Head of Engineering — Insurance & Investments

Job Summary

The Head of Engineering leads the organization's software engineering and technology development function, responsible for building, modernizing, scaling, and maintaining secure and reliable technology products and platforms.

Within Insurance & Investments, the role oversees engineering across insurance platforms, investment systems, customer-facing applications, APIs, enterprise integrations, digital channels, data-intensive applications, and technology modernization initiatives.
Key Responsibilities

Define and execute the engineering strategy, roadmap, architecture, and delivery model.

Lead software engineering, application development, platform engineering, and technical delivery teams.

Establish engineering standards, development methodologies, coding practices, and technical governance.
Oversee development of:
Enterprise applications
Customer-facing digital platforms
Mobile/web applications
APIs and microservices
Insurance platforms
Investment/portfolio platforms
Workflow and automation solutions
Integration platforms

Lead modernization of legacy applications and technology platforms.

Drive cloud-native development, microservices, APIs, DevOps, CI/CD, and automation.

Establish software development lifecycle (SDLC) and engineering quality standards.

Ensure applications are scalable, resilient, secure, and highly available.

Partner with the CISO to embed application security, secure coding, DevSecOps, and vulnerability management.

Partner with Data/Analytics teams on data-intensive applications and analytical platforms.

Oversee architecture decisions, technical debt management, and platform modernization.

Establish automated testing, code quality, release management, and deployment practices.

Monitor engineering productivity, quality, delivery timelines, and operational performance.

Lead engineering incident management, root-cause analysis, and continuous improvement.

Manage engineering budgets, technology vendors, contractors, and strategic technology partners.

Recruit, mentor, and develop engineering leaders and technical teams.

Establish engineering KPIs, SLAs, quality metrics, and delivery standards.

Ensure technology development complies with relevant security, regulatory, risk, and governance requirements.

Collaborate with Product, Business, Operations, Data, Security, Infrastructure, Risk, and executive leadership.

Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.

Promote engineering innovation and adoption of emerging technologies, including AI where appropriate.

Insurance & Investments Engineering Focus
Insurance
Policy administration systems
Claims platforms
Underwriting systems
Insurance portals
Customer/mobile applications
Digital distribution platforms
Payments and billing systems
CRM and workflow applications
Insurance APIs and integrations
Investments / Asset Management
Portfolio-management platforms
Trading/investment applications
Market-data platforms
Risk and performance systems
Client/investor portals
Wealth-management applications
Transaction and custody integrations
Investment analytics platforms
Ideal Candidate Profile

12–18+ years of software engineering, application development, technology, or platform engineering experience.
5+ years in engineering leadership.
Previous experience as:
Head of Engineering
Head of Software Engineering
Head of Software Development
Head of Application Development
Engineering Director
Director of Engineering
Director of Software Engineering
Director of Technology
VP Engineering
VP Software Engineering
Chief Technology Officer

Experience in Insurance, Banking, Investment Management, Asset Management, Wealth Management, FinTech, or Financial Services preferred.
Strong expertise in:
Software engineering
Enterprise application development
Cloud-native architecture
Microservices
APIs
DevOps/DevSecOps
CI/CD
Agile engineering
Software architecture
Application security
System integration
Platform engineering

Experience leading large engineering organizations and distributed teams.

Strong understanding of enterprise architecture, scalability, resilience, performance, and technical debt.

Experience with AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker, CI/CD, and modern development frameworks is advantageous.

Strong product/business orientation and ability to connect engineering strategy with business objectives.

Excellent executive stakeholder and vendor-management skills.

Relevant bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field.

Originally posted on Himalayas