Product Owner / Product Manager

APN Consulting, Inc. • Summit, NJ

15h • Hybrid

About The Position

The Product Owner is accountable for shaping and delivering digital products that improve the experience and effectiveness of employees, clients, and business partners. This role combines strategic product management with hands-on product ownership, serving as the primary bridge between business stakeholders and cross-functional technology teams. The successful candidate will establish a clear product vision, translate complex insurance workflows into actionable requirements, prioritize the product backlog, and guide solutions from discovery through launch and continuous improvement. The role requires strong insurance domain knowledge, sound product judgment, and the ability to influence stakeholders without relying on formal authority.

Requirements

• 7+ years of progressive experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Product Lead, or similar role delivering software or digital products.
• Demonstrated success defining product direction and delivering products or capabilities that users value and adopt.
• Strong knowledge of the insurance industry and familiarity with insurance operations and terminology, including policies, endorsements, renewals, claims, underwriting, premiums, exposures, client servicing, billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financial transactions.
• Proven ability to translate complex business needs into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, business rules, and functional requirements.
• Hands-on experience managing and prioritizing a product backlog within an Agile or Scrum delivery environment.
• Experience facilitating discovery, requirements, process-mapping, training, or decision-making sessions with business users and leadership.
• Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with executives, business teams, engineers, QA professionals, and subject-matter experts.
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills.
• Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms.
• Self-directed ownership, sound judgment, attention to detail, and a consistent record of timely delivery with limited supervision.
• Working proficiency with AI Tools, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio or comparable productivity and process-mapping tools.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in insurance brokerage or with commercial insurance technology and workflows.
• Familiarity with policy administration, CRM, document management, finance, billing, or client-servicing platforms.
• Experience with Azure DevOps or Jira, Salesforce, Sagitta, and related integration or data flows.
• Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms.
• Ability to use SQL or comparable query tools for data validation and analysis.
• Technical background or hands-on exposure to software development, web technologies, data platforms, or systems integration.
• Relevant product, Agile, Scrum, business analysis, insurance, or project management certification.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate a clear product vision, strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes aligned with business-line priorities.
• Partner with business leadership and users to understand goals, operating processes, pain points, and opportunities to improve customer experience, employee efficiency, risk management, and growth.
• Evaluate ideas using customer impact, business value, cost, risk, technical feasibility, return on investment, and build-versus-buy considerations.
• Create alignment and sustained stakeholder commitment to product priorities, trade-offs, and release decisions.
• Monitor product adoption, performance, and business outcomes, then use insights and feedback to guide ongoing enhancements.
• Lead discovery workshops and working sessions with business leaders, subject-matter experts, users, architects, developers, data teams, UX, and QA.
• Document current-state and future-state workflows, business rules, data needs, integrations, exceptions, dependencies, and control requirements.
• Translate product strategy and stakeholder needs into well-structured epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, process maps, and supporting prototypes or documentation.
• Decompose complex requirements into appropriately sized, testable backlog items while preserving an end-to-end view of the product and user journey.
• Identify unclear, conflicting, or missing requirements early and drive timely decisions to reduce delivery risk and rework.
• Leverage AI-powered tools and technologies to improve product discovery, requirements definition, backlog management, stakeholder communication, and decision-making.
• Own, refine, and prioritize the product backlog based on business value, customer impact, risk, urgency, dependencies, and team capacity.
• Ensure backlog items are clear, testable, and ready for development; communicate intended outcomes and clarify requirements throughout delivery.
• Participate actively in Agile ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily collaboration, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Partner with engineering to evaluate solution options and make informed scope and sequencing decisions without prescribing technical implementation.
• Accept completed work against agreed acceptance criteria and the intended business outcome; make prompt decisions when trade-offs are required.
• Act as the voice of the user and a trusted advisor to business stakeholders, balancing competing needs while maintaining focus on product outcomes.
• Facilitate product demonstrations and feedback sessions throughout development, incorporating validated feedback into the roadmap and backlog.
• Communicate product status, priorities, decisions, risks, dependencies, and expected value clearly to executive, business, and technical audiences.
• Champion adoption by partnering on user acceptance testing, training, release readiness, communications, and post-launch support.
• Build strong relationships across business lines, platform teams, vendors, and other Product Owners to coordinate shared capabilities and dependencies.
• Partner with QA and business testers to define expected behaviors, support test planning, review results, and resolve functional questions.
• Analyze data flows, data quality, integration behavior, and exception scenarios to identify opportunities for process and product improvement.
• Use qualitative and quantitative evidence to assess product effectiveness, validate assumptions, and recommend next-best investments.
• Promote high standards for usability, accessibility, security, reliability, maintainability, and operational readiness.

Benefits

• We are committed to fostering a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace where individuals from all backgrounds feel valued and empowered to contribute their unique perspectives. We strongly encourage applications from candidates of all genders, races, ethnicities, abilities, and experiences to join our team and help us build a culture of belonging.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed