Director of Application Development

Why This Role Matters:

• Direct people-management of Lead, Senior, and entry-level Applications Developers (FTE and contractor mix)
• Tactical accountability for sprint-level delivery, code reviews, and technical decisions across the application development track
• Supports application development needs across all Group 1001 member companies: Delaware Life, Wellspring Health, Gainbridge, Clear Spring P&C, RVI Group, and Group 1001 Corporate
• Expected to maintain hands-on coding contribution on critical-path work, personally conduct code reviews, and prototype technical solutions to de-risk delivery
• Must meet or exceed the Lead Applications Developer technical bar across the full stack
• Operates in an Agile environment using Jira and User Stories, with AI-assisted development expected throughout the team

How You'll Contribute:

• Hands-On Engineering: Contribute production code on critical-path work; personally conduct code reviews; build prototypes and proofs-of-concept to de-risk new initiatives.
• Product Ownership of Portfolio Applications: Serve as the accountable Product Owner for the applications and web properties in the team's portfolio, including ongoing responsibility for security posture, accessibility compliance (WCAG AA minimum), and regulatory compliance applicable to the supported Group 1001 member company (e.g., insurance regulatory, privacy, and data-protection requirements).
• Architectural Fitness and Operational Resilience: Own the architectural health of every application in the portfolio — including business continuity and disaster recovery posture, data backup and retention policy adherence, operating-system and runtime version currency, third-party library currency, and timely application of security patches.
• Tooling and Access Enablement: Ensure every team member has access to the correct application development and support tooling at the appropriate access level — including IDEs, design tools, source control, CI/CD systems, cloud consoles, monitoring/observability platforms, ticketing systems, and any production-support tooling required for their role. Partner with IT, Security, and Identity teams to provision, review, and revoke access on an ongoing basis.
• Short-Range Planning: Own the team's quarterly and sprint-level delivery plans; align capacity against committed scope.
• Sprint Operations: Either lead or actively participate in Agile sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives; partner with product owners on story sizing and readiness.
• Story Readiness Review: Personally vet user stories for technical fitness, acceptance criteria clarity, and dependency identification before they enter a sprint.
• Staff Assignment: Match developers to projects and enhancements based on skill, growth opportunity, and capacity.
• Day-to-Day People Management: Schedule management, 1:1s, goal-setting, performance reviews, compensation recommendations, and corrective action.
• Developer Growth: Build individual development plans; provide technical mentoring; identify and resolve skill gaps through training, pairing, and assignment.
• Continuous Delivery Improvement: Drive measurable improvements in cycle time, change-fail rate, MTTR, and code quality; own the team's CI/CD pipeline health on GitLab.
• M&A Technical Integration: In partnership with the AVP, lead the hands-on technical assessment, re-platforming, and integration of application stacks acquired through M&A across member companies.
• Standards and Governance: Set and enforce team coding standards, secure coding practices (OWASP Top 10 / ASVS), API design conventions, and architectural patterns.
• Production Support: Participate in on-call rotation; lead and/or review investigations on production issues.

What We're Looking For:

• 10 years of professional full-stack software development experience with progressive responsibility
• Demonstrated professional experience in the financial services and/or insurance sector, with a clear commitment to deepening domain knowledge across the markets in which Group 1001 member companies compete — including life and annuity, health, property and casualty, and specialty insurance.
• Demonstrated ability to meet or exceed the Lead Applications Developer technical bar across the full stack — see Lead Applications Developer requirements as the technical floor
• TypeScript proficiency (expert-level)
• Java proficiency (expert-level)
• Deep experience with at least one modern front-end framework (Angular, React, or Next.js)
• Node.js and Express in production for web hosting and server-side execution
• Module bundling (Webpack, Vite, or equivalent)
• Spring Boot for enterprise backend services
• API design and development (REST, GraphQL)
• Advanced Git workflows and authoring/maintaining GitLab CI/CD pipelines
• Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred)
• Production AWS deployment experience and working knowledge of core AWS services
• Secure coding mindset — OWASP Top 10 and OWASP ASVS
• Demonstrated technical management experience — running a team of 4 engineers
• Confident, fluent use of AI tools to accelerate engineering work
• Agile environment experience (Jira, User Stories)
• Demonstrated grounding in software engineering concepts and theory — acquired through formal education, professional training, or equivalent industry experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience integrating acquired-company application stacks during M&A activity
• Insurance, life/annuity, or financial services domain experience
• AWS certification
• Platform engineering or developer-experience leadership exposure

Behavioral Competencies:

• Hands-on technical credibility — earns respect by doing, not just delegating
• Decisive in technical trade-offs; willing to defend an architectural call
• Direct, candid communication with the team and upward to the AVP
• Strong delivery discipline — meets commitments and holds the team to the same
• Coaching mindset — develops senior and lead engineers as future leaders
• Calm under sprint-cycle pressure; protects the team from churn
• Intellectual curiosity and forward-thinking, especially on AI-accelerated delivery