The Engineering Manager for Marketing Technology at Thrivent provides strategic direction and technical leadership for multidisciplinary teams, driving the design, integration, and optimization of marketing technology platforms and multi-channel campaigns. This role establishes operating policies, aligns team priorities with organizational goals, and fosters a culture of innovation, continuous improvement, and psychological safety. The manager oversees vendor management, talent development, and cross-team collaboration, ensuring seamless execution of marketing initiatives. Responsibilities include guiding solution architecture, supporting agile practices, and advocating for operational excellence and DevOps maturity. The role requires effective communication with stakeholders and leadership in driving business value through technology.
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:
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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:
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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 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 human.resources@thrivent.com or call 800-847-4836 and request Human Resources.
At Thrivent, we believe money is a tool, not a goal. Driven by a higher purpose at our core, we are committed to providing financial advice, investments, insurance, banking and generosity programs to help people make the most of all they've been given. At our heart, we are a membership-owned fraternal organization, as well as a holistic financial services organization, dedicated to serving the unique needs of our customers. We focus on their goals and priorities, guiding them toward financial choices that will help them live the life they want today-and tomorrow.
For over 100 years, Thrivent has been helping people build their financial futures and live more generous lives. Today, it's a Fortune 500 company that offers a full range of expert financial solutions, serving more than 2 million customers, as well as the communities in which they live and work.
Thrivent fosters a diverse workforce to serve our diverse clientele, reflecting a wide range of backgrounds and experiences. If you're intrigued about our work and the possibility of becoming part of it, we invite you to visit Thrivent.com to learn more. You won't just build a career; you'll be part of an organization focused on growing, innovating, and serving.
