Dir Solution Development

The role

The Director Solution Development will lead the software engineering and support team within IT. This leader will manage digital platforms, prioritize business requests, and drive the adoption of agentic AI-assisted development.

What you will do

• Evaluate and prioritize incoming requests based on business impact, urgency, and technical feasibility.
• Set clear expectations with stakeholders and communicate trade-offs.
• Lead, mentor, and empower a high-performing team responsible for support and system enhancements.
• Drive the team's use of agentic AI tools to boost efficiency and skill development.
• Establish and refine processes for managing digital defects, incidents, and enhancement requests.
• Analyze trends in defects and enhancement requests to identify opportunities for improvement.
• Serve as the bridge between technology teams and business stakeholders.
• Provide guidance on best practices for system stability, scalability, and continuous improvement.
• Provide regular updates on progress, challenges, and key outcomes.
• Verify AI-generated work against real evidence.

Required 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 agentic AI development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Codex) and driving team-wide adoption in engineering workflows.
• 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.
• Fluency in prompt and context engineering and experience building reusable tooling around agentic coding assistants.
• Understanding of the cost and reliability tradeoffs of agentic workflows at team scale.
• Strong people leadership skills.

Nice to have

• 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.
• Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification (or equivalent process-improvement credential)

About the company

Horace Mann was founded in 1945 by two Springfield, Illinois, teachers. The company serves more than 4,100 school districts nationwide and is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange.