Dir Solution Development

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.

Skills & Competencies:

Technical & Business Expertise

• Strong understanding of digital applications, software development lifecycles, and IT support models .
• Ability to translate business needs into technical priorities and vice versa .
• Familiarity with modern ticketing systems (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira, Azure DevOps) and IT service management best practices .
• Hands-on proficiency with agentic AI coding tools such as Claude Code or Codex — not just chat-based AI assistants — to enhance development workflows.
• Fluency in prompt and context engineering — structuring instructions, memory, and tool access so an agent behaves reliably — and experience building reusable tooling (custom skills or commands, hooks, MCP integrations) around agentic coding assistants, not just ad hoc prompting.
• Understanding of the cost and reliability tradeoffs of …