & Responsibilities:

Designing Solutions

• Review technical solution design and architecture and provide guidance and direction.
• Take part in system design and architecture conversations with the team to land approaches to deliver solutions.
• Review technical solution and supports the execution of the solution

Developing Software

• Has Developed software. Can read code and stays up to date on best practices.
• Ensure Code reviews are completed - Problem solving and analytical skills

Learning and applying new techniques

• Promotes and empowers sharing ideas, best practices, etc. They need to make space so teams can take time for these activities.
• Anticipates and analyzes trends in technology and assesses the impact of emerging technologies on the business

Collaborating within team

• Supports the team agile practices and learning events / trainings
• Helps break down barriers for the team
• Engages in sprint demos; Understands the desired and actual outcomes as well as the technology delivered by the team
• Partner with Product Manager on Initiatives/ Features/ Epics and provides clarity on desired outcomes as well as technical expertise.
• Collaborates with Product manager for strategies, operating plans, targets and measures for product groups
• Creating a positive team environment where individuals have psychological safety and work collaboratively while understanding, respecting, challenging and appreciating each other's ideas

Collaborating across teams

• Supports and empowers teams to broker solutions across products
• Understands how the product integrates with other products and ensures consistency in approach to work towards a common goal / outcome.
• Builds strong working relationships with peers across teams
• Proactively identifies cross team challenges and works to empower teams in solve collaboratively

Collaborating across the organization

• Align your team with the priorities of the company and the technology organization for a given product area

Setting product/platform technology strategy

• Participates in setting the product and platform technology vision, strategies, initiatives, roadmaps, objectives and alignments
• Represents the business value of technology upgrades, etc. and influences prioritization in the product roadmap
• Empowers the team to select the right tool and platforms for the given product area.

Defining Engineering standards/patterns

• Collaborating with Engineers to ensure Engineering practices and be an advocate to bring the engineering disciplines.
• Promoting engineering practices and continuous improvement such as DevOps nd observability
• Contributes to the creation of enterprise frameworks and patterns

DevOps

• Define and supports the development Lifecyle processes
• Supports the team and removes barriers to resolving production incidents/problems
• DevOps continuously evaluated through observability, monitoring and alerting
• Understands the health of technology products and promotes prioritization of work to maintain and continuously improve
• Serve as an escalation point in product level support for ongoing maintenance and production issues

Selecting & Managing Technology Vendors

• Be an advocate to the team to define criteria's for selecting the right platform/technology
• Guides the team to build consensus on an approach and driving a build vs buy decision with the team. In a buy decision, works with the team to decide on criteria and vendor selection.
• Execute or manage the overall technology solutions, platforms for the product groups and associated vendor relationships.

Coaching Engineers

• Holding regular 1:1s with team members and team meeting, p rovides constructive feedback, guidance and coaching to help engineers grow their skills and experience.
• Provides career planning advice to engineers and creates development plans to help them achieve their career goals which leverages their skills and capabilities and provides them with learning opportunities.

Recruiting/building talent

• Leads the process of selecting and engaging the right consulting partners
• Planning in advance for future people needs for the product groups, collaborate with the other teams on the recruitment process
• Recruits, develops, and sustains a high-performing team while promoting a culture of shared accountability, operational excellence, and partnership across the organization.
• Models Thrivent's leadership competencies – courage, collaboration, and commitment by demonstrating resiliency, working together to make the best decisions, and holding yourself and others accountable.​
• Supports and/or develops an environment in which Thrivent employees and colleagues are focused on continuous improvement, exceptional employee engagement, and an unwavering commitment to our clients. Shapes and/or supports a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise and values, ensuring that Thrivent ' s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients.
• Manage a team of direct and indirect staff

Qualifications & Skills:

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience
• 8+ years of progressively responsible positions in Information Technology including 5+ years' experience in IT discipline, e.g., wealth management advisor solutions, 3 rd party Saas Vendor file management, portfolio strategy and roadmap development.
• 3+ years' management/supervisory experience in specific IT functional area discipline, e.g. applications development or equivalent skills leading major technical projects with accountability for enforcing talent management needs and performance standards.
• Demonstrated leadership and experience managing multidiscipline, high-performance work teams.
• Strong competency in project management and execution of multiple or large projects.
• Experience working with customers to develop solutions to complex business problems.
• Proven ability to communicate effectively with internal/external stakeholders to support business initiatives.
• Proven ability to function in an environment which requires flexibility, good judgment and intelligent decision making, often based on limited information and/or extreme conditions.
• Ability to formulate, implement and evaluate plans, programs and procedures applicable to customer relationship and demand management.

Preferred:

• MBA
• Financial Services industry experience
• 5+ years of experience in hands on development with modern data tools and technologies such a Python, Lambda, AWS with proven ability to design, build and maintain data architecture and pipelines.
• Guide architectural decisions and ensure best engineering practices.
• Review code, design documents, and technical proposals.
• Stay hands-on with coding when necessary, especially for prototyping or critical issues.
• Experience with data modeling, 3rd party vendor file management.
• Experience in IT planning and business relationship management
• Experience working in a matrix management organization
• Experience with product development and management

Pay TransparencyThrivent's long-term growth depends on attracting, rewarding, and retaining people who are committed to helping others thrive with purpose. We accomplish this by offering a wide variety of market competitive compensation programs to attract, reward, and retain top talent. The applicable salary or hourly wage range for this full-time role is $139,455.00 - $188,676.00 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will be determined by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, location, relevant experience, skills, and knowledge, business needs, market demand