Head of Engineering — Insurance & Investments

Job Summary

The Head of Engineering leads the organization's software engineering and technology development function, responsible for building, modernizing, scaling, and maintaining secure and reliable technology products and platforms.

Within Insurance & Investments, the role oversees engineering across insurance platforms, investment systems, customer-facing applications, APIs, enterprise integrations, digital channels, data-intensive applications, and technology modernization initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

Define and execute the engineering strategy, roadmap, architecture, and delivery model.

Lead software engineering, application development, platform engineering, and technical delivery teams.

Establish engineering standards, development methodologies, coding practices, and technical governance.

Oversee development of:

Enterprise applications

Customer-facing digital platforms

Mobile/web applications

APIs and microservices

Insurance platforms

Investment/portfolio platforms

Workflow and automation solutions

Integration platforms

Lead modernization of legacy applications and technology platforms.

Drive cloud-native development, microservices, APIs, DevOps, CI/CD, and automation.

Establish software development lifecycle (SDLC) and engineering quality standards.

Ensure applications are scalable, resilient, secure, and highly available.

Partner with the CISO to embed application security, secure coding, DevSecOps, and vulnerability management.

Partner with Data/Analytics teams on data-intensive applications and analytical platforms.

Oversee architecture decisions, technical debt management, and platform modernization.

Establish automated testing, code quality, release management, and deployment practices.

Monitor engineering productivity, quality, delivery timelines, and operational performance.

Lead engineering incident management, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement.

Manage engineering budgets, technology vendors, contractors, and strategic technology partners.

Recruit, mentor, and develop engineering leaders and technical teams.

Establish engineering KPIs, SLAs, quality metrics, and delivery standards.

Ensure technology development complies with relevant security, regulatory, risk, and governance requirements.

Collaborate with Product, Business, Operations, Data, Security, Infrastructure, Risk, and executive leadership.

Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Promote engineering innovation and adoption of emerging technologies, including AI where appropriate.

Insurance & Investments Engineering Focus

Insurance

Policy administration systems

Claims platforms

Underwriting systems

Insurance portals

Customer/mobile applications

Digital distribution platforms

Payments and billing systems

CRM and workflow applications

Insurance APIs and integrations

Investments / Asset Management

Portfolio-management platforms

Trading/investment applications

Market-data platforms

Risk and performance systems

Client/investor portals

Wealth-management applications

Transaction and custody integrations

Investment analytics platforms

Ideal Candidate Profile

12–18+ years of software engineering, application development, technology, or platform engineering experience.

5+ years in engineering leadership.

Previous experience as:

Head of Engineering

Head of Software Engineering

Head of Software Development

Head of Application Development

Engineering Director

Director of Engineering

Director of Software Engineering

Director of Technology

VP Engineering

VP Software Engineering

Chief Technology Officer

Experience in Insurance, Banking, Investment Management, Asset Management, Wealth Management, FinTech, or Financial Services preferred.

Strong expertise in:

Software engineering

Enterprise application development

Cloud-native architecture

Microservices

APIs

DevOps/DevSecOps

CI/CD

Agile engineering

Software architecture

Application security

System integration

Platform engineering

Experience leading large engineering organizations and distributed teams.

Strong understanding of enterprise architecture, scalability, resilience, performance, and technical debt.

Experience with AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, and modern development frameworks is advantageous.

Strong product/business orientation and ability to connect engineering strategy with business objectives.

Excellent executive stakeholder and vendor-management skills.

Relevant bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.

Originally posted on Himalayas