We've been discussing the impact of cloud computing on insurance operations, but what about the people who will be running these systems? What kinds of special skills are needed?
A recent perusal of some of the leading IT job sites, including Dice.com, as well as some individual insurance company sites, turns up exactly these types of opportunities emerging within the insurance and financial services sector. All require a healthy degree of technical knowledge (not included for brevity purposes), but note the prominence of business skills as qualifiers as well:
Cloud systems engineer (insurer): “Partner with new development business unit to learn about the new businesses launched in the cloud and assist with support and deployments. Develop an operational strategy with IT infrastructure management to transition these new businesses into IT steady state support..... Experience with cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3, others), IBM Cast Iron integration and Salesforce.com and related ecosystem.... Extensive experience with full development life cycles including Agile and Waterfall methods....”
Cloud engineer (credit union): “Builds, implements and manages all cloud solutions, ensuring 24/7 availability. ….Works with IT development staff and management to ensure the highest level of technical support of production and staging environments.... Excellent customer service skills. Professional verbal and written communication skills and the ability to interact with all levels of staff..”
Cloud architect (financial services): “Will work extensively on the design and architecture of major components of our cloud initiatives.... Three-plus years of significant cloud architecture and design experience... Five-plus years of experience working in a highly virtualized environment..... Solid background in systems virtualization and orchestration.”
Sr. cloud/Platform as a Service developer/analyst (healthcare insurer): “Designs and implements automation workflows for Platform as a Service offerings, including database and application server platform stacks.... Involves requirements gathering and creating strategic vision for continued growth and adaptation of services.... Conduct stakeholder interviews and user testing sessions, creating workflows and schematics, as well as delivering information architecture and click-through prototypes.... - Develop architectural approach to meet key business objectives.”
Infrastructure Manager—VMware\Windows (insurer): “Responsible for management of old and new processes, programs and/or initiatives related to maintaining the VMware/Windows environment.... ...Continually monitor departmental KPIs and service level agreements. ...Contribute to policy/program development for strategic and tactical initiatives. ...experience with ITIL processes, experience working with private and/or public cloud environments...”
Director, technical digital services (credit union): “Responsible for the strategic planning and technology road map that supports online and mobile services activities. ...Minimum 5 years experience managing complex e-commerce environments, including cloud services, network communications, database structures (Oracle, SQL) and operating systems (Windows, Linux).... Strategic thinker with strong implementation and solutions experience..... Possess strong interpersonal, facilitation and consensus building skills... Proven ability to obtain cooperation and build trust internally and externally.”
Joe McKendrick is an author, consultant, blogger and frequent INN contributor specializing in information technology.
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This blog was exclusively written for Insurance Networking News. It may not be reposted or reused without permission from Insurance Networking News.
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