Manager - Engineering

The Marketing Technology Engineering Manager leads a high-performing team responsible for designing, building, and supporting scalable marketing technology solutions. This role drives activation across key marketing channels—including email, SMS, push notifications, paid media, and direct mail—leveraging platforms such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud, CRM, Distributed Marketing, Liveramp, Sprinklr, and Hearsay Social. The manager collaborates cross-functionally to align technology strategy with business goals, oversees engineering standards, and ensures seamless integration of tools like Kafka, Informatica, and Java applications. This position also plays a key role in talent development, vendor management, and fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.

Duties & Responsibilities

Solution Design & Architecture

• Provide strategic guidance on technical solution design and architecture.
• Participate in system design discussions to define delivery approaches.
• Review and support execution of technical solutions, including integration of Kafka topics, Informatica workflows, and Java-based applications.

Software Development

• Demonstrates hands-on experience in software development and code review.
• Stays current with coding best practices and industry standards.
• Ensures thorough code reviews and applies strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Supports development and maintenance of Java applications and services.

Technology Innovation & Learning

• Encourages sharing of ideas and best practices across teams.
• Creates space for innovation and continuous learning.
• Anticipates technology trends and evaluates their impact on business outcomes.

Team Collaboration

• Supports agile practices, learning events, and team trainings.
• Removes barriers to team productivity and engagement.
• Actively participates in sprint demos and understands both desired and delivered outcomes.
• Partners with Product Managers to define initiatives, features, and epics, ensuring clarity of outcomes and technical feasibility.
• Co-develops strategies, operating plans, and performance measures for product groups.
• Fosters a psychologically safe and collaborative team environment that values diverse perspectives.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Empowers teams to broker solutions across product boundaries.
• Ensures consistent integration approaches across products to achieve shared goals.
• Builds strong relationships with peers and proactively addresses cross-team challenges.

Organizational Alignment

• Aligns team priorities with broader company and technology organization goals.

Technology Strategy & Vision

• Contributes to product and platform technology vision, strategy, and roadmaps.
• Advocates for the business value of technology upgrades and influences roadmap prioritization.
• Enables teams to select appropriate tools and platforms for their product areas.

Marketing Channel Activation

• Leads engineering efforts to activate and optimize marketing channels including:
  • Email
  • Text/SMS
  • Push Notifications
  • Paid Media
  • Direct Mail
• Ensures seamless integration and orchestration across channels to support marketing campaigns and customer journeys.

Marketing Technology Stack

• Oversees engineering support and integration of tools such as:
  • Salesforce Marketing Cloud
  • Salesforce CRM
  • Distributed Marketing
  • Liveramp
  • Sprinklr
  • Hearsay Social
• Guides teams in leveraging these platforms to deliver personalized, scalable, and compliant marketing experiences.

Engineering Standards & Practices

• Collaborates with engineers to uphold and evolve engineering practices.
• Promotes continuous improvement through development standards and observability.
• Contributes to enterprise-wide frameworks and reusable patterns.

DevOps & Operational Excellence

• Defines and supports development lifecycle processes.
• Removes obstacles to resolving production incidents and problems.
• Promotes observability, monitoring, and alerting as part of DevOps maturity.
• Advocates for prioritizing work that maintains and improves product health.
• Serves as an escalation point for ongoing maintenance and production issues.

Vendor Management

• Guides teams in defining criteria for platform and technology selection.
• Facilitates consensus on build vs. buy decisions and manages vendor selection processes.
• Oversees execution and management of technology platforms and vendor relationships.

Talent Development & Coaching

• Conducts regular 1:1s and team meetings.
• Provides constructive feedback and coaching to support engineer growth.
• Offers career planning and development opportunities aligned with individual strengths and aspirations.

Recruitment & Team Building

• Leads selection and engagement of consulting partners.
• Plans for future talent needs and collaborates on recruitment strategies.
• Builds and sustains high-performing teams with a culture of accountability, excellence, and partnership.
• Models Thrivent’s leadership competencies—courage, collaboration, and commitment.
• Supports a culture of continuous improvement, employee engagement, and client focus aligned with Thrivent’s purpose and values.
• Manages direct and indirect team members.

Qualifications & Skills

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of progressive experience in IT, including 5+ years in disciplines such as CRM, Marketing Technology, portfolio strategy, or roadmap development.
• 3+ years of leadership experience in IT disciplines like customer relationship management or demand management.
• 3+ years of management experience in application development or leading major technical projects.
• Proven leadership of high-performance, multidisciplinary teams.
• Strong project management skills with experience executing multiple or large-scale initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to develop solutions to complex business problems.
• Effective communication with internal and external stakeholders.
• Ability to make sound decisions in dynamic environments with limited information.
• Experience in planning and evaluating customer relationship and demand management programs.
• Experience with Kafka, Informatica, and Java application development and integration.

Preferred

• MBA
• Experience in the financial services industry.
• Background in IT planning and business relationship management.
• Experience in matrixed organizations.
• Familiarity 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 $136,721.00 - $184,976.00 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.