Cloud Native Developer Practice Lead & Supervisor

Great American Insurance Company•Cincinnati, OH

20h•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking collaborative, full-stack developers who are passionate AI champions and change agents. This role requires strong backend experience in Java/Spring Boot, .NET, or both, with a love for close collaboration, embracing XP practices, and adapting comfortably to frequent context switching. You will lead from wherever you sit, bringing others along as you introduce new ways of working and help teams rethink how software gets built in an AI-augmented world. You will stay ahead of the curve, embrace new tools as the industry evolves, and be genuinely curious about where software development is headed. You see AI as a fundamental shift in how great software gets built, and you're excited to help shape what that looks like in practice. In the Developer Practice Lead role, you will enable and coach teams throughout our organization, championing modern development practices and guiding teams toward delivery excellence. You'll be a driving force behind our AI-first delivery approach - pioneering how our teams leverage AI across the software development lifecycle, evaluating emerging tools and techniques, and establishing the practices, patterns, and guardrails that let us move faster without sacrificing quality. You'll own our internal playbook for AI-assisted development and be the go-to voice for how our teams adopt, evaluate, and scale new AI capabilities. Acting as a bridge between practitioners and architects, you will ensure alignment with organizational goals while cultivating a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation. As AI continues to reshape our industry, you won't just keep pace - you'll set the direction, empowering every team to deliver with speed, quality, and confidence in an AI-augmented world. As a Developer Supervisor, approximately 10% of your time will be dedicated to the growth and success of your direct reports. You'll coach and mentor developers at all experience levels, hold regular 1:1s focused on career growth and feedback, and partner with each team member on individual development plans aligned to their goals. You'll conduct performance reviews, participate in hiring and interviewing, and foster a culture of continuous learning — helping every developer on your team progress toward the next stage of their career.

Requirements

Ability to dive into large, polyglot codebases and contribute quickly while learning.
Comfortable working across multiple programming languages and paradigms.
Genuinely curious about new languages, patterns, and ways of thinking about problems.
Experience leveraging AI coding tools tactically and strategically throughout your engineering workflow, with a particular emphasis on agentic approaches.
Demonstrable ability to research and break down complex problems into discrete, actionable parts.
Empathy for colleagues and a habit of giving and receiving feedback openly and continuously.
Enthusiastic about (or at least open to) Test-Driven Development (TDD).
Experience supporting and troubleshooting complex systems, with the ability to dig into logs, metrics, and streaming data to diagnose issues quickly.
Has mentored others in a professional setting.
BA/BS in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
Minimum 8 years of professional programming experience.
Java/Spring Boot, .NET 8+, VueJS, Testing Frameworks (unit and acceptance), Python (preferred)
Core Tools: Git, Github Copilot (CLI preferred); IDEs like IntelliJ, VS Code; Visual Studio with Resharper or Rider; Relational Databases / NoSQL Databases; Redis; RabbitMQ
Platforms: Cloud Native Platforms (like Pivotal Cloud Foundry/Tanzu Application Service, Azure/Kubernetes), GitHub, GitHub Actions including CI/CD pipelines

Nice To Haves

Experience in a pair programming environment (preferred).
Experience in the Insurance industry (major plus).

Responsibilities

Enable and coach teams throughout the organization, championing modern development practices and guiding teams toward delivery excellence.
Be a driving force behind our AI-first delivery approach, pioneering how teams leverage AI across the software development lifecycle.
Evaluate emerging AI tools and techniques, and establish practices, patterns, and guardrails for faster delivery without sacrificing quality.
Own the internal playbook for AI-assisted development and be the go-to voice for adopting, evaluating, and scaling new AI capabilities.
Act as a bridge between practitioners and architects, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
Cultivate a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation.
Set the direction for AI adoption, empowering every team to deliver with speed, quality, and confidence in an AI-augmented world.
Dedicate ~10% of time to growing direct reports through coaching, mentoring, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.
Hold regular 1:1s focused on career growth, feedback, and removing blockers.
Create individual development plans and identify stretch opportunities aligned to each developer's goals.
Conduct performance reviews and support compensation decisions.
Participate in hiring, interviewing, and onboarding new developers.
Partner with fellow practice leads to set the north star for architectural patterns, design principles, and implementation standards.
Continuously assess development practices and drive improvements, pairing with teams to teach modern techniques and XP practices.
Bring deep technical expertise across the full stack (Java/Spring Boot, .NET, or both), connecting business domain context to architectural design within our AI toolset.
Act as a change agent, cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and curiosity about where software development is headed.