Application Engineering Manager--remote or Midwest-preferred

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Engineering Manager to provide people leadership, technical direction, and strategic oversight across a complex enterprise application portfolio. This role is ideal for a seasoned engineering leader who has grown through the engineering ranks, brings deep technical credibility, and thrives in environments that include legacy systems, vendor platforms, and long term modernization initiatives.

The Engineering Manager will lead multiple product teams supporting mission critical business capabilities, with a strong emphasis on team development, architectural decision making, and modernization strategy. Success in this role requires balancing delivery, technology health, and long term sustainability while operating within real world enterprise constraints.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and develop multiple cross functional product teams, including engineers, scrum masters, and a staff engineer.


• Build, coach, and retain high performing engineering teams with a strong culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.


• Provide regular 1:1 coaching, performance feedback, and career development planning.


• Foster psychological safety and a growth oriented team environment.

• Actively participate in architectural discussions and technical tradeoff decisions, including deep, hands on conversations.


• Guide teams toward sound system level and portfolio level architecture decisions rather than isolated optimizations.


• Review and influence solution design, integration approaches, and modernization strategies.


• Maintain credibility through hands on technical engagement, code review familiarity, and solution design participation.

• Provide leadership across a diverse application ecosystem, including:
  
  
  
  • Packaged vendor platforms
  
  
  • Custom and in house applications
  
  
  • Legacy and mainframe systems
  
  
  
  


• Lead or contribute to large scale, multi year modernization efforts involving deeply interdependent systems and aging data platforms.


• Coach teams through complex modernization journeys, balancing business continuity with long term transformation.

• Partner closely with product, architecture, and DevOps teams to influence priorities without direct ownership.


• Drive effective prioritization, capacity planning, and delivery execution across constrained environments.


• Assess and balance technology health, delivery commitments, and long term sustainability.


• Support roadmap planning aligned to multi year strategic objectives and capital investment planning.

• Guide teams through build vs. buy decisions and vendor platform tradeoffs.


• Support vendor selection, platform evaluation, and ongoing vendor relationships.


• Navigate constraints and dependencies inherent in third party software ecosystems.

Team Scope

• Responsible for approximately five product teams.


• Direct leadership of engineers and scrum masters.


• Oversight of a blended team including full time employees, long term contractors, and burst capacity resources.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent experience.


• Significant experience as an engineering people leader with demonstrated success managing and developing engineers.


• Background originating from hands on engineering roles (not purely oversight or adjacent functions).


• Experience leading or influencing large enterprise application portfolios.


• Proven ability to engage in deep technical and architectural discussions.


• Experience working within corporate or enterprise technology environments.


• Familiarity with Agile and product oriented operating models.


• Strong communication skills with the ability to articulate the technical "why" to both technical and non technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Java based systems.


• Exposure to financial services, finance technology, or actuarial systems.


• Experience leading legacy modernization initiatives.


• Comfort operating in matrixed organizations and influencing without full authority.

What Success Looks Like

• Strong, stable engineering teams with clear technical direction and healthy culture.


• Improved engineering practices and platform stability.


• Progress toward long term modernization goals aligned to business strategy.


• Trusted leadership presence across engineering, product, and technology partners.