Manager, IT Application Support

Homesteaders Life Company•West Des Moines, IA

2d•$125,000 - $135,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As Manager, IT Application Support – Policy Operations, this role leads a team of application engineers who provide production support, incident management, and operational stewardship for policy administration system processes. The position is directly accountable for the successful execution, monitoring, support, and continuous improvement of the organization’s Policy Administration Cycle. The manager leads engineers participating in on-call and overnight support rotations, establishes operational excellence, drives automation and observability initiatives, and builds operational knowledge to reduce risk. The role is the primary owner for cycle reliability, support readiness, incident response coordination, and production support governance. Homesteaders Life Company is a mutual company owned by its policy holders and a national provider of products and services that help people design a better farewell. Founded in 1906, it provides preneed funding and solutions connecting funeral and end-of-life professionals with consumers. Hiring is currently available in AL, FL, GA, IA, IN, KS, LA, MI, MS, MT, NC, NE, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA, WI, and WV. Applicants must be authorized to work for any U.S. employer; visa sponsorship or takeover of sponsorship is not available.

Requirements

At least 5 years of progressive, applicable experience working with application development tools and processes.
At least 2 years of .NET framework experience.
At least 2 years of experience utilizing SQL Server.
Understanding of systems development methodology best practices.
Knowledge of agile methodologies, techniques, and tools, with at least 2 years of agile experience.
Experience supporting overnight and on-call processes.

Nice To Haves

Policy Administration system experience.

Responsibilities

Lead and develop an Application Support & Delivery team responsible for supporting and maintaining critical business applications and operational processes; establish team goals, performance expectations, support standards, and development plans while fostering accountability, ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Own the execution, monitoring, support, and continuous improvement of the overnight Policy Administration Cycle, ensuring nightly processing completes accurately and within defined service levels and coordinating issue resolution and recovery when failures occur.
Direct responses to production incidents, system outages, and cycle disruptions; coordinate major events, communication, escalation, business impact assessment, and resolution of critical issues.
Establish and manage on-call schedules, support rotations, escalation procedures, and after-hours support processes; ensure adequate coverage and readiness while promoting knowledge sharing and accountability.
Maintain support procedures, runbooks, troubleshooting guides, recovery plans, and operational documentation; promote knowledge transfer to reduce reliance on individual contributors and improve organizational resiliency.
Oversee application monitoring, job scheduling, alerting, and operational dashboards; proactively identify issues, validate operational readiness, and maintain visibility into critical systems and processes.
Develop deep knowledge of policy administration processing, dependencies, integrations, and business impacts; ensure support teams have the knowledge and capabilities to maintain reliable operations.
Build an engaged support organization through coaching, recognition, career development, and clear expectations; encourage ownership, collaboration, innovation, and a customer-focused mindset.