IT Manager/Engagement Lead

Job description

Job Summary

Horace Mann is seeking an experienced and strategic IT Manager/Engagement Lead for Enterprise Data to assist with coordinating across multiple teams: Data Governance, Data Enablement Real-Time Services, Data Warehousing, and Data Reporting.

This leader will play a pivotal role in ensuring stability, efficiency, visibility, and continuous improvement of enterprise data capabilities, balancing evolving business priorities with a commitment to technical excellence and innovation. The ideal candidate will possess practical analytical expertise, deep understanding of business needs, and exceptional decision-making skills to evaluate and prioritize requests that maximize business value.  The candidate will encourage partners to use generative AI to enhance productivity and creativity.

This role requires someone who is highly organized, equally effective communicator for both business and technical partners, and driven to make a meaningful and measurable impact across the enterprise. This Engagement Lead must be able to navigate competing demands, align technology work with strategic goals, and create a structured approach to data support, incremental enhancements and strategic advancements.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Prioritization & Business Alignment

• Evaluate and prioritize incoming requests based on business impact, urgency, and technical feasibility.
• Set clear expectations with stakeholders, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
• Communicate trade-offs transparently, advocating for business value over reactive task execution.
• Facilitate progression of effort from roadmap to project intake and project initiation, including prioritization, cost-benefit analysis, and other pre-project tasks.
• Develop a structured framework for prioritization that ensures mission-critical support needs are met while also advancing right-sized enhancements that drive continuous improvement.

Leadership & Team Management

• Ensure operational metrics, roadmaps, goals/outcomes, project status, and other critical reports outs for the data department are updated appropriately.
• Identify and help remove operational roadblocks that limit team effectiveness, including process inefficiencies, unclear responsibilities, or misaligned priorities.
• Facilitate necessary resource capacity/demand activities include planning, onboarding, tracking, and support for both employee and contractual staff across all enterprise data teams.
• Ensure cross-team collaboration, fostering a shared understanding of priorities, dependencies, and technical solutions.
• Create and uphold accountability structures to ensure work is completed efficiently and of high quality.
• Drive a culture of ownership, problem-solving, and continuous learning.
• Coach team leads on best practices for planning, reporting, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Act as a central point of escalation and resolution for cross-team resource conflicts or competing priorities.
• Promote the use of generative AI tools to boost team creativity, efficiency, and skill development.

Technical & Business Understanding

• Serve as the bridge between technology teams and business stakeholders, ensuring both sides understand priorities, constraints, and impacts.
• Maintain a strong grasp of enterprise data systems, workflows, and potential challenges, ensuring informed decision-making.

Stakeholder Communication & Expectation Management

• Set firm but fair expectations with business stakeholders, ensuring they understand how and why prioritization decisions are made.
• Provide regular updates on progress, challenges, and key outcomes related to support and enhancements.
• Communicate realistic timelines, risks, and trade-offs when managing requests.

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.

Experience

• 6+ years of experience in IT leadership, with a focus on managing IT projects, technical support, and/or system enhancements.
• Proven track record of making strategic prioritization decisions that drive business value.
• Experience implementing generative AI technologies in development workflows.

Skills & Competencies

Technical & Business Expertise

• Familiarity with at least one area of Data Management, including but not limited to, data intensive applications, data development lifecycles, data analytics, business intelligence, data governance, and/or data-driven decision making.
• Ability to translate business needs into technical priorities and vice versa.
• Ability to view the enterprise data ecosystem holistically and identify systemic issues that affect multiple teams or business areas.
• Familiarity with modern planning and ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow, Enterprise One, Monday, Jira, Azure DevOps) and IT project/portfolio management best practices.
• Familiarity with change management frameworks to support adoption of new processes, tools, or prioritization frameworks across data teams.
• Proficiency in leveraging generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar to enhance IT workflows.

Leadership & Communication

• Strong leadership skills, with the ability to motivate, support, and guide teams in a fast-paced environment.
• Experience with IT portfolio planning, tracking, and senior level report outs.
• Ability to set clear expectations and communicate priorities firmly yet diplomatically to stakeholders.
• Experience in negotiating and influencing senior leaders on data priorities and trade-offs.
• Strong facilitation and conflict resolution skills, with the ability to mediate between diverse stakeholders and align differing viewpoints.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading/shaping IT data and continuous improvement teams in a large enterprise environment.
• Experience within Insurance, Financial Services, or related business domain.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), ITIL frameworks, and Agile methodologies.

Pay Rate:

$99,100.00 - $146,050.00

Salary is commensurate to experience, location, etc.

#vizi

Horace Mann was founded in 1945 by two Springfield, Illinois, teachers who saw a need for quality, affordable auto insurance for teachers. Since then, we’ve broadened our mission to helping all educators protect what they have today and prepare for a successful tomorrow.  And with our broadened mission has come corporate growth:  We serve more than 4,100 school districts nationwide, we’re publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: HMN) and we have more than $12 billion in assets.

We’re motivated by the fact that educators take care of our children’s future, and we believe they deserve someone to look after theirs.  We help educators identify their financial goals and develop plans to achieve them.  This includes insurance to protect what they have today and financial products to help them prepare for their future. Our tailored offerings include special rates and benefits for educators.

EOE/Minorities/Females/Veterans/Disabled. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status

For applicants that are California residents, please review our California Consumer Privacy Notice

All applicants should review our Horace Mann Privacy Policy