Technology Lead, UW Technology Portfolio - London, United Kingdom - Liberty Specialty Markets

Description

Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Creation Date: 21-Mar-2024

Employment Type: Permanent

Employment Type: Full time

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Description & Requirements

Role Title: Technology Lead, UW Technology Portfolio

Division: GRSI Underwriting Technology Team

Department: GRSI Technology Underwriting

Location: London

Type: Permanent

About the Role

The UW Technology Portfolio is seeking to recruit an experienced Technology Lead to be responsible for the design and delivery of an agreed and evolving set of UW Technology Initiatives.

The Technology Lead will need to have a clear understanding of the commercial imperatives for these UW Technology Initiatives and drive technology direction, staying up to date with the latest technologies and industry trends, and driving continuous improvement initiatives to enhance team productivity and business outcomes.

The individual will also collaborate with (and sometimes manage) a team of software developers and should possesses a strong background in software engineering practices and methods, with a proven track record of successful delivery within an Agile framework.

About the Department & Team

The UW Technology Team reports into the CIO and works closely with Global Risk Solution (GRS) technology teams to deliver innovative solutions and capabilities that leverage our technical expertise, business understanding and partnerships to enable market-leading performance world-wide.

The UW Technology Team is made up of people who deliver day to day 'Business as Usual' support and the delivery of enhancements and new applications to support the LSM & LMRe underwriting teams.

These applications are used in LSM & LMRe's offices from Latin America and across Europe and the Middle East, through to Lloyd's China. The UW Core Products Team works closely with GRSI and US based Global Risk Solutions (GRS) teams to deliver the right solutions to LSM & LMRe.

Key Responsibilities

• Understanding the UW Technology initiatives landscape for both LSM & LMRe on a global basis, and the different UW Technology initiatives to design and support the implementation of proportionate and fit for purpose solutions designs and plans, including the downstream impacts on LSM & LMR's technology landscape, and associated governance/controls.

• Ensure solution designs are aligned with business goals: You will work closely with the business stakeholders and product owners to ensure that designs are aligned with the overall business goals and objectives. This means that you need to have a thorough understanding of the business context in which the project is being delivered and ensure that the project is contributing towards the achievement of the business goals.

o Understand the individual initiatives and products to build and present designs (based on the high-level design considerations and transition states) to a sufficient level of detail for translation into technical deliverables

o Set-up and run a Design Authority Group, in line with the Terms of Reference

o Collaborate with Product Owners, Architects and Development teams to develop the solution design, aligning detailed designs with the high-level design and escalating any deviations

o Work closely with Software Architects, challenging their decisions and collaborating with them to optimise technical designs and translate them into technical deliverables

o Documenting key transition states from a Technology delivery point of view, and evolution throughout interim states, to a target Technology state

o Supporting business customer journey mapping by highlighting technology implications and considerations

• Technology Capabilities & Standards:

o Provide application design and programming expertise and guidance to Technology professionals involved in the development and enhancement of business applications

o Work with Technology areas to identify, propose and implement new technologies as solutions to business needs, based on strategic direction and priorities

o Aligning the detailed designs with the wider GRS Technology Roadmap and 'North Star' Architecture and standards

o Create technical documentation for development solutions, future reference, and reporting

• Supporting the Development Teams:

o Work with agile development teams to build and enhance a growing software platform and provide technical leadership throughout the technical design and sprint process and ensure the team delivers high quality work that supports the delivery of business capabilities and associated value.

o Become a technical advocate improving communications with developers and have a good understanding of their challenges

o Act as a coach and mentor: as a Technology Lead, you will be required to act as a coach and mentor to team members, providing guidance and support as needed. This will involve helping team members to develop their skills and knowledge and providing feedback to help them improve. You will need to ensure that the team is motivated and that everyone is working towards a common goal.

o Conduct peer reviews of developer's code and provide feedback, if required

o Support the team in working towards continuous integration and continuous deployment, work to remove technical impediments raised by the team and proactively escalate issues and blockers to the relevant Executive Action Team (EAT)

• Work with Stakeholders, including Architects, other Technical Leads, Product Owners and Product Analysts, Scrum Masters, Agile Project Managers, Developers, and external vendors to promote and support 'best practice' to ensure new initiatives and deliverables are understood, evaluated, prioritised, and implemented to agreed designs, approved by the Architecture Review Board (ARB).

• Develop and set documentation and standards for all development and delivery activities, including using a common approach, structure, and platform (e.g. Confluence) for documentation, be responsible for checking that these standards are being properly met and ensure documentation and reporting evolves as requirements change over time.

• Build relationships with other Technology Leads and senior business stakeholders to promote best practice Delivery and Programme management approaches and be able to run education sessions ('Lunch & Learns') across the wider LSM organisation to explain the same.

• Supporting GRS/GRSI's Agile Transformation - the Technology Lead is also responsible supporting Agile practices at both the Team and Portfolio level, including:

o Facilitating the prioritisation of features for Program Increment (PI) 90/30-day planning and individual Sprint planning and prioritisation, supporting the Portfolio Head and Product Owners to manage change to the programs' PI plan and identify the impacts of those changes

o Driving cross team, Portfolio, and departmental planning, collaboration, coordination, including identifying dependencies and resolving impediments

o Driving delivery and continuous improvement by utilising feedback and metrics (quality, delivery rate, etc.) to identify areas of opportunity

o Participating at Portfolio level and within cross-functional teams as a subject matter expert to develop and improve operating policies and procedures and be an advocate in adopting Agile best practices and processes

o Supporting the configuration of Scaled Agile to the needs of the organisation, standardising, and documenting practices

Skills and Experience

• Technology Expertise - you will have experience as the technology expert on a development team where you were responsible for everything from planning to delivering key features and management of those features. To be successful in the role you will need to quickly develop a deep understanding of the products and business goals which you can translate into technology direction, design, and decisions. Experience of Insurance and Reinsurance business and supporting technologies and/or experience leading implementation programs for the same is preferable.

• Agile and Scaled Agile practices - you know about and can lead on a range of Agile and Scaled Agile tools and techniques and be an advocate for these tools and techniques. You can establish a feedback loop for teams; you can take responsibility for the translation and measurement of value (what you put in and what you will get out) and ensure this relates to UW Technology Initiatives objectives and business needs. You can ensure the team has a situational awareness of work and priorities across the team.

• Communication skills - you know how to communicate effectively across organisational, technical, and geographical boundaries, understanding the context. You can advocate and communicate what a team does to create trust and authenticity. You know how to successfully react and respond to challenge.

• Life-cycle perspective - you understand the different phases of product delivery and can contribute to, plan, or run these. You can maintain a product or process through the delivery phases, into live and then into ongoing support. You know how to lead a team through the different phases of the delivery product life cycle. You can maintain and iterate a product over time to continuously meet user needs. You understand incident management and service support so that products are built effectively.

• Making the process work - you focus on the outcome. You can challenge and improve disproportionate organisational processes where it impacts the pace of the team. You can identify what works best for the team and when to utilise certain processes. You understand that all steps in a process must add value.

• Technical Experience - proven experience (a minimum of three years) as a Technical Lead, Solutions Engineer, or similar role, working within Agile frameworks and associated architectures, design, coding languages and testing & deployment tools, including the following:

o Angular 6

o Cloud experience (AWS & Azure) and serverless code deployment

o Understanding of event driven architecture.

o Familiar with design thinking, behaviour, and test-driven development/familiarity with test-and-learn approaches

o Experience of SQL database development, SSIS and cloud deployment e.g. RDS in AWS

o Knowledge of containerised deployments and optimisation techniques & tools e.g. Docker, Fargate, Kubernetes

o Experience of working with wider project teams including Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Business Analysts and Testers

o Experience of producing technical support documentation

o Experience of writing technical specifications/User Stories

o Experience of working within the full development lifecycle i.e. development, unit testing and release management

o Experience of source code repositories, code branching and version control systems e.g. GIT and TFS

About Liberty Specialty Markets (LSM & LMRE)

Liberty Specialty Markets is part of Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, a leading global insurer. We offer a breadth of world-class insurance and reinsurance services to brokers and insureds in all major markets.

Our people are key to our success. That is why "Put People First" is one of the five Liberty values which unite us as a global organisation. We bring this to life for our colleagues through:

• Offering a vibrant and inclusive environment and committing to their career development.

• Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Our Inclusion Matters framework and employee-led networks strengthen the diversity of our workforce and our inclusive environment.

• Reinforcing that collaborating together to share our unique perspectives help us make better decisions, deliver innovative solutions, and pursue our ambitious goals.

• A supportive culture, which includes promoting a healthy work-life balance and working flexibly.

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