Application Architect Manager

The Main Street America Group offers insurance exclusively through independent agents. Since 1923, we have partnered with independent agents to offer consumers a variety of important insurance coverages. Our continued commitment to consumers and independent agents has contributed to our growth and success. Today, Main Street America offers property and casualty insurance in 36 states, surety bonds in 45 states and the District of Columbia and annually writes more than $1 billion in premium.

Job Summary: * Responsible for managing the team of architects and create/update application strategy, target architectures and roadmaps. * Works with the IT organization and business units to obtain business requirements for performance and improvements to ensure the existing and future information systems are implemented according to the organization’s goals, needs and objectives. * Establishes the organization’s application structure, defining essential design features and providing a framework. * Responsible for participating in a variety of activities, including: defining requirements, assessing server storage and infrastructure sizing, analyzing hardware sizing to meet application requirements, and designing load balancing and clustering solutions according to architecture standards. * Required to prepare architectural design documentation, including diagrams and inventories. * Typically oversees building business plans, strategic direction, and standards for procedures and policies as they relate to IT application architecture. * Coordinates with the other architects on issues dealing with the quality flaws of the existing standards, especially security, session state and long-running transactions. * Builds a composite reference model to be used on internet/Extranet/Intranet based applications, incorporating the models provided by the information, technology and security architects . * Responsible for defining the application tiers, frameworks, components types and interfaces. Also, creates the first-draft graphical template of UML design models used by the Project Teams. * Monitors the emerging standards for B2B & B2C internet interaction and sets the standards and technologies to be used by the enterprise. These include the existing HTML, applet & XML standards, and the emerging web services and semantic net standards. * Collaborates with staff, users and senior management on establishing business goals, reviewing new and existing IT projects, systems designs and plans, and conducting research on emerging technologies to support changes in infrastructure/application strategy. * Converting and breaking business requirement into full end to end solution required * Experience in Websphere, ESB, SOA, JAVA &.Net required Role Competencies: * Act with Integrity – Demonstrates principled leadership and sound business ethics. * Manage Execution - Focuses on the key elements of execution, including delegation, setting expectations, measuring performance, and holding people accountable. * Drive for Results - Continuously focused on achieving/exceeding goals and objectives. Sets high standards of performance; pursues aggressive goals and works hard to achieve them. * Foster Teamwork - Ability to form, build and manage effective teams. * Coaching and Development - Ability to encourage, motivate and guide individuals and teams in learning and improving effectiveness. Technical Competencies: * External Resource Management – Ability to effectively manage the utilization of external services, e.g., product or platform vendors, service providers, contractors, consultants, outsourced functions. * Managing Organizational Change – Ability to manage the successful and smooth transition from current to desired culture, practices, structure, and overall organizational environment. * Core Application Systems – Knowledge of major production application systems used for delivery of services to internal and external clients. * Business Process Design – Knowledge of business process design that encourages a critical, fresh look at key processes and focuses on optimizing organizational performance.. * Outsourcing – Knowledge of the approaches, issues, and challenges associated with outsourcing, and the ability to manage or facilitate outsourcing relationships.

Requirements: * Bachelor's degree in a technical or business field (Computer Science, Engineering or related discipline) * 10+ years of experience in Information Technology. * Property and Casualty experience a must have. * Previous supervisory experience a plus. * Progressive experience in application development, business analysis, application architecture, solution architecture and enterprise architecture. * Experience with the development of future state application architectures and a practical roadmap to get there. * Knowledge of application and web design and development tools & languages - .Net, ESB, Websphere, ITIL, SQL Server, Cognos, Data Warehouse * Experience with SDLC. * Demonstrated leadership of multidisciplinary, high performance work teams/groups spread across multiple locations involving the full range of technology platforms and telecommunications architecture. * Very strong collaboration, negotiation, and influence capability required. * Excellent oral and written communication skills. * Ability to self-prioritize work effectively.