Mgr, Engineering

Thrivent is committed to helping people thrive with purpose, and they are seeking an Engineering Manager for their Discovery team. The role involves leading two engineering teams to enhance the advisor-client experience through Salesforce and modern web applications, ensuring effective execution and alignment across platforms.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee all Salesforce engineering for Discovery:
• Goals
• Fact‑finding workflows
• Data sync processes
• Action steps & workflow engine dependencies
• Integrations with Planning Profile, Planning Engine, AdvicePay, and other downstream systems
• Drive stability and quality in Salesforce experiences—reducing sync failures, workflow bugs, and data integrity issues
• Ensure platform governance and adherence to Salesforce security, compliance, and architectural standards
• Lead modernization work, including evaluating when and how capabilities shift from Salesforce into modern services
• Oversee delivery of customer‑facing Discovery capabilities through a modern tech stack:
• React UIs
• GraphQL Query data fetching
• Java / Spring Boot APIs
• AWS cloud services (Lambdas, microservices, data pipelines)
• Guide system design for scalable, integration-heavy Discovery workflows
• Establish best‑in‑class engineering practices for testing, performance, observability, resiliency, and accessibility
• Ensure thoughtful balance between new feature delivery, tech debt reduction, and operational excellence
• Holding regular 1:1s with team members and team meeting
• Provides constructive feedback, guidance and coaching to help engineers grow their skills and experience
• Provides career planning advice to engineers and creates development plans to help them achieve their career goals which leverages their skills and capabilities and provides them with learning opportunities
• Partner with Product Managers and Product Owners to shape Discovery roadmaps for both teams — ensuring aligned sequencing of Salesforce vs. full‑stack delivery
• Drive clarity around ownership boundaries so dependencies between the teams don’t create delivery friction
• Lead quarterly planning, capacity allocation, prioritization, and milestone management for both teams
• Ensure predictable delivery with strong engineering rigor and transparent communication
• Work with the principal engineer and team to define how Discovery capabilities should be distributed across Salesforce and modern services
• Provide clear guidance to both teams regarding technical direction, patterns, and integration boundaries
• Maintain a cohesive technical strategy across two platforms with different lifecycles, risk profiles, and scaling characteristics
• Advocate for data quality, maintainability, and long-term simplification across Discovery systems
• Partner closely with Design, Product, downstream Planning teams, and engineering leadership across the portfolio
• Ensure Discovery experiences set up partner teams, and broader Planning systems for success
• Communicate trade‑offs, risks, and recommendations between Salesforce and full‑stack pathways
• Drive high reliability across both platforms by establishing strong observability, monitoring, and alerting
• Oversee incident response, root‑cause analysis, and prevention strategies for both teams
• Ensure adherence to compliance, security, data governance, and accessibility requirements
• Leads the process of selecting and engaging the right consulting partners
• Planning in advance for future people needs for the product groups, collaborate with the other teams on the recruitment process
• Recruits, develops, and sustains a high-performing team while promoting a culture of shared accountability, operational excellence, and partnership across the organization
• Models Thrivent’s leadership competencies – courage, collaboration, and commitment by demonstrating resiliency, working together to make the best decisions, and holding yourself and others accountable
• Supports and/or develops an environment in which Thrivent employees and colleagues are focused on continuous improvement, exceptional employee engagement, and an unwavering commitment to our clients
• Shapes and/or supports a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise and values, ensuring that Thrivent’s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients
• Manage a team of direct and indirect staff

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience
• 8+ years of progressively responsible positions in Information Technology including 5+ years' experience in IT discipline, e.g., Strong engineering background in full‑stack development (Java, React, GraphQL, cloud services) or equivalent architectural experience
• 3+ years of leadership experience in all aspects of a specific IT discipline, e.g. IT/LOB customer relationship management, portfolio strategy and/or demand management
• 3+ years' management/supervisory experience in specific IT functional area discipline, e.g. applications development or equivalent skills leading major technical projects with accountability for enforcing talent management needs and performance standards
• Demonstrated leadership and experience managing multidiscipline, high-performance work teams
• Strong competency in project management and execution of multiple or large projects
• Experience working with customers to develop solutions to complex business problems
• Proven ability to communicate effectively with internal/external stakeholders to support business initiatives
• Proven ability to function in an environment which requires flexibility, good judgment and intelligent decision making, often based on limited information and/or extreme conditions
• Ability to formulate, implement and evaluate plans, programs and procedures applicable to customer relationship and demand management
• Familiarity with Salesforce engineering, workflows, data models, and integration patterns
• Experience with AWS, service‑based architectures, and event-driven systems
• Hands-on or leadership experience with Salesforce Apex, Lightning, Flows, and platform governance
• Experience in financial planning, advisor tools, or enterprise SaaS
• Financial Services industry experience
• Experience in IT planning and business relationship management
• Experience working in a matrix management organization
• Experience with product development and management