Senior Manager Application Development

RK Management Consultants, Inc.; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

RK Management Consultants, Inc. in Chicago seeks a Senior Manager, Application Development to lead multiple engineering teams delivering secure, scalable, cloud-enabled enterprise applications in the banking and finance domain.

The role requires extensive Agile/Scrum leadership, expertise across Salesforce, AWS, DevSecOps, and modern engineering practices, and a track record of building high-performing teams within regulated financial services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of software engineering and application development experience, including managing teams.
• 8+ years of hands-on leadership experience with the Salesforce ecosystem and enterprise delivery.
• Experience leading technology delivery across Salesforce, member engagement, GRC, workflow and SaaS portfolios.

Responsibilities

• Provide senior technology leadership across Salesforce, CRM, and GRC portfolios.
• Lead end-to-end software development lifecycle across multiple teams.
• Drive DevSecOps adoption, CI/CD, and secure coding practices.
• Collaborate with architects, business owners, and stakeholders to translate business needs into roadmaps.
• Ensure regulatory compliance and operational readiness in a financial services environment.

Skills

Leadership

Salesforce

AWS

DevSecOps

Agile/Scrum

Architecture

Stakeholder management

Education

BS/MS in CS or Eng

Tools

Salesforce

Angular

Java

.NET

CI/CD

IaC

GitHub Actions

Job description

Senior Manager, Application Development, Banking and Finance Domain

Provide technical leadership across Salesforce, custom applications, and other member services technologies.

What You’ll Do

The Sr. Manager, Application Development is a senior technology leader within IT Software Engineering & Delivery responsible for leading multiple application development teams in the design, development, modernization, delivery, and support of secure, scalable, cloud-enabled enterprise applications that support Chicago’s business operations and strategic priorities.

This role provides technology leadership for the Bank’s member engagement, Salesforce, CRM, and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) application portfolios, including custom applications, SaaS platforms, workflow and reporting solutions, integrations, and Salesforce ecosystem capabilities.

The Sr. Manager is a highly technical engineering leader who guides architecture and design decisions, challenges technical assumptions, removes delivery impediments, and drives modern engineering practices. The role partners closely with business stakeholders, Product Owners, Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Data, Risk, Compliance, and IT leadership to translate business needs into secure, sustainable technology solutions.

The ideal candidate has extensive experience leading software engineering teams in Agile/Scrum environments, delivering AWS-based applications, implementing DevSecOps and CI/CD practices, modernizing legacy platforms, developing technical talent, and building high-performing teams in a regulated financial services environment. This role is accountable for delivery execution, engineering excellence, application reliability, security, talent development, and continuous improvement.

How You’ll Make an Impact

• Provide senior technology leadership across the Bank’s member engagement, Salesforce, CRM, and GRC application portfolio, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, reliable, supportable, and aligned with business priorities.
• Drive business value through strong stakeholder partnership, platform maturity, talent development, and risk-aware execution.
• Strengthen Agile delivery, modern engineering practices, Salesforce governance, and delivery predictability while using data and metrics to drive continuous improvement.
• Balance business priorities, technical debt, platform health, regulatory requirements, risk, quality, and team capacity to deliver sustainable technology outcomes.

What You Can Expect

Technology Leadership & Engineering Excellence

• Lead the end-to-end software development lifecycle, including solution design, architecture alignment, development, testing, deployment, operational readiness, and production support.
• Provide technical leadership across development teams to ensure applications are secure, scalable, reliable, maintainable, observable, and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices, including clean architecture, API-first design, microservices where appropriate, reusable components, automated testing, secure coding, code reviews, CI/CD, and observability.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for complex architecture, integration, performance, security, production stability, and modernization challenges.
• Partner with architects, engineering leaders, business owners, and stakeholders to evaluate technical and business tradeoffs, reduce technical debt, and strengthen application and platform maturity.

Cloud, AWS & DevSecOps

• Lead teams designing, building, deploying, and operating applications in AWS cloud environments with a focus on security, reliability, scalability, automation, performance, and cost-conscious engineering.
• Drive adoption of cloud-native practices, including infrastructure as code, containerization, managed cloud services, automated deployment pipelines, and application telemetry.
• Champion DevSecOps by embedding security, quality, testing, governance, and compliance throughout the development lifecycle.
• Ensure applications include effective monitoring, logging, alerting, traceability, and operational support capabilities to improve reliability and reduce time to detect and resolve issues.

Agile/Scrum Delivery Leadership

• Lead Agile/Scrum development teams with strong sprint discipline, effective backlog refinement, predictable planning, and measurable delivery outcomes.
• Partner with Product Owners and business leaders to develop and execute roadmaps that balance strategic value, stakeholder priorities, Salesforce platform health, regulatory requirements, technical debt, and team capacity.
• Use Agile, engineering, and operational metrics to assess delivery predictability, throughput, cycle time, quality, team health, and continuous improvement opportunities.

Business Partnership & Stakeholder Management

• Build trusted relationships with business leaders across member engagement/CRM, risk, governance, and compliance by understanding business processes, priorities, risks, and desired outcomes.
• Translate business needs into technology roadmaps, capabilities, delivery plans, and sustainable solutions aligned with Chicago’s strategic objectives.
• Lead effective tradeoff discussions involving scope, timing, cost, risk, quality, platform capabilities, and business value.
• Communicate clearly with technical and non-technical audiences, including senior leadership, business partners, risk and compliance stakeholders, vendors, and delivery teams.
• Identify technology opportunities, delivery risks, resource constraints, and modernization needs and provide actionable recommendations to leadership.

Talent Development & High-Performing Teams

• Hire, develop, coach, and retain high-performing engineering talent, including managers, technical leads, developers, cloud engineers, test engineers, and application support resources.
• Build a culture of accountability, craftsmanship, collaboration, inclusion, continuous learning, and strong business partnership.
• Establish clear performance expectations, provide meaningful feedback, support career development, and create growth and succession plans for technical and leadership talent.
• Foster psychological safety, collaboration, and ownership while holding teams accountable for delivery, quality, security, and operational outcomes.

Risk, Security, Compliance & Operational Readiness

• Ensure applications and engineering practices meet applicable security, audit, compliance, and regulatory expectations within a financial services environment.
• Partner with Cybersecurity, Risk, Compliance, Audit, and Infrastructure teams to embed appropriate controls throughout application design, development, testing, release, and support.
• Promote secure coding, threat-aware design, vulnerability remediation, automated testing, segregation of duties, change control, and evidence-based audit readiness.
• Ensure production changes are appropriately tested, controlled, observable, and aligned with enterprise risk expectations.

Strategy, Planning & Financial Management

• Contribute to application portfolio strategy, technology roadmaps, annual planning, budgeting, staffing, and resource allocation.
• Lead and support modernization initiatives involving digital transformation, application rationalization, API and data integration, cloud migration, platform resiliency, and legacy system transformation.
• Manage a diverse portfolio of custom applications, SaaS platforms, Salesforce capabilities, vendor-supported applications, integrations, workflow tools, and reporting solutions, ensuring clear ownership, lifecycle planning, vendor accountability, and operational support.
• Manage vendor and third-party relationships as needed, ensuring delivery, quality, security, and architectural expectations are met.
• Monitor delivery performance, team capacity, financial impacts, operational health, and modernization outcomes to support leadership decision-making.

What You’ll Bring

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline; equivalent experience may be considered.
• 15+ years of software engineering and application development experience, including 5+ years managing high-performing engineering teams.
• 8+ years of hands-on leadership experience with the Salesforce ecosystem, preferably including Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Service Cloud, integrations, platform governance, release management, and enterprise delivery.
• Experience leading technology delivery and support across Salesforce, member/customer engagement, GRC, workflow, reporting, and SaaS application portfolios.
• Proven success delivering large-scale, business-critical applications using modern engineering practices, Agile/Scrum methodologies, and AWS cloud technologies.
• Strong technical expertise in Angular, Java, .NET/.NET Core, APIs, microservices, CI/CD, DevSecOps, automated testing, and cloud-native architectures.
• Demonstrated success building, coaching, and developing high-performing engineering teams while driving accountability, continuous improvement, and talent growth.
• Strong business partnership and cross-functional leadership skills, with the ability to align technology solutions to strategic business objectives.
• Experience leading application modernization, cloud migration, and digital transformation initiatives within complex, regulated environments.
• AWS and Agile/project management certifications (e.g., PMP, CSM, PSM, SAFe) preferred.
• Experience with GitHub, GitHub Actions, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), observability platforms, and modern engineering toolchains preferred