Director, Strategic Initiatives, Agile Tooling (Information Technology)

Job Classification:

Technology - Agile, Delivery, & Product

Are you interested in building capabilities that enable the organization with innovation, speed, agility, scalability, and efficiency? The Global Technology team takes great pride in our culture where digital transformation is built into our DNA! When you join our organization at Prudential, you'll unlock an exciting and impactful career – all while growing your skills and advancing your profession at one of the world's leading financial services institutions.

Your Team & Role

As a Director, Strategic Initiatives in the Agile Enablement Office(AEO), you will collaborate across the enterprise on the development, prioritization, and implementation of an evolving suite of planning and collaboration tools used by a wide range of Agile practitioners, partners, and leaders to enable them to be high performing, manage work and priorities, have visibility across bodies of work, and deliver customer focused, business outcomes. As a key member of the AEO, you will lead a small team of analyst and developers supporting agile transformation across the enterprise.   With a growth mindset, product focus and customer centric way of thinking you will partner across the enterprise to understand user needs, continuously evolve, and improve our offerings, develop tools-related training and learning, and drive change plans that inspire people to leverage technology to improve how they work.

Location: Newark, NJ hybrid work arrangement preferred. Virtual work arrangements will be considered for those outside of the commutable Newark area.

Here is What You Can Expect on a Typical Day

Defining Strategy, Roadmap and Backlog

• In partnership with relevant stakeholders, define and execute strategy to support the user needs of our agile planning and collaboration toolset (Jira, Jira Align, Confluence, Miro, Agility Health)
• Create and maintain an ongoing roadmap by working with business areas to identify, sequence, and prioritize user requests
• Vendor management responsibilities for all tooling vendors
• Collaborate with vendor partners on new and future capabilities to drive the tooling strategy
• Understand the user needs and continuously scan the tooling marketplace confirming we are using "best in class"
• Drive change and communication plans related to tooling releases and new functionality

Manage the day-to-day operations support process

• Work with the team to increase automation that will decrease number of support tickets and inquiries
• Partner across the organization to implement integrations with other application that will increase our user satisfaction 
• Responsible for tooling documentation, training, and overall interactions with the user community
• Provide SME consulting to Agile teams about how to implement and use these tools
• Partners with coaches and engagement leads to satisfy our customer needs
• Lead and effectively leverage diverse ideas, experiences, thoughts, and perspectives to the benefit of the organization.   

Team Management:

• Lead, mentor and manage a small team in executing upon the roadmap and day-to-day operations
• Manage backlog prioritization and daily activities of team members

The Skills & Expertise You Bring

• Bachelor of Computer Science or Engineering or experience in related fields
• Demonstrated leadership in guiding and coordinating team efforts
• Skilled in mentoring and motivating team members to achieve common goals
• Ability to coach others with minimal guidance optimally leverage diverse ideas, experiences, thoughts, and perspectives to the benefit of the organization
• Experience with agile development methodologies
• Experience working in a centralized technology organization that support users across multiple business units
• Experience navigating large complex organizations to solve enterprise level problems
• Ability to learn new skills and knowledge on an on-going basis through self-initiative and tackling challenges
• Excellent problem solving, communication and teamwork skills

Deep experience and/or expertise with several of the following:

• Deep understanding and expertise with implementing and supporting SaaS Product, preferably Atlassian products, experience with whiteboarding tools like Miro

You'll Love Working Here Because You Can

Join a team and culture where your voice matters; where every day, your work transforms our experiences to make lives better. As you put your skills to use, we'll help you make an even bigger impact with learning experiences that can grow your technical AND leadership capabilities. You'll be surprised by what this rock-solid organization has in store for you.

What we offer you:

• Market competitive base salaries, with a yearly bonus potential at every level
• Medical, dental, vision, life insurance, disability insurance, Paid Time Off (PTO), and leave of absences, such as parental and military leave
• Retirement plans:
• 401(k) plan with company match (up to 4%)
• Company-funded pension plan
• Wellness Programs to help you achieve your wellbeing goals, including up to $1,600 a year for reimbursement of items purchased to support personal wellbeing needs
• Work/Life Resources to help support topics such as parenting, housing, senior care, finances, pets, legal matters, education, emotional and mental health, and career development.
• Tuition Assistance to help finance traditional college enrollment toward obtaining an approved degree, many accredited certificate programs, and industry designations.
• Employee Stock Purchase Plan: Shares can be purchased at 85% of the lower of two prices (Beginning or End of the purchase period), after one year of service.

To find out more about our Total Reward package, visit Work Life Balance | Prudential Careers. Some of the above benefits may not apply to part-time employees scheduled to work less than 20 hours per week.

Note: Prudential is required by state specific laws to include the salary range for this role when hiring a resident in applicable locations. The salary range for this role is from $148,800.00 to $201,200.00. Specific pricing for the role may vary within the above range based on many factors including geographic location, candidate experience, and skills. Roles may also be eligible for additional compensation and/or benefits. Eligibility to participate in a discretionary annual incentive program is subject to the rules governing the program, whereby an award, if any, depends on various factors including, without limitation, individual and organizational performance. In addition, employees are eligible for standard benefits package including paid time off, medical, dental and retirement.