Director of Digital Operations & Continuous Improvement

Horace Mann is seeking an experienced and strategic Director of Digital Operations & Continuous Improvement to lead two critical teams within IT:

• Team 1: Focused on support, bug resolution, and defect management for all digital assets.
• Team 2: Dedicated to small enhancements and routine modifications to existing digital systems.

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 encourage teams to use generative AI 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 two high-performing teams 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.
• Promote the use of generative 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 generative 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:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.
• 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 generative AI technologies in development workflows.

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.
• Proficiency in leveraging generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar to enhance development workflows.

Decision-Making & Prioritization

• Ability to assess competing priorities and make firm, strategic decisions.
• Skilled in identifying high-impact improvements while maintaining system stability.
• Experience in building structured prioritization frameworks for IT support and enhancement requests.

Leadership & Communication

• Strong people leadership skills, with the ability to motivate and guide teams in a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to set clear expectations and communicate priorities firmly yet diplomatically to stakeholders.
• Experience in negotiating and influencing senior leaders on digital priorities and trade-offs.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading IT support and continuous improvement teams in a large enterprise environment.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), ITIL frameworks, and Agile methodologies.
• Strong understanding of metrics-driven decision-making and process optimization.

Pay Range:

$117,500.00 - $173,300.00  

Salary is commensurate to experience, location, etc.

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