Dir Solution Development at Horace Mann

Job Summary

Horace Mann is seeking an experienced and strategic Director Solution Development to lead the software engineering and support team within IT.

This leader will play a pivotal role in ensuring the stability, efficiency, and continuous improvement of digital platforms, balancing business priorities while driving technical excellence. The ideal candidate will possess a strong technical background, deep understanding of business needs, and exceptional decision-making skills to evaluate and prioritize requests that maximize business value. The candidate will lead the team's adoption of agentic AI-assisted development to enhance productivity and creativity.

This role requires someone who is highly organized, confident in making firm prioritization decisions, and skilled in communicating trade-offs to stakeholders. The director must be able to navigate competing demands, align technology work with strategic goals, and create a structured approach to digital system support and incremental enhancements.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Prioritization & Business Alignment

Evaluate and prioritize incoming requests based on business impact, urgency, and technical feasibility.
Set clear expectations with stakeholders, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
Communicate trade-offs transparently, advocating for business value over reactive task execution.
Develop a structured framework for prioritization that ensures mission-critical support needs are met while also advancing small enhancements that drive continuous improvement.

Leadership & Team Management

Lead, mentor, and empower a high-performing team responsible for support, defect resolution, and small system enhancements.
Ensure cross-team collaboration, fostering a shared understanding of priorities, dependencies, and technical solutions.
Create and uphold accountability structures to ensure work is completed efficiently and with high quality.
Drive a culture of ownership, problem-solving, and continuous learning.
Champion and personally drive the team's use of agentic AI tools to boost team creativity, efficiency, and skill development.

Operational Excellence & Process Improvement

Establish and refine processes for managing digital defects, incidents, and enhancement requests, ensuring smooth workflows and minimal disruption.
Improve and implement best practices for ticketing, resolution timelines, and stakeholder communication.
Analyze trends in defects and enhancement requests to identify opportunities for proactive improvements and efficiency gains.
Drive continuous innovation by incorporating emerging trends and tools, including agentic AI, into project workflows.

Technical & Business Understanding

Serve as the bridge between technology teams and business stakeholders, ensuring both sides understand priorities, constraints, and impacts.
Maintain a strong technical grasp of digital systems, workflows, and potential challenges, ensuring informed decision-making.
Provide guidance on best practices for system stability, scalability, and continuous improvement.

Stakeholder Communication & Expectation Management

Set firm but fair expectations with business stakeholders, ensuring they understand how and why prioritization decisions are made.
Provide regular updates on progress, challenges, and key outcomes related to support and enhancements.
Communicate realistic timelines, risks, and trade-offs when managing requests.

Qualifications

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.

Experience

6+ years of experience in IT leadership, with a focus on managing digital operations, technical support, and system enhancements.
Proven track record of making strategic prioritization decisions that drive business value.
Strong background in technical support, bug resolution, and application enhancement.
Experience implementing agentic AI development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) and driving team-wide adoption in engineering workflows.