Team Lead – Cloud Application Engineering

About AAIS

Since 1936, American Association of Insurance Services (“AAIS”) has served the property and casualty insurance industry as the only national not-for-profit advisory organization governed by its member companies. We are committed to evolving with changes in the insurance industry, adding value to our members, regulators, and the industry with responsive products and insights.

Purpose

The Team Lead - Cloud Application Engineering leads a delivery and engineering team that independently designs, builds, and supports AAIS's cloud application platform. The Cloud Application Engineering team is a full-stack, full-lifecycle team that works in close partnership with DevSecOps and Data teams. This role is accountable for delivery health, engineering standards, prioritization, operational readiness, and team development.

The ideal candidate is an experienced, hands-on technology leader with broad cloud engineering knowledge and the ability to guide complex work across multiple disciplines. They balance technical leadership with practical delivery management while developing engineers and ensuring solutions are secure, reliable, maintainable, and aligned with business priorities.

Responsibilities

Team Delivery & Prioritization

• Lead work intake, technical planning, prioritization, estimation, sequencing, and delivery tracking.
• Translate business priorities into clear engineering outcomes, release plans, and accountable execution.
• Identify delivery risks and resource constraints, resolve blockers, and escalate decisions as needed.

Technical & Operational Leadership

• Guide architecture and engineering decisions across data, applications, cloud infrastructure, DevSecOps, security, identity, endpoints, and SaaS platforms.
• Establish and reinforce standards for source control, testing, CI/CD, security, observability, documentation, and change management.
• Lead production readiness, incident escalation, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement of reliability.

Broader Engineering Responsibilities

• Coordinate engineers, business partners, vendors, and leadership around priorities, tradeoffs, risks, and outcomes.
• Ensure work is tracked in Azure DevOps, code is maintained in GitHub, and peer review practices are applied consistently.
• Communicate delivery status, risks, and recommendations clearly to non-technical stakeholders and leadership.
• Perform additional duties as assigned or requested.

Manage a Team

• Coach and mentor engineers, provide timely feedback, and create opportunities that build technical depth and breadth.
• Build a collaborative engineering culture with clear accountability, knowledge sharing, and cross-coverage.
• Lead, coach, and develop a team to deliver high performance and support individual growth.
• Set clear goals and expectations, monitor progress, and provide regular feedback.
• Foster a positive, inclusive, and accountable team culture.
• Manage day-to-day operations, ensure alignment with department objectives, and remove barriers to performance.
• Support resource planning, workload distribution, and prioritization of tasks.
• Facilitate regular team meetings, one-on-one check-ins, and performance conversations.
• Identify and address performance issues in a timely and constructive manner.
• Partner with Human Resources on talent-related matters such as hiring, onboarding, development, employee relations, and performance management.
• Encourage collaboration, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement within the team.
• Represent the team's needs and perspectives in cross-functional discussions.
• Ensure compliance with company policies, procedures, and quality standards.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• Broad technical knowledge across cloud data platforms, application engineering, DevSecOps, cloud security, identity, infrastructure, and production operations.
• Recent experience leading teams that utilize AWS-native services, including API Gateway, EventBridge, Step Functions, S3, AWS Lambda, and AWS Amplify, as well as MongoDB Atlas, Okta, and Microsoft 365 Security.
• Strong delivery leadership skills, including prioritization, estimation, risk management, dependency management, and incident leadership.
• Experience with API integration, CI/CD pipelines, observability, automation, and cloud security practices.
• Ability to guide architecture decisions and technical tradeoffs while remaining close enough to the work to coach engineers and challenge designs.
• Strong understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC), source control, testing strategies, change management, and operational readiness.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Strong critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and meet deadlines.
• Demonstrated leadership, mentoring, and team development skills.
• Must demonstrate a high degree of integrity, ethics, discretion, and dedication to the mission of the organization.
• Ability to work effectively both independently and in a collaborative team environment.
• Ability to communicate effectively across multiple channels and asynchronously in a remote-first work environment.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Data Management, Cybersecurity, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years of technology experience, including senior engineering or technical leadership responsibilities.
• Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional engineering delivery and production operations.
• Demonstrated breadth across multiple cloud engineering disciplines and depth in at least one.
• Formal people-management experience a plus.
• Experience in property and casualty insurance or other regulated industries a plus.
• Successful candidate will be required to complete an in-person leadership interview
• Minimum travel is required for annual all-company gatherings or team design sessions (up to 5% of the time)

Minimum starting base of $130,000, with upward flexibility based on skills and experience + 10% annual bonus.

Notice of AI Use in Job Application Review

As part of our commitment in creating a fair, efficient, and consistent hiring process we may use artificial intelligence (AI) to help our recruiting teams organize, summarize, and analyze information provided by candidates, including resumes, application responses, and other materials submitted during the application process.AI may be used to identify patterns, highlight relevant skills, and experience, and assist in comparing a candidate’s qualifications with the requirement of a specific role. These tools are to improve efficiency and consistency while supporting more informed hiring decisions, which will ultimately be made by the hiring team.