Manager, IT

Markel•Richmond, VA

12d•$108,800 - $226,800

About The Position

Markel is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead the full stack development teams behind our Wholesale and Specialty policy administration platform — the core system our underwriters and external agents use to quote, issue, and service commercial insurance policies. It is a large, actively developed, cloud-hosted application built on the Microsoft technology stack, and it sits at the center of how this part of our business operates. This position is responsible for managing a team of IT employees possessing varied experience levels, leading them through the design, development, delivery, and ongoing support of new capabilities on the platform. This position participates in the planning and managing of activities within the assigned business unit/area. No prior insurance systems experience is required — a strong engineering leader who is curious about the business will be successful here.

Requirements

8 to 10 years of software development, infrastructure, or project delivery experience, including full stack application development.
Hands-on experience with the Microsoft technology stack, including C#/.NET (.NET Core / .NET 6+), ASP.NET, REST APIs, and SQL Server.
Experience delivering and operating applications in Microsoft Azure (for example App Services, Functions, Azure SQL, storage, and messaging).
Experience with modern CI/CD practices and tooling, preferably Azure DevOps and/or GitHub, including automated build, test, and release pipelines.
Experience with modern front-end development (for example Angular, React, or Blazor).
Experience with agile software development methodologies.
Providing coaching and mentoring to team members.
Capable of balancing immediate operational needs while making progress towards long-term engineering goals.
Strong knowledge of technologies and methodologies related to assigned business unit/area.
Skilled in organizing resources and establishing priorities.
Strong analytical and problem solving skills.
Ability to successfully gather technical information and transform into clear and concise communication material.
Strong desire for continuous improvement.
Ability to effectively lead, coach, and develop staff across multiple teams.
Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills. Ability to interact with all levels of Markel's internal and external business partners.
Ability to manage and prioritize multiple projects, attention to detail, sensitivity to time management and deadlines.
Displays confidence when working with and convincing all levels of employees.
Ability to lead effectively in a busy, fast-paced environment with shifting priorities.
Willingness to learn a complex business domain and translate it into technical direction for the team.
Working knowledge of application architecture patterns, secure coding practices, and technical debt management in a long-lived business-critical system.
Working knowledge of AI tools and techniques and the ability to apply them to software engineering and delivery problems.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, other related field, or equivalent work experience, including military experience.
US Work Authorization required. Markel does not provide visa sponsorship for this position, now or in the future.

Nice To Haves

Experience managing multiple teams strongly preferred.
Experience leading teams that support a large, long-lived business-critical application is strongly preferred.
Insurance or financial services experience is a plus but not required.
Practical experience applying AI-assisted development tooling and AI capabilities within an application engineering context.

Responsibilities

Contributes to strategic, operational, and divisional goals as a member of the management team.
Tracks team delivery, provides project update/information, and informs management of any deviations which may impact the delivery.
Plans and conducts performance appraisals for employees, and administers disciplinary action.
Initiates discussions around raises, bonuses, and promotions within team.
Involved with recruitment, development, retention, and organization of all managed staff in accordance with corporate budgetary and policy requirements, including offshore resources.
Defines team operating standards and ensures essential procedures are followed at all times.
Trains, coaches, and mentors employees on the team.
Identify and measure team health indicators.
Ensure proper team focus on priorities, milestones, and deliverables.
Responsible for tracking and reporting key metrics and status updates to senior management.
Represents the engineering team to business stakeholders, customers, and other internal delivery teams.
Leads the design, build, and delivery of application components across the full stack — user interface, APIs and services, business logic, and data persistence — on the Microsoft technology stack.
Owns engineering practices for the team, including CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, code quality standards, environment and release management, and production support.
Partners with product owners and business partners to translate business needs into working software, and builds the team's understanding of the insurance processes the platform supports.
Ensures reliable integration between this platform and the surrounding systems it exchanges data with, including billing, claims, document generation, and enterprise reporting.
Manage one or more teams as assigned, balancing workload and priorities across teams.
Participates in production support escalation and is occasionally required to work late evenings and weekends as needed.