Senior Manager - IT Application Development

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Job overview and responsibilities The Senior Manager of IT Application Development will lead a team responsible for creating, implementing, and maintaining technology solutions to support United Airlines’ Tech Ops business organization. This role involves aligning IT strategies with overall business goals, managing project portfolios, ensuring system performance and security, and fostering strong relationships with business partners and senior leaders. Candidates should have expertise in the software development lifecycle, familiarity with Agile methodologies, and the ability to provide technical leadership for complex, large‑scale systems.

The role centers on modernizing legacy systems, strengthening cybersecurity measures, and enabling data‑driven insights to improve fleet reliability, safety, and regulatory compliance. Collaboration with engineering, maintenance, safety, and compliance leaders is crucial to ensure IT capabilities support both operational and strategic objectives.

You will lead efforts in designing, analyzing, and developing scalable solutions, focusing on solutions architecture and driving organizational change. Effective collaboration with finance and other organizational teams is crucial to achieving the company’s strategic goals. The role requires a combination of technical expertise, leadership qualities, and collaborative skills.

Develop and implement a comprehensive strategy in alignment with business objectives.

• Manage the full lifecycle of projects, including planning, development, testing, and deployment.
• Ensure the quality and scalability of solutions by establishing best practices and governance procedures.
• Monitor the performance of solutions and conduct regular reviews to ensure they deliver the expected business benefits.
• Responsible for escalating, assisting, and following through on the resolution of issues related to the delivery of technology solutions.

Delivery/Support:
Accountable for gaining and maintaining alignment of delivery success criteria with business partners

• Accountable for effective project management and delivery of work requests and projects within committed budget, schedule, and quality for individual projects while also meeting overall department performance goals.
• Accountable for identifying needs, securing commitments, and monitoring progress of deliverables from internal and external service provider teams.
• Provide cost estimates and business case updates.
• Accountable for ensuring technology solutions comply with architectural standards.
• Responsible for communication of progress to senior IT and Business leadership.
• Responsible for organizing and maintaining performance of any application issues in accordance with the agreed SLA.
• Provide information and periodic updates to support overall IT performance metrics, monthly project status reporting, and quarterly resource planning review.

Development Standards, Tools & Architecture

• Create a team structure and process for quality control during development, testing, debugging code, and deployment.
• Ensure best practices for Agile methodologies are implemented, and continuous improvements are made, as needed. Ensure adherence to code scanning and other security protocols during development and release.
• Ensure IT application development process disciplines (solution delivery, project management, work requests, QA, etc.) and standards are established, effectively managed, and performed.
• Remain informed of new technologies and/or business processes and incorporate those technologies to improve the productivity of the applications staff and software systems' maintainability.
• Drive continuous improvement and be adaptable to changing designs and to adding performance enhancements.
• Play a key role in formulating and following the procedures and processes for development.
• Play a key role in the formation of agile…