IT Manager/Engagement Lead for Enterprise Data

Horace Mann is seeking an experienced and strategic IT Manager/Engagement Lead for Enterprise Data to assist with coordinating across multiple teams: Data Governance, Data Enablement Real-Time Services, Data Warehousing, and Data Reporting.

This leader will play a pivotal role in ensuring stability, efficiency, visibility, and continuous improvement of enterprise data capabilities, balancing evolving business priorities with a commitment to technical excellence and innovation. The ideal candidate will possess practical analytical expertise, deep understanding of business needs, and exceptional decision-making skills to evaluate and prioritize requests that maximize business value.  The candidate will encourage partners to use generative AI to enhance productivity and creativity.

This role requires someone who is highly organized, equally effective communicator for both business and technical partners, and driven to make a meaningful and measurable impact across the enterprise. This Engagement Lead must be able to navigate competing demands, align technology work with strategic goals, and create a structured approach to data support, incremental enhancements and strategic advancements.

Key Responsibilities

Strategic Prioritization & Business Alignment

• Evaluate and prioritize incoming requests based on business impact, urgency, and technical feasibility.
• Set clear expectations with stakeholders, ensuring alignment with organizational goals.
• Communicate trade-offs transparently, advocating for business value over reactive task execution.
• Facilitate progression of effort from roadmap to project intake and project initiation, including prioritization, cost-benefit analysis, and other pre-project tasks.
• Develop a structured framework for prioritization that ensures mission-critical support needs are met while also advancing right-sized enhancements that drive continuous improvement.

Leadership & Team Management

• Ensure operational metrics, roadmaps, goals/outcomes, project status, and other critical reports outs for the data department are updated appropriately.
• Identify and help remove operational roadblocks that limit team effectiveness, including process inefficiencies, unclear responsibilities, or misaligned priorities.
• Facilitate necessary resource capacity/demand activities include planning, onboarding, tracking, and support for both employee and contractual staff across all enterprise data teams.
• Ensure cross-team collaboration, fostering a shared understanding of priorities, dependencies, and technical solutions.
• Create and uphold accountability structures to ensure work is completed efficiently and of high quality.
• Drive a culture of ownership, problem-solving, and continuous learning.
• Coach team leads on best practices for planning, reporting, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Act as a central point of escalation and resolution for cross-team resource conflicts or competing priorities.
• Promote the use of generative AI tools to boost team creativity, efficiency, and skill development.

Technical & Business Understanding

• Serve as the bridge between technology teams and business stakeholders, ensuring both sides understand priorities, constraints, and impacts.
• Maintain a strong grasp of enterprise data systems, workflows, and potential challenges, ensuring informed decision-making.

Stakeholder Communication & Expectation Management

• Set firm but fair expectations with business stakeholders, ensuring they understand how and why prioritization decisions are made.
• Provide regular updates on progress, challenges, and key outcomes related to support and enhancements.
• Communicate realistic timelines, risks, and trade-offs when managing requests.

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or a related field.

Experience

• 6+ years of experience in IT leadership, with a focus on managing IT projects, technical support, and/or system enhancements.
• Proven track record of making strategic prioritization decisions that drive business value.
• Experience implementing generative AI technologi