The I.T. Senior Applications Manager is responsible for leading/managing the development, deployment, and support of new and existing applications to meet the current and future needs of the business. Responsible for planning, management, and execution of multiple teams that primarily support transactional web-based applications and/or mainframe-based applications.
- Partner with business departments and other IT groups to assess needs, make recommendations, and deliver highly effective technology solutions that support the current and future business operations.
- Collaborate with business and IT stakeholders to prioritize modernization initiatives and establish product roadmaps.
- Lead project managers, team leads and teams supporting existing applications and developing new applications utilizing systems development life cycle and project management methodologies.
- Ensure delivered software meets standards of operational excellence and is stable and supportable in production environments.
- Evaluates project status and resource utilization and implements changes to improve the team’s effectiveness.
- Ensure projects and change requests are prioritized, tracked, and communicated in a consistent and effective manner to ensure the alignment of IT with business initiatives.
- Plan or assist project managers in the planning of projects including the identification of tasks, estimation of effort, and allocation of resources.
- Ensure projects and commitments are delivered on time and within budget, adhering to quality standards and meeting stakeholder expectations.
- Provide technical leadership to development team.
- Perform project management duties for smaller modernization initiatives, including developing project plans, communication management, and risk management.
- Develops and maintains an appropriate organizational structure capable of supporting the application development needs of Globe Life. This includes the appropriate level of cross-training to ensure that applications can be worked on and supported by people other than the original developers.
- Collaborates and coordinates with IT managers and personnel from teams including Infrastructure, BA/QA, EPMO and other Application Managers.
- Ensure compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements and COBIT requirements.
Required Skills
- 10+ years experience managing applications and software development projects and teams in a transactional web-based environment and/or mainframe-based environment with integration to legacy systems.
- Experience with application development environments and tools, change control procedures, systems architecture, and systems development life cycle methodologies.
- 6+ years work related experience in project management with proven knowledge of project management principles and methodologies.
- Experience with complex system environments, including multiple locations and companies in an integrated environment.
- Experience in needs analysis, software package selection and implementation.
- Experience developing & monitoring project work plans and interacting with senior management.
- Experience integrating business processes and business applications.
- Strong leadership, delegation, personnel development and mentoring skills.
- Strong organizational and multi-tasking skills.
- Proven experience in meeting deadlines and managing multiple priorities.
- Strong communication, interpersonal and presentation skills.
- Strong negotiation, conflict resolution and influencing skills.
- Strong conceptual, analytical, problem solving and troubleshooting skills.
- Experience leading/managing teams with both business and technical backgrounds.
- Experience working with vendors and service providers.
- Experience with cost benefit and ROI analysis preparation.
- Experience with providing Level Of Estimates for work and building time-lines
- Commitment to service delivery, including the delivery of project on-time, on-budget, and with exceptional customer satisfaction.
- As a technical leader in the organization, innovative thinking is a must as we drive our systems forward.
- Driving process excellence around software delivery is critical.
- A continuous focus on communication management and risk management for all initiatives.
- Development and maintenance of technology roadmaps to step change applications performance and effectiveness.
- All projects must include thoroughly documented code and operational procedures
- Effective balancing of the workload among team members.
- Provide constructive feedback on an ongoing basis and preparation of formal performance reviews on an annual basis.
- Disaster recovery plans and tests must be completed on an annual basis (at a minimum) for all applications identified as critical to the operations of the business.
Required Experience
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Business Administration, or other related field. Equivalent years of work experience in Information Technology Applications Development & Leadership area also taken in consideration.
- Insurance industry experience in life, health and annuity a plus. Candidates with a working knowledge of the ALIS Policy Administration System would be highly considered.
- Mainframe skills also a plus: COBOL, EASYTRIEVE, Sync Sort, IDCAMS, zOS JCL, BDAM, VSAM, CICS, CEDF, Trac, Xray