Manager IT Engagement & Delivery

Remote; Springfield, IL

The Manager, IT Engagement & Delivery serves as a key leader responsible for connecting business demand with technology delivery execution. This role oversees intake, engagement, portfolio visibility, and cross-functional coordination across IT delivery teams while ensuring requests are appropriately captured, prioritized, sequenced, and routed to support successful outcomes.

The Manager partners closely with business stakeholders, delivery leaders, Business Analysts (BA), Quality Assurance (QA), User Experience Design (UXD), developers, and other technology partners to drive transparency, improve workflow efficiency, and ensure alignment between strategic priorities and delivery execution. This role combines people leadership, portfolio orchestration, operational oversight, and continuous improvement to enhance delivery effectiveness across the organization.

Key Responsibilities

IT Engagement & Demand Management

  • Lead and oversee the IT work intake process, ensuring requests are effectively captured, evaluated, prioritized, and routed.
  • Serve as a primary engagement point for business stakeholders, providing guidance on submitting projects, enhancements, defects, and operational support requests.
  • Ensure incoming demand is documented with sufficient detail to support evaluation, estimation, and successful delivery.
  • Facilitate the progression of requests from intake through project initiation and delivery readiness.
  • Promote visibility and alignment between business demand, strategic priorities, and delivery capacity.

Portfolio Visibility & Delivery Coordination

  • Maintain visibility across the IT portfolio, including projects, enhancements, operational work, backlog commitments, and planned initiatives.
  • Support prioritization, sequencing, estimation, and capacity discussions in partnership with business leaders and delivery teams.
  • Coordinate communication between stakeholders and delivery teams throughout the request lifecycle.
  • Ensure questions, issues, changes, and dependencies are effectively tracked, communicated, and resolved.
  • Partner with delivery leads to establish realistic timing expectations and communicate portfolio impacts.

Cross-Functional Leadership

  • Lead and coordinate engagement activities across Business Analysis, Quality Assurance, User Experience Design, Development, and other delivery functions.
  • Facilitate effective handoffs between teams and identify opportunities to improve workflow continuity.
  • Support delivery readiness by ensuring teams have the information required for successful execution.
  • Foster collaboration across technology and business teams to achieve shared objectives.

Metrics, Reporting & Operational Insights

  • Establish and maintain portfolio and operational reporting that provides transparency into intake volume, throughput, backlog health, delivery progress, and capacity utilization.
  • Analyze trends, risks, constraints, and performance indicators to support informed decision-making.
  • Prepare executive-ready reporting and portfolio insights for leadership review.
  • Support budget monitoring, capacity planning, resource forecasting, and vendor engagement activities as needed.

Process Improvement & Operational Excellence

  • Identify inefficiencies within engagement, intake, prioritization, and delivery processes.
  • Lead continuous improvement initiatives that enhance consistency, reduce delays, and improve delivery outcomes.
  • Establish scalable engagement and governance practices while allowing flexibility for team-specific execution.
  • Promote standardization of processes, reporting, and communication across delivery functions.

AI-Enabled Ways of Working

  • Champion the practical and responsible use of AI-enabled tools to improve request quality, documentation, analysis, reporting, and workflow efficiency.
  • Identify opportunities to leverage AI technologies to accelerate delivery and improve operational effectiveness.
  • Support adoption of AI-enabled practices across engagement and delivery teams.

People Leadership

  • Directly manage Business Analysts, Quality Assurance professionals, User Experience Designers, engagement specialists, and/or related team members.
  • Provide coaching, mentoring, performance management, and career development support.
  • Establish clear expectations, assign work, monitor performance, and support professional growth.
  • Build a high-performing, collaborative team culture focused on accountability, continuous improvement, and customer service.
  • Balance people leadership responsibilities with portfolio management and strategic execution objectives.

Qualifications

Education

  • Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience.

Experience

  • Typically 8+ years of experience in IT delivery, portfolio management, product engagement, business relationship management, or related technology leadership roles.
  • Experience managing cross-functional technology initiatives and stakeholder relationships.
  • Prior people leadership experience preferred.
  • Experience leading Business Analysis, Quality Assurance, UXD, Product, Engagement, or related delivery functions preferred.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

Leadership & Relationship Management

  • Ability to build trusted partnerships across business units, technology teams, and executive leadership.
  • Strong facilitation and stakeholder management skills.
  • Proven ability to lead prioritization, sequencing, and portfolio discussions.
  • Excellent written, verbal, and presentation communication skills.

Operational & Analytical Excellence

  • Strong understanding of portfolio management, demand management, capacity planning, and delivery governance.
  • Ability to interpret metrics, identify trends, and drive data-informed decisions.
  • Experience with reporting, forecasting, budgeting, and operational planning.

Delivery & Technology Acumen

  • Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC), Agile delivery methodologies, and technology delivery practices.
  • Knowledge of project, product, and operational work management processes.
  • Ability to balance strategic planning with execution and operational oversight.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

  • Demonstrated ability to identify process improvement opportunities and drive organizational change.
  • Experience leveraging technology and AI-enabled tools to improve business processes and delivery effectiveness.

Leadership Expectations

This position is responsible for leading both people and processes across the IT Engagement & Delivery function. The Manager is expected to drive alignment between business priorities and technology execution, foster collaboration across teams, establish operational discipline, and continuously improve delivery outcomes while developing and empowering team members.

 

 

Salary Range:

$105,200.00 - $147,950.00  

Salary is commensurate to experience, location, etc.

 

 

 

#VIZI

#LI-LM1

 

Horace Mann was founded in 1945 by two Springfield, Illinois, teachers who saw a need for quality, affordable auto insurance for teachers. Since then, we’ve broadened our mission to helping all educators protect what they have today and prepare for a successful tomorrow.  And with our broadened mission has come corporate growth:  We serve more than 4,100 school districts nationwide, we’re publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (symbol: HMN) and we have more than $12 billion in assets.

We’re motivated by the fact that educators take care of our children’s future, and we believe they deserve someone to look after theirs.  We help educators identify their financial goals and develop plans to achieve them.  This includes insurance to protect what they have today and financial products to help them prepare for their future. Our tailored offerings include special rates and benefits for educators.

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