Administration Systems Platform Manager

PRIMARY FUNCTION:
Provide leadership for application architecture, design and programming support, with a customer service focus, for Life and Annuity product development. This role will oversee the translation of business product needs and concerns into technology solutions with a constant focus on business process improvement.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES/BEHAVIORS:
·Develop a strong understanding of the company’s business processes in the Life and Annuity areas, their products, and the supporting technology environments.
·Develop a strong understanding of the product development process and sub-processes, including the supporting technology and organizational structures.
·Assemble, hire and develop an effective and highly skilled applications development team who can assess business needs and apply appropriate technology solutions.
·Serve as the Build, Test & Deploy (BT&D) sub-process owner of the Product Development Process, ultimately responsible for the product state filing, application development, and quality assurance associated with the development of Life and Annuity products.
·Partner with product development process and sub-process owners to ensure that transition between the product’s sub-process areas and their process stage gates are seamless.
·Ensure the BT&D sub-process team, and the functional teams comprising it, effectively collaborate and deliver on key strategic product initiatives.
·Ensure the Life and Annuity application development teams are successfully delivering on non-product project initiatives, maintenance, and support.
·Work with business, application and infrastructure associates to continually leverage technology in support of new functionality to meet value-added business needs.
·Actively contribute to and lead initiatives to continually streamline and enhance the product development process and its supporting technologies.
·Promote and build effective working relationships with business and IM&T partners, support staff and application vendors.
·Participate in strategic planning and project estimating.
REQUIREMENTS
MAJOR QUALIFICATIONS:
·7-plus years of professional Information Technology experience
·5-plus years of insurance industry, product application development experience
·Bachelors or higher-level degree in Information Technology or related discipline
·Exceptional communicator and relationship builder with all levels of the organization, and ability to communicate technical issues to non-technical business colleagues
·Excellent problem solving skills and ability to apply strategic and practical technology solutions to support efficient product development processing
·Expert and proven skills in the areas of analysis, judgment, decision making, influencing, organization, and planning
·Expert skill and demonstrated ability to provide leadership for a large application development team
·Demonstrated ability to lead in a matrix-organizational model for application development projects
·Passion and demonstrated ability for continuous, proactive process improvement