Assistant Director IT Applications Development

About the role

The assistant director, application development provides leadership for the application development function and helps shape the design, delivery, support, and ongoing evolution of technology solutions that meet HAI Group business needs.

Responsibilities

• Provides strong technical leadership for the development organization and drives continuous improvement across engineering, DevSecOps, release, security, and operational capabilities.
• Led development teams within a SAFe Agile environment to iteratively design, develop, test, and deliver high-quality solutions, partnering with product management to refine initiatives, epics, and stories.
• Builds strong partnerships with business leaders and product management to align priorities, communicate progress, and guide delivery decisions across all levels of the organization.
• Provides technical and operational leadership across the development portfolio, including setting priorities, balancing resources, and ensuring consistent, high-quality delivery.
• Drives the advancement of DevOps practices by leading development efforts and partnering with infrastructure and operations teams to improve automation, deployment workflows, and delivery efficiency.
• Promotes ongoing technical growth across the team through adoption of relevant technologies, practices, and approaches.
• Provides direction, coordination, and collaboration for overall solutions architecture, working closely with the CTO and key stakeholders to guide platform, integration, and technical design decisions in support of business and enterprise priorities.
• Shapes and evolves solution architecture across platforms and integrations to support changing business needs and enterprise strategy.
• Leads the build-out and strengthening of application development and support capabilities for the OneShield platform by developing internal expertise while fostering a strong, collaborative vendor partnership to operate as a unified team for delivery, support, and ongoing platform evolution.
• Serves as a key contributor to technical strategy and solution design, leading and advising on architectural decisions and maintaining appropriate documentation.
• Works closely with business leadership and product management to analyze requirements and ensure solutions effectively support business objectives.
• Collaborates with infrastructure and security teams to ensure solutions are scalable, secure, and aligned with performance, capacity, and lifecycle considerations.
• Accountable for the support, stability, and continuous improvement of HAI Group production applications.
• Leads root cause analysis for technical issues and drives lasting improvements to application reliability, stability, and performance.
• Partners with the HAI Group Service Desk to ensure responsive, high-quality application support.
• Maintains service performance against SLAs and KPIs, driving continuous improvement and evolution of service measures.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in computer engineering or related field; or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years of leadership experience in application development, software delivery, and/or technology management, including responsibility for teams, priorities, and delivery outcomes.
• 5+ years of experience in property and casualty insurance technology, preferably within an application development or enterprise systems environment.
• 10+ years of experience in application development within client/server, web, service-oriented, or modern cloud-enabled environments, including significant success leading strategic technology initiatives and delivering solutions. Experience with Microsoft development platforms preferred.
• 7+ years of experience working with application data and enterprise data platforms, including relational databases such as Microsoft SQL Server or comparable technologies.

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• Strong knowledge of property and casualty insurance business operations and supporting technology needs preferred.
• Strong knowledge of enterprise application development tools, platforms, delivery methodologies, and engineering governance practices.
• Well-versed in Agile software delivery methodologies such as SAFe or Scrum, with strong practical experience applying them in delivery environments.
• Strong working knowledge of infrastructure, cloud-based platforms, and security practices that support enterprise application delivery and operations
• Strong experience with service-oriented and integration-based architectures, including modern APIs, enterprise integration patterns, and supporting technologies.
• Strong experience with application data structures and patterns across different forms, formats, and platforms, including how data is managed, transformed, and integrated.
• Analytical and problem-solving skills; seeks solutions to customer challenges
• Communication (questioning/listening) and responding clearly (verbal and written)
• Team player; builds trusting relationships
• Excellent organizational skills and time management abilities are essential
• Effectively leads multiple concurrent initiatives of moderate to high complexity while balancing strategic priorities, operational needs, and organizational constraints.
• Adapts quickly to changing priorities and responds with urgency, judgment, and focus.
• Demonstrates curiosity about how technology solutions contribute to business outcomes.
• Seeks out best practices and applies lessons learned to improve outcomes.
• Coaches and develops leaders and team members, fostering accountability, engagement, collaboration, and strong performance across the development organization.

Work Environment and Physical Demands

• Inside climate-controlled office building
• Prolonged sitting and using a PC
• Ability to lift 25lbs