Sammons Financial Group Inc.
Director, Life IT Engineering - Sales Enablement ART
Sammons Financial Group Inc., Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States, 57102
What You Can Expect In This Role
The Life IT Engineering Director in provides strategic and operational leadership for Sammons Financial Group’s Life Insurance technology ecosystem supporting sales enablement, new business, underwriting, and policy delivery. Leading the Sales Enablement Agile Release Train (ART) within our SAFe Agile operating model, this role drives the delivery and evolution of digital capabilities across key platforms including Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC), FAST, PerformancePlus and internally developed Java/MuleSoft/Angular solutions. The IT Engineering Director serves as a key business partner to Product Management and Life Operations leadership - connecting technology strategy with business outcomes, guiding modernization efforts, and advancing our agile operating model to enhance scalability, resilience, and value delivery across the Life ecosystem. What You'll Do In This Role
Strategic & Technical Leadership
Provide strategic direction for the technology landscape enabling Life sales, underwriting, and policy servicing, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and business priorities. Lead the Sales Enablement ART within the SAFe Agile framework, ensuring predictability, transparency, and continuous improvement across six cross‑functional teams. Partner with Product Management and Life business leaders to define capability roadmaps, manage dependencies, and deliver measurable business outcomes. Drive technology modernization and platform reusability, optimizing architecture for scalability, cost efficiency, and integration with enterprise observability and analytics. Advance agile and engineering maturity across Life IT, fostering a culture of empowerment, data‑driven decision‑making, and innovation. Capability Delivery & Ecosystem Oversight
Provide leadership across a broad set of capabilities, ensuring effective technology enablement for: Recruit/Onboard Relationships; Distribution Partner Management; Point of Sale and In-Force Illustrations; Underwriting & Case Management; Correspondence, Pending Business Application & Policy Contract Generation; New Business, Data Integrations & Policy Contract Delivery. Ensure technical alignment, scalability, and business continuity across these systems and their integrations within the broader Life ecosystem. Vendor & SaaS Management
Provide executive‑level oversight of strategic vendor partnerships, including Verisk (FAST), iPipeline, WELiS, and DXC, ensuring alignment with SFG’s technology roadmap and business objectives. Oversee governance for SaaS and vendor‑delivered solutions, ensuring release planning, data integrity, and integration with enterprise systems. Collaborate with Procurement and Finance to manage licensing, vendor performance, and multi‑year contract planning aligned with SFG’s technology investment strategy. Serve as a primary liaison between internal delivery teams and external vendor engineering resources to coordinate joint initiatives and troubleshoot complex integration challenges. Cross‑Functional Collaboration
Partner closely with Service Delivery to ensure system reliability, incident transparency, and operational readiness for each release. Collaborate with enterprise observability teams as a consumer of insights from tools such as AppDynamics and LoadRunner to inform performance tuning and capacity planning. Coordinate with other ARTs to manage shared dependencies, sequencing, and enterprise release planning. Contribute to enterprise forums and governance processes to align with shared architecture, security, and delivery standards. People Leadership & Development
Lead a multi‑disciplinary organisation of engineers, analysts, and scrum masters; coach and mentor IT Managers and Tech Leads to strengthen leadership capability. Foster an environment of empowerment, accountability, and innovation aligned with Sammons Financial Group’s purpose and values. Encourage learning, collaboration, and creative problem‑solving through ongoing feedback, open communication, and recognition. Support career growth and succession planning, ensuring the organisation remains adaptive and capable of delivering evolving business needs. What We’re Looking For
Bachelor’s Degree Required Or Associate’s Degree technical degree with supplementary work experience Required Minimum 5 years’ experience in computer operations environment with increasing responsibilities Required Effective leadership, management, decision‑making and motivational skills Ability to manage geographically dispersed staff Proficiency in IBM mainframe production batch and online environment Demonstrated proficiency with open‑system and mainframe job scheduling software Excellent verbal and written communication skills Demonstrated corporate accountability, openness, integrity and respect when dealing with internal and external customers Ability to respond to emergencies outside of regularly scheduled work hours Other Requirements
Criminal background check required. Due to the financial nature and level of accountability of this position, a credit and criminal background check is required - The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires Sammons Financial Group Companies to notify you that, as a routine part of processing this application for employment, Sammons Financial Group may request a consumer report on you to verify all information contained in this application. Such report may include information about work‑related behaviours, performance, character, general reputation, and personal characteristics, in addition to information about your previous employment, education, credit history and criminal records. What you can expect when you join Sammons Financial Group
Sammons Financial Group offers a competitive benefit package that includes: Health, Dental, Vision, Company Paid Retirement, PTO and Holiday Pay. Our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is a 100% company‑funded retirement plan, so you can save for retirement without contributing a penny of your own paycheck. Healthy balance between work and personal lives. Friday afternoons off all year long, competitive PTO, and generous number of paid holidays. Our incentive program for defined goals subject to eligibility and performance. Monetary rewards are based on individual and/or overall company performance. Colleagues who support one another, model our core values, and drive our healthy, high‑performing culture. Salary Range Information
USD $112,713.00 - USD $234,819.00 /Yr. Range includes data points from multiple labor markets. Specific range is dependent on the labor market where the incumbent will be hired to perform the position. Starting salary is dependent on candidate qualifications and experience. For a narrower salary range specific to your labor market, please inquire. Work Authorization/Sponsorship
At this time, we’re not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future or those needing work authorization for this role (This includes, but is not limited to students on F1-OPT, F1-CPT, J-1, etc.).
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The Life IT Engineering Director in provides strategic and operational leadership for Sammons Financial Group’s Life Insurance technology ecosystem supporting sales enablement, new business, underwriting, and policy delivery. Leading the Sales Enablement Agile Release Train (ART) within our SAFe Agile operating model, this role drives the delivery and evolution of digital capabilities across key platforms including Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC), FAST, PerformancePlus and internally developed Java/MuleSoft/Angular solutions. The IT Engineering Director serves as a key business partner to Product Management and Life Operations leadership - connecting technology strategy with business outcomes, guiding modernization efforts, and advancing our agile operating model to enhance scalability, resilience, and value delivery across the Life ecosystem. What You'll Do In This Role
Strategic & Technical Leadership
Provide strategic direction for the technology landscape enabling Life sales, underwriting, and policy servicing, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture and business priorities. Lead the Sales Enablement ART within the SAFe Agile framework, ensuring predictability, transparency, and continuous improvement across six cross‑functional teams. Partner with Product Management and Life business leaders to define capability roadmaps, manage dependencies, and deliver measurable business outcomes. Drive technology modernization and platform reusability, optimizing architecture for scalability, cost efficiency, and integration with enterprise observability and analytics. Advance agile and engineering maturity across Life IT, fostering a culture of empowerment, data‑driven decision‑making, and innovation. Capability Delivery & Ecosystem Oversight
Provide leadership across a broad set of capabilities, ensuring effective technology enablement for: Recruit/Onboard Relationships; Distribution Partner Management; Point of Sale and In-Force Illustrations; Underwriting & Case Management; Correspondence, Pending Business Application & Policy Contract Generation; New Business, Data Integrations & Policy Contract Delivery. Ensure technical alignment, scalability, and business continuity across these systems and their integrations within the broader Life ecosystem. Vendor & SaaS Management
Provide executive‑level oversight of strategic vendor partnerships, including Verisk (FAST), iPipeline, WELiS, and DXC, ensuring alignment with SFG’s technology roadmap and business objectives. Oversee governance for SaaS and vendor‑delivered solutions, ensuring release planning, data integrity, and integration with enterprise systems. Collaborate with Procurement and Finance to manage licensing, vendor performance, and multi‑year contract planning aligned with SFG’s technology investment strategy. Serve as a primary liaison between internal delivery teams and external vendor engineering resources to coordinate joint initiatives and troubleshoot complex integration challenges. Cross‑Functional Collaboration
Partner closely with Service Delivery to ensure system reliability, incident transparency, and operational readiness for each release. Collaborate with enterprise observability teams as a consumer of insights from tools such as AppDynamics and LoadRunner to inform performance tuning and capacity planning. Coordinate with other ARTs to manage shared dependencies, sequencing, and enterprise release planning. Contribute to enterprise forums and governance processes to align with shared architecture, security, and delivery standards. People Leadership & Development
Lead a multi‑disciplinary organisation of engineers, analysts, and scrum masters; coach and mentor IT Managers and Tech Leads to strengthen leadership capability. Foster an environment of empowerment, accountability, and innovation aligned with Sammons Financial Group’s purpose and values. Encourage learning, collaboration, and creative problem‑solving through ongoing feedback, open communication, and recognition. Support career growth and succession planning, ensuring the organisation remains adaptive and capable of delivering evolving business needs. What We’re Looking For
Bachelor’s Degree Required Or Associate’s Degree technical degree with supplementary work experience Required Minimum 5 years’ experience in computer operations environment with increasing responsibilities Required Effective leadership, management, decision‑making and motivational skills Ability to manage geographically dispersed staff Proficiency in IBM mainframe production batch and online environment Demonstrated proficiency with open‑system and mainframe job scheduling software Excellent verbal and written communication skills Demonstrated corporate accountability, openness, integrity and respect when dealing with internal and external customers Ability to respond to emergencies outside of regularly scheduled work hours Other Requirements
Criminal background check required. Due to the financial nature and level of accountability of this position, a credit and criminal background check is required - The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires Sammons Financial Group Companies to notify you that, as a routine part of processing this application for employment, Sammons Financial Group may request a consumer report on you to verify all information contained in this application. Such report may include information about work‑related behaviours, performance, character, general reputation, and personal characteristics, in addition to information about your previous employment, education, credit history and criminal records. What you can expect when you join Sammons Financial Group
Sammons Financial Group offers a competitive benefit package that includes: Health, Dental, Vision, Company Paid Retirement, PTO and Holiday Pay. Our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is a 100% company‑funded retirement plan, so you can save for retirement without contributing a penny of your own paycheck. Healthy balance between work and personal lives. Friday afternoons off all year long, competitive PTO, and generous number of paid holidays. Our incentive program for defined goals subject to eligibility and performance. Monetary rewards are based on individual and/or overall company performance. Colleagues who support one another, model our core values, and drive our healthy, high‑performing culture. Salary Range Information
USD $112,713.00 - USD $234,819.00 /Yr. Range includes data points from multiple labor markets. Specific range is dependent on the labor market where the incumbent will be hired to perform the position. Starting salary is dependent on candidate qualifications and experience. For a narrower salary range specific to your labor market, please inquire. Work Authorization/Sponsorship
At this time, we’re not considering candidates that need any type of immigration sponsorship now or in the future or those needing work authorization for this role (This includes, but is not limited to students on F1-OPT, F1-CPT, J-1, etc.).
#J-18808-Ljbffr