Head of IT Strategy and Transformation

icwgroup; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

ICW Group seeks a Head of IT Strategy & Transformation to lead the STO, aligning architecture, investment planning, and delivery governance with enterprise strategy. This executive role drives transformation across technology investments, standards, and organizational change.

The position requires guiding senior stakeholders, aligning roadmaps, and ensuring delivery readiness while reducing technical debt through a unified operating model and strong governance processes.

Responsibilities

• Leads the Integrated IT Strategy & Transformation Office
• Sets the strategic agenda and annual operating plan for the STO, unifying architecture, portfolio, delivery, and governance activity behind one coherent enterprise strategy.
• Owns the end-to-end operating model connecting strategy formulation, investment funding, architectural standards, delivery execution, and governance decision rights.
• Serves as the single executive point of accountability for whether the organization's technology investments collectively advance its strategic priorities - through the quality of the recommendations, architecture, and delivery readiness the STO brings forward, not through unilateral funding authority.
• Represents the STO to the executive team, the Investment Council, and Board-level committees, translating strategic intent into well-formed, architected, and delivery-ready investment recommendations for those bodies to decide.
• Enterprise Architecture: Directs the definition of enterprise architecture standards, technology roadmaps, and reference architectures that ensure every investment advances one coherent strategy.
• Establishes the architecture governance model - including an Architecture Review Board that evaluates major initiatives for strategic fit, technical risk, and reuse before funding is committed - and delegates day-to-day chairmanship of the Board to the Principal Architect.
• Owns the technology rationalization and modernization roadmap, reducing redundant platforms and technical debt over time.
• Lean Portfolio Management: Directs enterprise investment planning, aligning funding, capacity, and prioritization with strategic themes and value streams.
• Facilitates the Investment Council - a standing committee of executive leaders who hold formal decision-making authority over funding, sequencing, and re-prioritization of major initiatives - by preparing prioritized investment recommendations, portfolio trade-off analysis, and capacity/value data for the committee's decisions.
• Owns portfolio-level value realization: tracking benefits, cost, and capacity against plan, and reallocating investment as strategic priorities shift.

Job description

Are you looking to make an impactful difference in your work, yourself, and your community? Why settle for just a job when you can land a career? At ICW Group, we are hiring team members who are ready to use their skills, curiosity, and drive to be part of our journey as we strive to transform the insurance carrier space. We're proud to be in business for over 50 years, and its change agents like yourself that will help us continue to deliver our mission to create the best insurance experience possible.

Headquartered in San Diego with regional offices located throughout the United States, ICW Group has been named for the twelfth consecutive year in a row and for the 20th time overall as a Top 50 performing P&C organization offering the stability of a large, profitable and growing company combined with a focus on all things people. It's our team members who make us an employer of choice and the vibrant company we are today. We strive to make both our internal and external communities better everyday! Learn more about why you want to be here!

PURPOSE OF THE JOB

Head of the IT Strategy and Transformation Office (STO) leads an integrated enterprise capability that connects strategy, architecture, investment planning, delivery excellence, organizational change, and executive governance. The role brings Enterprise Architecture, Lean Portfolio Management, Agile Delivery (LACE), Organizational Change Management, and Executive Governance together into one accountable operating model. Through this leadership, the Head of IT Strategy & Transformation ensures technology investments are strategically aligned, architecturally sound, appropriately prioritized, delivery-ready, and supported through adoption. The role connects enterprise strategy to execution by enabling informed decisions, focusing resources on the highest-value work, and improving transparency, consistency, and accountability for transformation outcomes.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Leads the Integrated IT Strategy & Transformation Office
• Sets the strategic agenda and annual operating plan for the STO, unifying architecture, portfolio, delivery, and governance activity behind one coherent enterprise strategy.
• Owns the end-to-end operating model connecting strategy formulation, investment funding, architectural standards, delivery execution, and governance decision rights.
• Serves as the single executive point of accountability for whether the organization's technology investments collectively advance its strategic priorities - through the quality of the recommendations, architecture, and delivery readiness the STO brings forward, not through unilateral funding authority.
• Represents the STO to the executive team, the Investment Council, and Board-level committees, translating strategic intent into well-formed, architected, and delivery-ready investment recommendations for those bodies to decide.
• Enterprise Architecture
• Directs the definition of enterprise architecture standards, technology roadmaps, and reference architectures that ensure every investment advances one coherent strategy.
• Establishes the architecture governance model - including an Architecture Review Board that evaluates major initiatives for strategic fit, technical risk, and reuse before funding is committed - and delegates day-to-day chairmanship of the Board to the Principal Architect.
• Owns the technology rationalization and modernization roadmap, reducing redundant platforms and technical debt over time.
• Lean Portfolio Management
• Directs enterprise investment planning, aligning funding, capacity, and prioritization with strategic themes and value streams.
• Facilitates the Investment Council - a standing committee of executive leaders who hold formal decision-making authority over funding, sequencing, and re-prioritization of major initiatives - by preparing prioritized investment recommendations, portfolio trade-off analysis, and capacity/value data for the committee's decisions. The Head of IT Strategy & Transformation does not hold personal or unilateral funding decision rights.
• Owns portfolio-level value realization: tracking benefits, cost, and capacity against plan, and reallocating investment as strategic priorities shift.
• Agile Delivery (LACE)
• Builds and matures enterprise delivery capability through the Lean-Agile Center of Excellence - coaching, engineering practices, and operating model maturity across delivery teams.
• Scope note: LACE owns the ways of working and delivery-team practices used to build initiatives; it does not own business-side adoption of the resulting process or operational changes - that responsibility sits with Organizational Change Management, below.
• Sets delivery standards and operating cadences (e.g., Program Increment planning, Scrum of Scrums) that give the portfolio a predictable, transparent delivery rhythm.
• Establishes delivery KPIs (predictability, flow, quality, cycle time) and drives continuous improvement across delivery teams.
• Ex