Team Leader - Engineering Practices (Site Reliability)

Company Description

Why Wellmark: We are a mutual insurance company owned by our policy holders across Iowa and South Dakota, and we’ve built our reputation on over 80 years’ worth of trust. We are not motivated by profits. We are motivated by the well-being of our friends, family, and neighbors–our members. If you’re passionate about joining an organization working hard to put its members first, to provide best-in-class service, and one that is committed to sustainability and innovation, consider applying today!   

Why Wellmark Technology? Wellmark is building innovative, modern solutions using cutting edge technology. We are driving organizational transformation and business strategy by empowering our technology team to innovate new and elegant solutions to enhance the customer experience. Together, we are leaning into the future, owning the outcome, and driving organizational change to transform how we work. 

Job Description

We are looking for a strategic and hands-on leader of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) to guide and grow our SRE function. You will manage the team responsible for ensuring the reliability, performance, and scalability of our systems. The ideal candidate has a strong technical background in systems engineering, excellent leadership skills, and a deep understanding of modern cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices. You will apply system thinking to understand the complex technical landscape and solve challenges holistically. You will collaborate closely with development teams to implement SRE principles and establish reliability metrics.  

As a health insurance organization entrusted with sensitive and mission-critical data, reliability is not optional—it’s essential. This role is instrumental in building the foundation for secure, resilient, and high-performing systems that support our members and healthcare partners. 

Qualifications

Required: 

• Bachelor’s degree or direct and applicable work experience.  
• Minimum of 7 years of experience to include any of the combination of the following: AWS Cloud infrastructure management or development; Microsoft Cloud infrastructure management or development; NodeJS, .NET, Python, PowerShell. 
• Leadership typically gained through a combination of project and informal leadership that demonstrates competencies. 
• Strong understanding of DevOps principles, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code. 
• Demonstrated ability to be adaptable and adjust effectively to work within new processes, work requirements, etc. 
• Proven experience in implementing change management initiatives. 
• Strong ability to support innovation and creativity by encouraging team(s) to accept and resolve challenges. 
• Strong communication skills - written and verbal with the ability to adapt the message to various audiences. 
• Demonstrates a methodical and logical approach to addressing customer needs while utilizing innovative solutions/designs as appropriate. 
• Self-starter and proactive in approach. 
• Strong collaboration skills with ability to build relationships across Technology division. 
• Strong decision-making skills with the ability to influence and drive change. 
• Ability to think strategically to communicate and accomplish long-range goals. 
• In-depth knowledge of observability tools and practices, such as monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing. 
• Demonstrated experience in defining and implementing coding standards, design patterns, and development processes. 
• Experience generating analytical data for reporting.  
• Proven ability to adapt when experiencing major changes in work tasks or work environment.  
• Knowledge of Agile process and tools.    

Preferred: 

• Experience with GitHub Enterprise and Azure DevOps. 

Additional Information

a. Provide leadership and day-to-day management of financial and human resources, primarily focusing on employee coaching, development, performance improvement, coordination and budgeting for staff and department(s) specific functions/services. Support business objectives and produce results that are effective, accurate, and timely and on target to meet HR team and stakeholder needs. 

b. Define and drive the vision for advanced engineering practices across the organization. 

c. Align practices with business goals, regulatory requirements, and delivery outcomes (e.g., DORA metrics, DevEx initiatives). 

d. Develop, document, and evangelize advanced engineering such as Coding standards and code reviews; Test automation (unit, integration, E2E); Continuous Integration/Delivery (CI/CD) best practices; Secure coding and DevSecOps integration; Observability best practices; and AI-assisted engineering