The Head, IT Applications & Engineering is accountable for the end-to-end delivery, performance, stability, and evolution of the organisation’s application landscape across core insurance systems, CRM and customer-servicing platforms, customer-facing digital channels, and integration and API layers.
The primary purpose of this role is to ensure that enterprise systems and custom-built digital capabilities are well-architected for scalability, efficiently delivered, and sustainably operated to support business growth in a regulated insurance environment.
We are seeking a strategic leader who can lead the team through a critical business growth phase. He/she should demonstrate a combination of strong technical leadership and enterprise application experience (e.g. with policy administration and CRM systems).The ideal candidate should also have experience in building or transforming teams from a reactive, change-request driven culture into a high-performing, innovative and product-oriented engineering one.
POSITION ACCOUNTABILITIES
Technical Leadership & Architecture
- Provide hands-on leadership across application design, architecture and engineering best practices
- Guide teams in building scalable, secure, and high-performance systems
- Review, validate and challenge technical designs while coaching software engineers on best practices
Enterprise Applications Ownership
- Oversee the design, build / customisation and enhancement of core insurance systems, CRM and customer-servicing platforms, customer-facing digital channels, andintegration and API layers
- For enterprise systems and SaaS platforms, ensure optimal balance between configuration and customisation
- Build and maintain application roadmaps aligned to business priorities
- Identify opportunities for system optimisation, technical debt reduction and cost-efficiency improvements
AI Enablement & Innovation
- Build engineering capacity for innovation and product development (including AI and automation) and modernizing existing technology stack
- Drive adoption of AI-enabled development practices and tooling across the SDLC
- Support gradual transition towards a product squad operating model
Engineering Execution and Resource Planning
- Define and implement delivery processes (agile cadence, sprint planning, backlog management)
- Establish and manage release schedules and CI/CD pipelines
- Track and report delivery performance metrics (lead time, defects, throughout)
- Establish and enforce engineering standards and best practices of code quality and peer reviews, CI/CD and test automation standards
- Define engineering roadmaps and plan resource allocation across multiple projects
Team Leadership and Change Agility
- Lead and manage software engineering teams, focused on a balanced strategy to build internal engineering capabilities and leveraging external (offshore)capabilities
- Coach, mentor and develop engineering managers and developers.
- Identify capability gaps and implement training and promote professional development within the team, emphasizing the growth and advancement of team members
- Foster anengineering culture of strong ownership, collaboration and continuousimprovement
- Navigate complex change management processes, fostering a culture of agility
Strategic Vendor Management
- Manage vendor relationships and contract negotiations to optimize value, performance, and risk mitigation.
- Manage delivery and performance of vendors and integration partners, which includes tracking vendor performance against SLAs and contractual obligation.
- Manage vendor’s upgrade and roadmap alignment, prevent over-customisation and vendor lock-in.
Stakeholder Management & Alignment
- Partner closely with business, product, and executive stakeholders to align on priorities and outcomes
- Translate complex business requirements into scalable technical solutions
QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE
Qualifications
- Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Computer or Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
- Relevant professional certifications such as Project Management Professional (PMP),Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or other relevant credentials are advantageous.
Experience
- 15 - 20years of experience in software engineering, application delivery, with strong progression into leadership roles
- Strong background in modern architecture (e.g. microservices / API design, cloud-native development, integration patterns such as REST, messaging, event-driven)
- Demonstrated experience leading and scaling engineering teams. Prior experience with leading offshore teams is advantageous.
- Strong technical foundation with previous hands-on experience as a technology architect, able to make strategic decisions grounded in deep architectural understanding.
- Exposure to AI/ML or AI-enabled development practices is highly preferred
- Experience working with enterprise platforms (CRM systems such as Salesforce, Dynamics)
- Experience working in direct insurance environments with understanding of policy lifecycle, underwriting workflows, claims processing is preferred.
- Experience working in regulated environments with strong appreciation of technology risk management, segregation of duties, audit and compliance requirements is advantageous.
Key Competencies & Attributes
- A problem solver who is hands-on, pragmatic, and delivery-focused
- Comfortable to do hands-on coding and engage developers at code, design and architecture levels
- Strong systems thinking and architectural mindset
- Able to operate effectively in lean, fast-paced and ambiguous environments
- Comfortable driving change and challenging status quo constructively
- Able to drive cross-functional collaboration
