Manager of Application Development

Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores•Oklahoma City, OK

About The Position

Love's Travel Stops & Country Stores is seeking a Manager of Application Development to lead software development, engineering practices, and quality for new and existing products. The Manager is responsible for guiding teams to deliver maintainable and sustainable product solutions, resolving issues through collaboration and performance monitoring, and partnering with business and product stakeholders to deliver best-in-class customer experiences. This role is also responsible for driving adoption of modern engineering approaches—including AI-assisted engineering tools—to improve developer productivity, strengthen code quality, and accelerate solution delivery. The Manager sets standards and guardrails for responsible AI usage across the team and ensures AI-enabled development integrates with DevOps, testing, and delivery practices.

Requirements

Bachelor’s Degree or 4 years equivalent experience
8+ years experience of application development
2+ years experience leading development teams
Strong proficiency in application development patterns and practices
Proficient understanding of code versioning tools and workflows (e.g., Git)
Product mindset with strong customer focus
Ability to operate effectively both independently and within a team using Agile methodology
Ability to recommend and enforce industry best practices and patterns
Ability to mentor and lead developers and other technical roles
Strong customer-service orientation with understanding of organizational goals and objectives
Well organized; team oriented
Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
Clear, concise communication across technical and non-technical audiences
Collaborative mindset with the ability to influence without authority
Attention to detail with a focus on risk-based quality decisions
Prolonged periods of sitting and computer use
Occasional bending and stooping
Manual dexterity sufficient to operate a computer keyboard and standard office equipment
Requires normal range of vision and hearing
Occasional lifting of up to 25 pounds may be required
Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without sponsorship

Responsibilities

Manage the development and deployment of new applications, systems software, and enhancements to existing applications and supporting services and data
Cultivate, disseminate, and enforce development, administrative, and operational best practices
Lead strategy and implementation for best practices in delivery of application development products
Ensure solutions are maintainable, sustainable, and aligned to business outcomes
Identify, troubleshoot, and resolve issues and defects through collaboration and monitoring application performance
Research and make recommendations on software products in support of procurement and development efforts
Coordinate feasibility studies for software and system products under consideration for purchase and provide recommendations based on findings
Partner with business, product, and design teams to translate needs into actionable delivery plans and to deliver best-in-class customer experience
Review and analyze existing applications’ effectiveness and efficiency, and develop strategies for improving or leveraging these systems
Where necessary, prepare, establish, and monitor budgets
Continuously learn and adopt new technologies as required to meet business needs
Drive adoption of AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Tabnine, or similar) to improve development efficiency and code quality
Define team standards and guardrails for responsible AI usage (e.g., code review expectations, security considerations, and testing requirements)
Embed AI-enabled practices into SDLC and DevOps workflows, including automated testing, CI/CD, and observability/monitoring