Director, IT Operations, XLA & Digital Workplace

Overview

At Banner Life Insurance Company, we lead with heart and ambition. Every day, we transform purpose into progress, guided by our unwavering commitment to be better for our customers, clients, and communities, not just today but long-term as well. Our people are the driving force behind everything we achieve. Their passion, purpose, and pursuit of innovation empower us to deliver cutting‑edge solutions that support those we serve, ensuring we are here for you, here for good and striving for better.

We’re a forward‑thinking company energized by our work and how we show up for one another. Our culture is built on meaningful impact and genuine enjoyment, because we believe great work and great experiences should go hand in hand.

By offering career development opportunities, comprehensive benefits, and programs that support your wellbeing, we help you thrive personally and professionally. We are here for you, here for good and here for better.

Banner Life has experienced significant growth over the past several years, driven by digital transformation and platform‑led innovation. As we look ahead, we have an ambitious goal to more than triple our revenue over the next decade by expanding into new products, distribution channels, and customer experiences.

Technology & Transformation plays a central role in enabling this growth. As the business scales, our technology operating model must also evolve — from traditional SLA‑based service delivery to an experience‑led, resilient, and partner‑enabled XLA model that supports productivity, operational confidence, and enterprise agility.

Within this context, IT Operations, XLA, and Digital Workplace are critical capabilities. This role owns the RUN operating model and ensures managed service partners, internal teams, and enterprise platforms operate as one integrated service ecosystem focused on user experience, reliability, resilience, service quality, and continuous improvement.

The Director, IT Operations, XLA & Digital Workplace is accountable for the enterprise RUN / XLA operating model across employee‑facing IT services, managed service partner performance, Digital Workplace, Service Desk experience, operational resilience, and continuous service improvement.

This role owns the shift from traditional SLA‑based service delivery to an experience‑led operating model, ensuring technology services are measured and governed by productivity, usability, reliability, recoverability, and business impact.

The Director acts as Banner Life’s primary operational counterpart to XLA managed service partners, ensuring day‑to‑day RUN execution remains aligned to enterprise standards, service expectations, user experience outcomes, and continuous improvement objectives.

This role protects the RUN / CHANGE boundary by ensuring RUN owns operational performance while systemic issues and platform improvements are fed into the appropriate Change / Transform roadmaps.

This role has significant commercial and operational accountability, including governance of an XLA managed service model of approximately $10M per annum and oversight of a managed service partner team of approximately 90+ people.

IT User Experience (XLA) Strategy & Ownership

• Own and evolve the enterprise IT User Experience (ITUX) and XLA strategy.
• Define experience outcomes across End User Computing, Digital Workplace platforms, Service Desk, Network, Collaboration, and Core IT services.
• Translate employee and business expectations into measurable experience indicators and prioritized improvement roadmaps.
• Partner with Infrastructure Change / Transform teams to ensure new or changed services are operationally ready before transition into RUN / XLA ownership.
• Drive clear accountability between RUN and CHANGE teams, ensuring operational issues are owned by RUN while systemic improvements are fed back into transformation roadmaps.

Managed Service Partner / XLA Governance

• Serve as Banner Life’s primary operational owner for the XLA managed service partner model, including service performance, governance cadence, escalation, service improvement, and operational accountability.
• Govern managed service partner…