Staff Engineer

      

As a Staff Engineer on Thrivent’s Product Concept and Design team, you will play a key role in designing, implementing, and evolving the business systems that support the development and delivery of Life, Health, and Annuity products. You’ll work both independently and collaboratively to translate business and customer needs into robust, scalable technical solutions that integrate seamlessly with legacy and vendor administration systems, including mid-tier and mainframe platforms.
Leveraging your expertise in Java, Spring Boot, APIs, microservices, SQL Server, and DB2, you will design and implement system capabilities that advance product innovation, operational excellence, and speed to market. You’ll ensure core contract functionality is supported, contract calculations are accurate, and system designs remain aligned with changing business and market needs. You’ll also partner closely with internal stakeholders and external software vendors to evaluate platform capabilities, assess the impact of new requirements, and recommend improvements that support the team’s vision to establish a distinct place for product definition and centralized calculations, creating a foundation for greater agility and consistency across Thrivent’s product ecosystem.
As a technical leader, you’ll set direction, influence decisions, and help shape the team’s engineering practices to deliver lasting business impact. This role requires a strong blend of technical depth, product insight, and business acumen to deliver scalable, compliant, and value-driven system solutions. You’ll mentor engineers, model cross-team collaboration, and champion best practices in Agile delivery, DevOps, and reliability engineering, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement. Your leadership will enable the team to deliver secure, high-quality systems that advance Thrivent’s financial services business and long-term strategic goals.

         

          

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES: 

Designing Solutions

• Apply expert industry knowledge and broad understanding of multiple disciplines with technical knowledge to drive outcomes for customers 
• Ability to work and problem solve independently on initiatives that align to the broader software engineering strategy 
• Design systems and software integration patterns across a diverse software engineering ecosystem. These patterns should align to high level engineering goals and business initiatives

Developing Software

• Use independent, critical thinking to solve complex problems which are significant to the customer. Uses application and system data, as well as past experiences to inform decision making.
• Leader in technical expertise; Develops most architecturally impactful components of solutions
• Lead to identify, incorporate and define development frameworks and libraries useful to the product

Learning and Applying New Techniques

• Seek out industry and technology knowledge along with best practices to share with the team.

Collaborating within the Team

• Coordinate design and integration of the entire system including subsystems. Research and recommend technology to improve the current systems
• Participate in team’s collaboration session to provide technical expertise to solve a problem/remove technical roadblocks for the team
• Participate in product planning and implementation. Helps product owner to create technical user stories as required/needed.
• Contribute to detailed application specifications, standards, and diagrams and develop coding standards / best practices

Collaborating Across Teams

• Broker solution design and implementation across product teams to achieve outcomes;
• Contribute to overall systems design which involves multiple teams, research and provide customization or development recommendations, and implement accordingly

Collaborating Across The Organization

• Act as an SME to provide over all operations and support processes to build resilient systems for the enterprise

Setting product/platform technology strategy

• Lead the design of critical path/technology for the product group. Contribute to innovative solutions that align to strategic objectives for the customer
• Provide platform technology expertise to teams within product group as well as interdependent teams across the organization
• Help to define the technology / tools roadmap along with the product owner for the team.

Defining Engineering Standards and Patterns

• Partner with the engineering community inside and outside Thrivent in establishing best practices
• Share engineering standards across internal teams and collaborate to help software engineers apply these patterns to build solutions that achieve outcomes

DevOps

• Lead the resolution of critical incidents and provides leadership in proactively addressing product issues
• Continuously assessing technology to build more stable, scalable, and resilient software
• Promote and expand on the use of the CI/CD pipeline to improve the deployment and build process.

Selecting & Managing Technology Vendors

• Lead the evaluation process for software solutions - advising on strengths and weaknesses of the external software.
• Provide a summary of how a tool impacts business processes and goals.
• Contribute in criteria’s for selecting the right platforms and software for the product team.

Coaching Engineers

• Provide guidance and reinforcement around established engineering best practices  
• Provide technical leadership and mentoring to other engineers of varying levels inside the product group
• Provide trainings and demos to address knowledge gaps with in the team

Recruiting and Building Talent

• Engage in the tech community to build the Thrivent technology brand and position as the employer of choice in the market
• Participate in the interview process or be part of the panel to recruit the right talent to the team
• Take part in the Talent Captain role for the product group. This person also leads in how we interview.
• 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.  

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QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS:  

 Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent work experience 
• 10+ years of experience in engineering environments, taking abstract concepts and ideas and formulating a detailed software engineering plan to deliver 
• Experience architecting software solutions with requirements such as performance SLOs, high availability, reliability, security, etc.  
• Understand data and system integration patterns and technologies 
• Proficiency in managing large scale projects. 
• Ability to articulate and transfer complex ideas to a wide audience through both verbal and written communication. 
• Strong conceptual, critical thinking, technical and problem-solving skills with good attention to details.   
• Must be articulate and have the ability to meet with high level management to present and/or deliver technical documentation. 

Preferred:

• Financial services industry experience preferred , with an emphasis on Life, Health, and Annuity products and insurance systems.
• Coach / mentor other team members as appropriate

              

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 $118,105.00 - $159,788.00 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.