Mgr, Data Engineering

At Thrivent, we believe data is a critical asset that powers our business decisions and fuels innovation. As a Manager of Data Engineering, you will lead a talented team of data engineers to build strategic, high-performing data solutions that enable our organization to stay competitive and future-ready. You will champion technical excellence, foster a culture of continuous learning, and partner closely with business and technology leaders to ensure our data strategies are aligned with enterprise goals.
This role is ideal for someone passionate about solving complex challenges, driving scalable solutions, mentoring high-performing teams, and working across business and technology boundaries.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of talented data engineers, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence.
• Own the architecture, development, and execution of Thrivent’s strategic data engineering best practices and services.
• Challenge the status quo to deliver better, more scalable, and efficient data solutions.
• Drive the design and implementation of reliable, high-quality data pipelines and data platform capabilities, ensuring observability, scalability, and security.
• Partner closely with leaders across Data, AI, and business units to deeply understand data needs and translate them into effective technical solutions.
• Collaborate with product managers, product owners, solution architects, and line-of-business engineering teams to integrate and deliver data solutions that meet business objectives.
• Provide clear visibility and communication to partners and stakeholders on project roadmaps, execution status, production performance, and platform reliability.
• Prioritize and manage team workloads by creating and executing clear, actionable roadmaps and project plans.
• Set high standards for quality and operational excellence; establish measurable goals to track and enhance team performance and product reliability.
• Partner with DMG and platform teams to ensure compliance with security protocols, service level objectives (SLOs), and operational error budgets.
• Foster an environment of continuous learning, innovation, and skill development through training, coaching, and mentoring initiatives.
• Act as a strong thought leader in data engineering by influencing and contributing to enterprise-wide data initiatives.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Designing Solutions

• Review technical solution design and architecture and provide guidance and direction.
• Take part in system design and architecture conversations with the team to land approaches to deliver solutions.
• Review technical solution and supports the execution of the solution

Developing Software

• Has Developed software.   Can read code and stays up to date on best practices.
• Ensure Code reviews are completed - Problem solving and analytical skills

Learning and applying new techniques

• Promotes and empowers sharing ideas, best practices, etc. They need to make space so teams can take time for these activities.
• Anticipates and analyzes trends in technology and assesses the impact of emerging technologies on the business

Collaborating within team

• Supports the team agile practices and learning events / trainings
• Helps break down barriers for the team
• Engages in sprint demos; Understands the desired and actual outcomes as well as the technology delivered by the team
• Partner with Product Manager on Initiatives/ Features/ Epics and provides clarity on desired outcomes as well as technical expertise.
• Collaborates with Product manager for strategies, operating plans, targets and measures for product groups 
• Creating a positive team environment where individuals have psychological safety and work collaboratively while understanding, respecting, challenging and appreciating each other’s ideas

Collaborating across teams

• Supports and empowers teams to broker solutions across products
• Understands how the product integrates with other products and ensures consistency in approach to work towards a common goal / outcome.
• Builds strong working relationships with peers across teams
• Proactively identifies cross team challenges and works to empower teams in solve collaboratively

Collaborating across the organization

• Align your team with the priorities of the company and the technology organization for a given product area

Setting product/platform technology strategy

• Participates in setting the product and platform technology vision, strategies, initiatives, roadmaps , objectives and alignments
• Represents the business value of technology upgrades, etc. and influences prioritization in the product roadmap
• Empowers the team to select the right tool and platforms for the given product area.

Defining Engineering standards/patterns

• Collaborating with Engineers to ensure Engineering practices and be an advocate to bring the engineering disciplines.
• Promoting engineering practices and continuous improvement such as develops and observability
• Contributes to the creation of enterprise frameworks and patterns

DevOps

• Define and supports the development Lifecyle processes
• Supports the team and removes barriers to resolving production incidents/problems
• DevOps continuously evaluated through observability, monitoring and alerting
• Understands the health of technology products and promotes prioritization of work to maintain and continuously improve
• Serve as an escalation point in product level support for ongoing maintenance and production issues 

Selecting & Managing Technology Vendors

• Be an advocate to the team to define criteria’s for selecting the right platform/technology
• Guides the team to build consensus on an approach and driving a build vs buy decision with the team. In a buy decision, works with the team to decide on criteria and vendor selection.
• Execute or manage the overall technology solutions, platforms for the product groups and associated vendor relationships.

Coaching Engineers

• Holding regular 1:1s with team members and team meeting,
• Provides constructive feedback, guidance and coaching to help engineers grow their skills and experience.
• Provides career planning advice to engineers and creates development plans to help them achieve their career goals which leverages their skills and capabilities and provides them with learning opportunities.

Recruiting/building talent

• Leads the process of selecting and engaging the right consulting partners
• Planning in advance for future people needs for the product groups, collaborate with the other teams on the recruitment process
• Recruits, develops, and sustains a high-performing team while promoting a culture of shared accountability, operational excellence, and partnership across the organization.
• Models Thrivent’s leadership competencies – courage, collaboration, and commitment by demonstrating resiliency, working together to make the best decisions, and holding yourself and others accountable.  ​
• Supports and/or develops an environment in which Thrivent employees and colleagues are focused on continuous improvement, exceptional employee engagement, and an unwavering commitment to our clients.  Shapes and/or supports a culture that represents the Thrivent purpose, promise and values, ensuring that Thrivent’s trust and reputation remain strong with its clients.  
• Manage a team of direct and indirect staff 

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QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:  

 Required:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related technical field.

• 6+ years of experience in software engineering or data engineering, including 2+ years in a technical leadership or management role.
• Proven experience building and scaling reliable, high-performance data platforms and data pipelines.
• Deep understanding of cloud technologies (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and modern data platforms (e.g., Databricks, Snowflake, Hadoop, Spark).
• Strong technical knowledge of data modeling, ETL/ELT processes, streaming architectures, and API integration.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills and experience collaborating across diverse business and technical teams.
• Strong coaching, mentoring, and leadership skills with the ability to build and retain high-performing teams.
• Excellent communication, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• 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 Transparency

Thrivent’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 other status 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.