Consultant, Data Product Owner (ESS Programs & E-Risk)

Nationwide Mutual Insurance•Columbus, OH

1d•Remote

About The Position

This role combines Data Product Owner and Business Advisor responsibilities, bringing together strong communication, stakeholder partnership, and data expertise. The position translates business needs into clear data requirements and supports the delivery of trusted data for Programs and E-Risk. Key responsibilities include sourcing, validating, and delivering Policy, Claims, Coverage, and related data for reporting, analytics, operational decisions, and predictive analytics use cases. The role leads and supports User Acceptance Testing by defining scenarios, validating outcomes, coordinating business handoffs, and documenting data changes and impacts. It also supports data quality by identifying defects, assessing downstream impacts, partnering on issue prioritization, and validating changes. The ideal candidate brings a curious mindset, strong business partnership skills, and the ability to influence through data and technical solutions. They will develop actionable recommendations, perform exploratory analysis to resolve data questions, help prioritize IT data work, and serve as a Programs data advisor for the business. This role collaborates with Programs Operations, Lifecycle Management, IT, DDS Data Engineering, Visualization, and Data Governance teams, as well as product vendors, to deliver trusted data products, reporting solutions, and visualizations. Success requires balancing business value, technical feasibility, data quality, and governance standards while maintaining clear documentation and follow-through. Nationwide embraces an agile work environment and collaborative culture through the understanding of business processes, relationship entities and requirements using data analysis, quality, visualization, governance, engineering, robotic process automation, and machine learning to produce targeted data solutions. As a Data Product Owner, you’ll be the data-related voice of the customer within a Technology development line and serve as the primary liaison between the business and Technology. You’ll be responsible for creating and maintaining the vision and value for the data product. You’ll continually re-prioritize backlog of defects and new development requests for the line(s) that support their data products, working with Technology leadership to influence staffing decisions against work priorities. Your role provides business-minded thought leadership throughout all phases of data development, including intake, work initiation and iteration planning and project estimations; they develop business requirements, manage communications between Technology and business, resolve blockers/questions/support needs, conduct/coordinate User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and approve releases. You’ll evaluate potential impacts to data products, coordinate with stakeholders and serve as steward for data governance, access rights/audits and defect resolution.

Requirements

Advanced SQL skills.
Python knowledge.
Strong knowledge of P&C insurance, including ESS and Programs data domains.
Experience with Data Warehousing, Lakehouse architecture, and enterprise data environments.
Five to eight years of relevant experience delivering Technology enabled business solutions.
Experience leading small to medium-scale initiatives across business and technology teams.
Experience with product roadmap development.
Prioritizing business cases.
Data application and practices knowledge.
Sound decision making.
Strong oral and written communication skills.
Strong analytical skills with high attention to detail and accuracy.
Ability to prioritize, facilitate large meetings, influence senior leaders, resolve conflict, negotiate and coach others.
Undergraduate studies in computer science, management information systems, business, statistics, math, a related field or comparable experience and education strongly preferred.
Graduate studies in business, statistics, math, computer science or a related field are a plus.
Certifications are not required, CSPO, SAFe POPM, PSPO or equivalent designation preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Power BI and/or Tableau is preferred.
Familiarity with AI-enabled tools that improve speed to market, accelerate analysis, and enhance delivery effectiveness.
Insurance/financial services industry knowledge a plus.

Responsibilities

Translates business needs into clear data requirements.
Supports the delivery of trusted data for Programs and E-Risk.
Sources, validates, and delivers Policy, Claims, Coverage, and related data for reporting, analytics, operational decisions, and predictive analytics use cases.
Leads and supports User Acceptance Testing by defining scenarios, validating outcomes, coordinating business handoffs, and documenting data changes and impacts.
Supports data quality by identifying defects, assessing downstream impacts, partnering on issue prioritization, and validating changes.
Develops actionable recommendations.
Performs exploratory analysis to resolve data questions.
Helps prioritize IT data work.
Serves as a Programs data advisor for the business.
Collaborates with Programs Operations, Lifecycle Management, IT, DDS Data Engineering, Visualization, and Data Governance teams, as well as product vendors, to deliver trusted data products, reporting solutions, and visualizations.
Balances business value, technical feasibility, data quality, and governance standards while maintaining clear documentation and follow-through.
Creates and maintains the vision and value for the data product.
Continually re-prioritizes backlog of defects and new development requests for the line(s) that support their data products.
Works with Technology leadership to influence staffing decisions against work priorities.
Provides business-minded thought leadership throughout all phases of data development, including intake, work initiation and iteration planning and project estimations.
Develops business requirements.
Manages communications between Technology and business.
Resolves blockers/questions/support needs.
Conducts/coordinates User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and approves releases.
Evaluates potential impacts to data products.
Coordinates with stakeholders.
Serves as steward for data governance, access rights/audits and defect resolution.
Executes on the solution vision/roadmap.
Serves as the customer and business proxy to developers and agile delivery teams for a single data product/experience impacting a single line of business.
Actively participates in daily scrum meetings, grooming meetings, project status meetings, sprint planning and review meetings.
Drives near-term milestone planning by overlaying the prioritized backlog against fixed-time blockers (monthly/quarterly) to help manage interdependencies and coordination across development teams.
Responsible for applying secure software and systems engineering practices throughout the delivery lifecycle to ensure our data and technology solutions are protected from threats and vulnerabilities.
Participates in planning and execution of user acceptance testing, triage issues and works with development team to resolve.
Manages all communications related to data product between Technology line, business stakeholders and work requestors, resolving blockers/risks on behalf of business, with some supervision.
Conducts/coordinates User Acceptance Testing.
Defines, monitors and analyzes metrics that reflect the quality and success of the data solution(s).
Serves as steward for data product, providing end-to-end subject matter expertise, including related up- and downstream systems and processes.
Acts as governance advocate, ensuring data metrics are understood and leveraged as intended by business users.
Responsible for ongoing data accuracy, including defect reporting, prioritization and resolution.
Assists in the governance of all data access requests and has final right of refusal for accesses.
Defines, prioritizes and grooms the agile delivery team's product backlog to ensure continuous delivery, as well as develops, prioritizes and manages epics and user stories for the development team.
May perform other responsibilities as assigned.