The Insurance Application Fulfillment Product Group is seeking a Staff Engineer to help lead the modernization of the Insurance Application Issue process across Life, Health, and Annuity business lines. This role partners closely with Product and Underwriting leadership to shape technology strategy, drive architectural decisions, and deliver solutions that are scalable, governed, and resilient in a highly regulated environment.
This role combines deep technical contribution with systems-level ownership. We are looking for an engineer who is energized by complex problem spaces, eager to engage deeply with the business and technical context, and motivated to translate business needs into scalable technical solutions, influence solution approaches, integrate with legacy and vendor systems, maximize reuse of existing platforms, and support thoughtful build vs. buy decisions—while remaining hands-on and engaged in delivery.
DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
Designing Solutions
- Apply expert industry knowledge and broad understanding of multiple disciplines with technical knowledge to drive outcomes for customers
- Ability to work and problem solve independently on initiatives that align to the broader software engineering strategy
- Design systems and software integration patterns across a diverse software engineering ecosystem. These patterns should align to high level engineering goals and business initiatives
Developing Software
- Use independent, critical thinking to solve complex problems which are significant to the customer. Uses application and system data, as well as past experiences to inform decision making.
- Leader in technical expertise; Develops most architecturally impactful components of solutions
- Lead to identify, incorporate and define development frameworks and libraries useful to the product
Learning and Applying New Techniques
- Seek out industry and technology knowledge along with best practices to share with the team.
Collaborating within the Team
- Coordinate design and integration of the entire system including subsystems. Research and recommend technology to improve the current systems
- Participate in team’s collaboration session to provide technical expertise to solve a problem/remove technical roadblocks for the team
- Participate in product planning and implementation. Helps product owner to create technical user stories as required/needed.
- Contribute to detailed application specifications, standards, and diagrams and develop coding standards / best practices
Collaborating Across Teams
- Broker solution design and implementation across product teams to achieve outcomes;
- Contribute to overall systems design which involves multiple teams, research and provide customization or development recommendations, and implement accordingly
Collaborating Across The Organization
- Act as an SME to provide over all operations and support processes to build resilient systems for the enterprise
Setting product/platform technology strategy
- Lead the design of critical path/technology for the product group. Contribute to innovative solutions that align to strategic objectives for the customer
- Provide platform technology expertise to teams within product group as well as interdependent teams across the organization
- Help to define the technology / tools roadmap along with the product owner for the team.
Defining Engineering Standards and Patterns
- Partner with the engineering community inside and outside Thrivent in establishing best practices
- Share engineering standards across internal teams and collaborate to help software engineers apply these patterns to build solutions that achieve outcomes
DevOps
- Lead the resolution of critical incidents and provides leadership in proactively addressing product issues
- Continuously assessing technology to build more stable, scalable, and resilient software
- Promote and expand on the use of the CI/CD pipeline to improve the deployment and build process.
Selecting & Managing Technology Vendors
- Lead the evaluation process for software solutions - advising on strengths and weaknesses of the external software.
- Provide a summary of how a tool impacts business processes and goals.
- Contribute in criteria’s for selecting the right platforms and software for the product team.
Coaching Engineers
- Provide guidance and reinforcement around established engineering best practices
- Provide technical leadership and mentoring to other engineers of varying levels inside the product group
- Provide trainings and demos to address knowledge gaps with in the team
Recruiting and Building Talent
- Engage in the tech community to build the Thrivent technology brand and position as the employer of choice in the market
- Participate in the interview process or be part of the panel to recruit the right talent to the team
- Take part in the Talent Captain role and help lead interview practices.
- Model Thrivent’s leadership competencies of courage, collaboration, and commitment.
- Support an environment focused on continuous improvement, strong engagement, and commitment to clients.
- Shape and support a culture that represents Thrivent’s purpose, promise, and values.
QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:
Required:
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience
- 10+ years of experience in engineering environments, turning abstract business concepts into scalable, well-architected software solutions.
- Experience architecting software solutions that meet performance SLOs, availability, reliability, and security requirements.
- Understanding of data and system integration patterns, including how data-driven capabilities are incorporated into application workflows.
- Proficiency in managing large-scale technical initiatives and navigating complex engineering efforts.
- Ability to clearly articulate complex technical and systems concepts to engineers, product partners, and business stakeholders.
- Strong conceptual, critical thinking, technical, and problem-solving skills, with attention to detail and sound engineering judgment.
- Ability to engage confidently with senior leaders to present architectural perspectives and technical documentation.
Preferred:
- Master’s degree in a related field
- Financial Services industry experience
- Coach / mentor other team members as appropriate
- Familiarity with modern technology stacks and cloud platforms.
- Proficiency in Java, with familiarity in data-oriented languages such as Python or R.
- Understanding of model-driven decision system used in underwriting or decision-support workflows is a plus.
- Financial services industry experience, with a focus on underwriting systems and workflows across insurance products.
- Experience collaborating with cross-functional partners across Product, Underwriting, Architecture, and Engineering teams.
- Experience with vendor evaluation, platform selection, or working with external technology providers.
- Demonstrated experience mentoring engineers and improving technical consistency, quality, and delivery outcomes across teams.
Pay Transparency
Thrivent’s long-term growth depends on attracting, rewarding, and retaining people who are committed to helping others thrive with purpose. We accomplish this by offering a wide variety of market competitive compensation programs to attract, reward, and retain top talent. The applicable salary or hourly wage range for this full-time role is $126,490.00 - $171,134.00 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will be determined by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, location, relevant experience, skills, and knowledge, business needs, market demand, and other factors Thrivent deems important.
Thrivent is unique in our commitment to helping people to be wise with money and live balanced and generous lives. That extends to our benefits.
The following benefits may be offered: various bonuses (including, for example, annual or long-term incentives); medical, dental, and vision insurance; health savings account; flexible spending account; 401k; pension; life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance; disability insurance; supplemental protection insurance; 20 days of Paid Time Off each year; Sick and Safe Time; 10 paid company holidays; Volunteer Time Off; paid parental leave; EAP; well-being benefits, and other employee benefits. Eligibility for receipt of these benefits is subject to the applicable plan/policy documents. Thrivent’s plans/policies are subject to change at any time at Thrivent’s discretion.
Thrivent provides Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other status protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. This policy applies to all employees and job applicants.
Thrivent is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please let us know by sending an email to human.resources@thrivent.com or call 800-847-4836 and request Human Resources.
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