Job Detail

Adliswil, ZH, CH

Head Information Retrieval Solutions 

About Swiss Re

The Swiss Re Group is one of the world’s leading providers of reinsurance, insurance and other forms of insurance-based risk transfer, working to make the world more resilient. It anticipates and manages risk – from natural catastrophes to climate change, from ageing populations to cyber crime. The Swiss Re Group is organised into three Business Units, each with a distinct strategy and set of objectives contributing to the Group’s overall mission.

The Opportunity

We are looking for a highly motivated Technology Leader with experience in working in a global support environment to lead our Information Retrieval Solutions team based in Zurich. You are a well-rounded individual bringing very sound understanding of modern software technology, high quality stakeholder management and interpersonal skills in order to effectively collaborate with your IT colleagues and business stakeholders. You have a decisive and autonomous working style, a clear focus on delivering results and you are technically sound, as you have at least 10 years of experience in developing complex software solutions in an enterprise environment.

In your role you will have line management function of a team of 5-7 members who is responsible for designing, implementing and supporting innovative advanced analytics solutions including Text Mining, Semantic Search and Cognitive Computing. In addition you will also play a key role in providing strong leadership in technical matters for one of the most important project of the company and actively take part to its delivery with your team of Data Scientists and DevOps Engineers.

About The Role

Acting as Head of Information Retrieval Solutions, you will work closely together with peers located in Bratislava, Zurich and Bangalore to ensure that our solutions are delivered by time, within budget and with the required quality.

• Design and manage analytics and search solutions based on Java, Python, Spark and Hadoop


• Develop and execute the 2 years roadmap for our internal platform for information retrieval


• Validate/evaluate system and software architectures


• Evaluate third party analytics solutions for internal adoption


• Actively look for the possibility to automate and streamline the analytics pipeline, and subsequently implement the suggested improvements


• Ensure timely customer communication and coordination of follow-up activities


• Build up balanced relationships with key business and IT stakeholders


• Provide mentoring and support to team members on software design, architecture and project management.


• People management

About You

• Master Study in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or Physics


• 10+ years of experience in software development either in Java or Python in an enterprise environment


• 2+ years of experience in managing a small sized team (>3 members)


• Sound understanding of Cloud and Big data concepts and architectures


• Good knowledge of Solr, Elastic Search, Hadoop, Spark, NoSQL


• Familiarity with DevOps and Agile methodologies


• Superb communication and organisational skills


• Strong analytical & conceptual skills to understand complex technology stacks and their dependencies


• High degree of flexibility, independent and enthusiastic working style


• Ability to work well under pressure and on multiple and conflicting priorities


• Excellent verbal and written English skills

Please apply with your full documentation

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