Application Manager, Software Engineering (Hybrid)

At Selective, we don't just insure uniquely, we employ uniqueness.

Selective is a midsized U.S. domestic property and casualty insurance company with a history of strong, consistent financial performance for nearly 100 years. Selective's unique position as both a leading insurance group and an employer of choice is recognized in a wide variety of awards and honors, including listing in Forbes Best Midsize Employers in 2024 and certification as a Great Place to Work in 2024 for the fifth consecutive year.

Employees are empowered and encouraged to Be Uniquely You by being their true, unique selves and contributing their diverse talents, experiences, and perspectives to our shared success. Together, we are a high-performing team working to serve our customers responsibly by helping to mitigate loss, keep them safe, and restore their lives and businesses after an insured loss occurs.

Selective Insurance is looking for an Application Manager, Software Engineering who is responsible for delivering software solutions to solve business, and customer needs. This individual will oversee a team consisting of senior software engineers and team leads responsible for supporting applications that are complex in nature and of high strategic importance to the corporation. The primary responsibility will be to oversee 2-3 agile delivery teams leading new strategic projects and enhancements for Excess & Surplus line solutions used by Selective's agents and underwriters. This is a unique opportunity to contribute to the strategic direction of Application Delivery within a growing company while being given opportunities to develop and excel professionally.

• Manages implementations of new hardware and software solutions and the ongoing maintenance for insurance policy administration systems
• Collaborate with managers (IT and business) to discuss system requirements, specifications, costs and timelines
• Establishing and maintaining relationships with business and IT counterparts to ensure proper collaboration
• Accountable for leading efforts around project scope, schedule, and budget, ensuring commitments and progress are monitored closely and communicated clearly
• Forecasting and allocation of team members across several development projects
• Regular reporting of key metrics like resource allocation, software defects, productivity, and efficiency
• Trains, supervises, assigns projects to, evaluates, and is responsible for hiring/termination of information technology personnel and contracting staff
• Talent management of team members to ensure high morale and appropriate advancement of individual goals and career aspirations
• Participate in the evaluation, acquisition, and implementation of software to support business processes
• Participation in and well-planned implementation of established quality improvement initiatives and processes

Knowledge and Requirements

Demonstrates extensive abilities and/or a proven record of success as a team leader by:

• Supervising teams to create an atmosphere of trust; seeking diverse views to encourage improvement and innovation;
• Participating in various staff recruitment and retention activities;
• Coaching staff including providing timely meaningful written and verbal feedback;
• Managing a cross functional team of Pega architects and system architects, along with .NET/Angular developers, and ensure tasks are assigned and delivered on time and on budget;
• Translating complex functional, technical and business requirements into architectural designs;
• Developing high-level application design and direct detailed design work of the developers;
• Developing proofs-of-concept and prototypes to validate and compare design alternatives;
• Performing cost/benefit and trade-off analyses of design alternatives;
• Defining high-level development tasks, provide estimates, and identify skills necessary for implementation;
• Guiding software engineers in the implementation of selected designs and strategies;
• Performing code reviews of critical parts of the systems

Demonstrates extensive abilities and/or a proven record of success learning and performing in functional and technical capacities, including following areas:

• Architecting and deploying web-based and web-enabled business applications;
• Understanding of Angular and .NET Framework development techniques;
• Understanding of Low Code Platform development; Preferred: Pega
• Understanding of Object-Oriented Design (OOD), Unified Modeling Language (UML), stateless distributed architectures, and designing for scalability and performance, especially within, .Net, HTML5, CSS3, and WCF technologies;
• Understanding of event-driven and delegate-based design paradigms;
• Leveraging knowledgeable in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), its principles, and patterns at the enterprise level;
• Demonstrating experience in data modeling techniques and knowledge and applicability of various normal forms;
• Demonstrating experience and knowledge of multi-tier and cross-platform architectures that are driven towards mobility;
• Developing IT architecture plans and software development methodologies;
• Leveraging knowledge of web-based technologies; HTTP, AJAX, HTML5, JavaScript, jQuery and CSS3;
• Understanding of UI Frameworks (i.e., Angular 4);
• Understanding of Microsoft SQL Server and other most common backend Microsoft technologies;
• Understanding of Agile development environment especially SCRUM and SAFe;
• Messaging architectures (EAI), Excel Services, BizTalk, SAP XI, XML, SOAP, and Web Services;
• Messaging architectures SOAP and REST with JSON text encoding; and,
• Coding Development, deploying distributed architectures and platforms, creating benchmark tests, designing for scalability and performance, and implementing large-scale vendor systems.

Selective Insurance offers a total rewards package that includes a competitive base salary, incentive plan eligibility at all levels, and a wide array of benefits designed to help you and your family stay healthy, achieve your financial goals, and balance the demands of your work and personal life. These benefits include comprehensive health care plans, retirement savings plan with company match, discounted Employee Stock Purchase Program, tuition assistance and reimbursement programs, and paid time off plans. Additional details about our total rewards package will be provided during the recruiting process.

The actual base salary is based on geographic location, and the range is representative of salaries for this role throughout Selective's footprint. Additional considerations include relevant education, qualifications, experience, skills, performance, and business needs.

Selective is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. That means we respect and value every individual's unique opinions, beliefs, abilities, and perspectives. We are committed to promoting a welcoming culture that celebrates diverse talent, individual identity, different points of view and experiences - and empowers employees to contribute new ideas that support our continued and growing success. Building a highly engaged team is one of our core strategic imperatives, which we believe is enhanced by diversity, equity, and inclusion. We expect and encourage all employees and all of our business partners to embrace, practice, and monitor the attitudes, values, and goals of acceptance; address biases; and foster diversity of viewpoints and opinions.