Engineering Manager - Identity Governance and Administration

The Engineering Manager for Identity Governance and Administration leads a team of experienced engineers responsible for Thrivent’s IGA products and services. This leader establishes team objectives, measures, operating practices, resource plans, and priorities aligned with Information Security and enterprise goals.

The role partners closely with Product Management, architects, and stakeholders across Technology, Cybersecurity, Risk, Compliance, and the business to deliver secure, reliable, and audit-ready identity governance capabilities. The Engineering Manager provides strategic and technical direction, develops engineering talent, manages operational and financial responsibilities, and helps the team navigate complex cross-functional decisions.

The ideal candidate has strong engineering leadership experience, an interest in identity and access management, and a passion for applying modern engineering principles to IAM products and services. This leader will continue advancing automation, infrastructure as code, observability, self-service, and end-to-end product ownership across the team.

Duties & Responsibilities

Leading the Team

• Lead, develop, and support a high-performing IGA engineering team through clear expectations, regular feedback, coaching, career development, and meaningful growth opportunities.
• Create an inclusive environment where engineers have psychological safety, challenge ideas constructively, and share accountability for team outcomes.
• Anticipate future talent and capability needs; recruit employees and engage consulting partners as needed to build and sustain the team.
• Model Thrivent’s leadership competencies of courage, collaboration, and commitment through resilient leadership, sound decisions, and accountability.

Owning IGA Products and Outcomes

• Own the engineering health and evolution of Thrivent’s IGA capabilities, including Saviynt, identity and entitlement data, access governance, lifecycle automation, and integrations with enterprise systems.
• Partner with Product Management to define strategy, roadmaps, priorities, measures, and desired outcomes that balance workforce experience, security and compliance risk, enterprise priorities, and long-term product health.
• Improve workforce access through automation and self-service, reducing unnecessary friction while maintaining effective, audit-ready controls.
• Establish trustworthy identity, role, entitlement, and access data that supports automation, governance, reporting, and access decisions.

Providing Technical and Engineering Leadership

• Guide technical strategy, solution design, and architecture in partnership with engineers and architects, ensuring solutions are secure, sustainable, and aligned with enterprise standards.
• Maintain sufficient technical depth to understand the team’s products, evaluate tradeoffs, ask meaningful questions, and support sound technical decisions.
• Empower engineers to own technical decisions, code quality, and the products they build rather than serving as the team’s primary architect or problem-solver.
• Evaluate technology trends, platform capabilities, and build-versus-buy decisions based on business value, security, sustainability, and total cost.

Advancing Modern Engineering Practices

• Continue the team’s evolution toward a modern engineering operating model through infrastructure as code, source control, automated testing and deployment, observability, and reusable patterns.
• Establish effective software-development lifecycle practices that enable safe, predictable, and frequent delivery.
• Create space for engineers to learn, experiment, improve practices, and contribute to shared engineering standards and patterns across Thrivent.
• Encourage outcome-based learning through demonstrations, operational measures, delivery data, and feedback from users and stakeholders.

Ensuring Operational Excellence

• Maintain secure, reliable, and resilient IGA products through monitoring, alerting, incident response, problem management, capacity planning, and continuous improvement.
• Use meaningful measures to understand product health, delivery performance, control effectiveness, and the workforce access experience.
• Serve as an escalation point for significant production issues while enabling engineers to lead diagnosis, resolution, and learning.
• Ensure operational risk, technical debt, and lifecycle needs are visible and appropriately represented in product priorities.

Partnering Across the Organization

• Build strong, trust-based relationships across Identity, Cybersecurity, Technology, Risk and Compliance, and business teams to deliver cohesive enterprise outcomes.
• Identify and resolve cross-team dependencies, barriers, and competing priorities through transparent communication and collaborative decision-making.
• Help product and engineering teams incorporate identity capabilities into Thrivent systems using consistent, reusable, and low-friction approaches.
• Manage team capacity, financial resources, vendor relationships, and delivery commitments responsibly.
• Align the team’s objectives and investments with Information Security, Technology, and enterprise priorities.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:  

 Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience 
• 8+ years of progressively responsible positions in Information Technology including 5+ years’ experience in IT discipline, e.g., customer relationship management, portfolio strategy and roadmap development. 
• 3+ years of leadership experience in all aspects of a specific IT discipline, e.g. IT/LOB customer relationship management, portfolio strategy and/or demand management. 
• 3+ years’ management/supervisory experience in specific IT functional area discipline, e.g. applications development or equivalent skills leading major technical projects with accountability for enforcing talent management needs and performance standards. 
• Proven ability to lead engineering teams while maintaining strong technical involvement. 
• Demonstrated leadership and experience managing multidiscipline, high-performance work teams. 
• Strong competency in project management and execution of multiple or large projects. 
• Experience working with customers to develop solutions to complex business problems. 
• Proven ability to communicate effectively with internal/external stakeholders to support business initiatives. 
• Proven ability to function in an environment which requires flexibility, good judgment and intelligent decision making, often based on limited information and/or extreme conditions. 
• Ability to formulate, implement and evaluate plans, programs and procedures applicable to customer relationship and demand management. 

 Preferred: 

• MBA 
• Financial Services industry experience 
• Experience in IT planning and business relationship management 
• Experience working in a matrix management organization 
• Experience with product development and management 

Pay TransparencyThrivent’s long-term growth depends on attracting, rewarding, and retaining people who are committed to helping others thrive with purpose. We accomplish this by offering a wide variety of market competitive compensation programs to attract, reward, and retain top talent. The applicable salary or hourly wage range for this full-time role is $139,455.00 - $188,676.00 per year, which factors in various geographic regions. The base pay actually offered will be determined by a variety of factors including, but not limited to, location, relevant experience, skills, and knowledge, business needs, market demand, and other factors Thrivent deems important.Thrivent is unique in our commitment to helping people to be wise with money and live balanced and generous lives. That extends to our benefits.The following benefits may be offered: various bonuses (including, for example, annual or long-term incentives); medical, dental, and vision insurance; health savings account; flexible spending account; 401k; pension; life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance; disability insurance; supplemental protection insurance; 20 days of Paid Time Off each year; Sick and Safe Time; 10 paid company holidays; Volunteer Time Off; paid parental leave; EAP; well-being benefits, and other employee benefits. Eligibility for receipt of these benefits is subject to the applicable plan/policy documents. Thrivent’s plans/policies are subject to change at any time at Thrivent’s discretion.

Thrivent provides Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) without regard to race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, marital status, citizenship status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any otherstatus protected by applicable local, state, or federal law. This policy applies to all employees and job applicants.

Thrivent is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation, please let us know by sending an email to [email protected] or call 800-847-4836 and request Human Resources.

#Remote