Director, Product Manager - Life Insurance Enablement

Sammons Financial Group • Chicago, IL

5d

About The Position

Looking for someone to own the strategy, vision, and delivery of a product capability or value stream, ensuring it delivers measurable business value, stakeholder engagement, role accountability, and measuring success while leading Product Owners and coordinating across business and technology teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor's Degree Product Management, Computer Science, Marketing, Information Systems or Business Administration Preferred
• Minimum 7 years' applicable experience leading and/or directing agile product planning, application or service development Preferred
• Minimum 5 years' applicable experience leading agile teams Preferred
• Minimum 5 years' relevant customer business process experience Preferred
• Demonstrated knowledge of the agile product management discipline and portfolio planning including alignment with strategic goals and financial objectives
• Demonstrated leadership effectiveness engaging executives and other stakeholders to support business objectives and develop overall agile product management capability (e.g. people, process, agile product)
• Demonstrated strong negotiating and influence leadership skills
• Basic familiarity with the principles of design thinking and lean and agile software delivery.
• Bias to action and sense of urgency and possess problem solving, strategic and process thinking skills
• Effective leadership, coaching, motivation and decision making skills
• Proven ability to manage multi-facetted business needs and diverse processes
• Demonstrated ability to balance all business decisions weighing the cost benefits of each to ensure that cost effective solutions are reached, keeping in mind long term benefits and automation
• 25% travel may be required.
• Criminal background check required.

Nice To Haves

• Product Owner certification Preferred
• Six Sigma Preferred

Responsibilities

• Autonomously craft compelling vision and roadmap that aligns with business strategy and goals, meets the customer needs and leverages technical knowledge to ensure feasibility and scalability.
• Monitor progress toward program objectives, identify and manage risks, and ensure effective communication among team members and stakeholders.
• Play a crucial role in resource allocation, budget management, and stakeholder engagement. Deliver expected value on time, within budget, and meet all specified requirements and quality standards.
• Responsible for the overall product strategy, market analysis, and defining the product roadmap. Prioritize features based on business goals and work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure successful delivery of anticipated value.
• Contribute to the broader business unit strategy and establish vision and roadmap to ensure work performed in the area supports overall business objectives. Analyze and interpret quantitative and qualitative information to identify new opportunities for speed to market, operational efficiencies and improving customer experience.
• Build strong working relationships with key partners, stakeholders and customers to facilitate delivery of expected quality Agile products. Actively manage the strategic planning, organization, development and successful (timing and return on investment) execution of multiple strategic and non-strategic project initiatives.
• Lead, develop and engage a team of Product Owners in multi-site locations including remote locations. Partner with each team member to focus on individual performance and inspire action towards meeting team expectations.
• Provide continual coaching and feedback regarding progress, strengths, and areas for development. Utilize corporate programs to reinforce employee performance and development, including incentive plans, annual merit reviews and individual development plans (IDPs).
• Serve on Agile Center of Excellence (COE) with active participation maturing with industry trends. Ensure team members engage and contribute to COE along with continuous learning requirements.
• Define, create, and measure success metrics for product line by establishing clear performance indicators, leveraging data analytics, and ensuring alignment with business objectives to drive product excellence and team accountability.
• Collaborate with division leaders, engineering leaders, architects and other key stakeholders to provide agile product strategy and leadership. Plan, develop and implement agile product initiatives through collaboration and coordinated solutions.
• Educate and partner with leadership and stakeholders on the agile product line vision and business rationale for agile product initiatives.
• Establish and maintain future state agile product roadmaps to enable business strategy, financial objectives and agile product goals.
• Ensure that the intake of new process and technology requests received for the division are aligned with business objectives and overall strategy.
• Develop and manage internal and external relationships to ensure effective combination of agile product lines into a complete agile product portfolio.
• Contribute to and directly lead aspects of the overall agile product management growth through committed evangelizing the vision, relentless improvement, continuous innovation and strong leadership, coaching and example setting.
• Provide input for budget and manage strategic, financial and agile product line plans, while maintaining an awareness of industry benchmarks to serve as a basis of comparison.
• Commitment to embrace Sammons Financial Group Companies shared values (Accountability, Connection, Openness, Respect and Integrity).
• As stated within the Company Attendance and Punctuality policy, regular attendance is required and expected in order to meet the business service levels and workflow demands.
• Participate in other initiatives and/or projects as necessary.

Benefits

• Sammons Financial Group offers a competitive benefit package that includes: Health, Dental, Vision, Company Paid Retirement, PTO and Holiday Pay.
• Our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is a 100% company-funded retirement plan, so you can save for retirement without contributing a penny of your own paycheck.
• Healthy balance between work and personal lives. Friday afternoons off all year long, competitive PTO, and generous number of paid holidays.
• Our incentive program for defined goals subject to eligibility and performance. Monetary rewards are based on individual and/or overall company performance.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director