Specialty Insurance Product Owner (Consultant)

Nationwide Mutual Insurance•Scottsdale, AZ

4d•Remote

About The Position

Nationwide's Property and Casualty team is seeking a Specialty Insurance Product Owner, Management Liability Specialty Operations, to maximize the value of products and capabilities supporting MLS operations and related specialty insurance areas. This role may encompass MLS, Surety Bonds, Credit and Political Risk, and other related product areas. The Product Owner will collaborate with business leaders, operations teams, broker/agent partners, customers, underwriters, technology, data, compliance, and other stakeholders to translate business needs into a prioritized roadmap, quality releases, and measurable business outcomes. The ideal candidate is comfortable navigating ambiguity, making informed decisions with incomplete information, and balancing customer value, operational effectiveness, risk, compliance, budget, and technical feasibility.

Requirements

Experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Analyst, Application Owner, or similar role in a complex business environment.
Experience working in insurance, financial services, specialty products, operations, underwriting, risk management, or a related domain.
Experience managing a product backlog in JIRA or a comparable Agile delivery tool and writing actionable stories and acceptance criteria.
Experience partnering with technology teams and distribution partners through discovery, delivery, testing, pilot activities, release, adoption, and production support.
Experience developing business cases, defining success measures, tracking budgets, and demonstrating measurable outcomes.
Comfort using AI tools and rapid prototyping techniques with sound judgment regarding accuracy, confidentiality, security, and responsible use.
Ability to make decisions and move work forward through ambiguity, evolving requirements, competing priorities, and imperfect information.
Strong analytical, facilitation, communication, organization, and stakeholder-influence skills.
Ability to balance customer experience, business value, operational practicality, risk, compliance, budget, and technical feasibility.
Ability to influence outcomes without direct authority in a matrixed environment.
Bachelor’s degree in business, information technology, computer science, insurance, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Eight plus years of dynamic experience in planning, designing and implementing company-wide business transformation initiatives.
Extensive experience in functional, process, information and data modeling, data management and warehousing and applications integration.
In-depth experience with process redesign methods and tools.
Three years of experience in project management is preferred.
Demonstrated knowledge of standards, methodologies and frameworks, business process management and technology.
Sound knowledge of a variety of tools, concepts and techniques.
Understanding of new technologies and developments in the technology industry.
Detailed knowledge of the system development life cycle.
Knowledge of project management concepts and techniques are required.
Thorough knowledge of facilitation, performance management, organizational design and managing organization change.
Ability to lead large or sophisticated projects.
Effective communication skills and ability to deal with ambiguity.
Other criteria, including leadership skills, competencies and experiences may take precedence.

Nice To Haves

Experience with specialty insurance, enterprise platforms, workflow automation, APIs, integrations, decision-support tools, or data-intensive applications.
Experience with Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Lean, product discovery, design thinking, or hybrid delivery models.
Experience with customer research, usability testing, service design, journey mapping, or process improvement.
Experience defining product metrics, dashboards, adoption measures, service-level measures, or business cases.
Familiarity with AI-enabled workflows, responsible AI practices, rapid prototyping tools, or automation concepts.
Graduate studies are preferred.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain the product vision, roadmap, priorities, and desired outcomes for assigned capabilities.
Develop a strong understanding of MLS Operations, related product areas, users, workflows, pain points, market needs, and applicable regulatory or control considerations.
Engage business stakeholders, operations teams, customers, broker/agent partners, and other users to validate problems, gather feedback, and define measurable outcomes.
Monitor competitors, market trends, and evolving capabilities to help MLS remain relevant and keep pace in the marketplace.
Identify opportunities to improve customer experience, operational effectiveness, decision support, automation, data quality, and controls.
Own and prioritize the product backlog in JIRA, including epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, dependencies, risks, and release targets.
Translate complex business processes and rules into clear requirements that delivery teams can execute.
Partner with technology, architecture, engineering, QA, data, security, operations, and vendors through refinement, development, testing, release, adoption, and production support.
Provide timely decisions, clarifications, and trade-off recommendations to maintain delivery momentum and avoid rework.
Confirm that completed work meets acceptance criteria, intended outcomes, and release-readiness expectations.
Use AI tools responsibly to accelerate discovery, analysis, documentation, story development, test design, and other product activities while protecting confidential information.
Use prototypes, workflow mockups, wireframes, process concepts, and rapid experimentation to validate ideas before significant delivery investment.
Build effective relationships with distribution partners and involve them early in discovery to validate proposed workflows and capabilities.
Design and coordinate pilot testing with selected distribution partners when appropriate; establish clear objectives and success criteria, gather structured feedback, and incorporate feasible enhancements before broader release.
Identify opportunities and develop business cases for review and submission, clearly describing the problem or opportunity, recommended approach, expected value, measurable benefits, investment and resource needs, costs, risks, dependencies, and implementation considerations.
Partner closely with the Project Manager, SEPM, and Agile Leader to maintain accurate forecasts, monitor expenditures against approved maintenance funding and business-case budgets, address variances, and escalate risks or required decisions promptly.
Define success measures, baselines, key performance indicators, adoption measures, and benefits-realization plans for projects and initiatives.
Showcase and demonstrate measurable outcomes through product demonstrations, stakeholder readouts, dashboards, status reporting, or other appropriate forums.
Ensure product decisions and delivery practices account for regulatory obligations, privacy, security, auditability, records, data governance, and enterprise policies.
Partner with compliance, legal, risk, security, architecture, and governance functions to identify and address risks early.
Maintain clear documentation of product decisions, business rules, assumptions, controls, integrations, data flows, business cases, budget status, and outcome results.
Monitor product performance, adoption, customer feedback, defects, operational results, and financial performance; use those insights to guide prioritization and improvement.
Make timely, well-reasoned decisions through ambiguity and escalate material risks while retaining ownership of recommendations and next steps.
Act independently or as a member of a team responsible for establishing a common understanding of the business environment in which a project must be defined, designed, created, deployed, used and supported.
Participate in major process modeling, analysis and design efforts providing business performance management, organizational design and business risk management capabilities to formulate pragmatic, forward facing and impactful business transformation plans.
Partners with senior leaders to transform their businesses through the strategic application of people, processes and technology.
Participates in the planning process by identifying complexities, dependencies and duplications.
Demonstrates expertise in leading business process analysis/design, organizational analysis, needs assessments and cost/benefit analysis to align solutions with business strategies and direction.
Consults with functional groups within Nationwide Technology and internal business clients to develop short- and long-term business transformation plans.
Serves as process management contributor and consultant between business customers and systems area for development and implementation of business processes and procedures.
Responsible for communicating to customers, management and external sources.
Identifies critical elements of a business process that need to be managed.
Defines criteria of performance success.
Reports performance in a cohesive manner.
As a team member, participates in analysis and design of organizational structures, roles, responsibilities, governance, staffing and sourcing to support business goals, strategies and process architecture.
Provides significant contribution in executing business unit level change.
Conducts and leads training of customers on business, technological, societal and environmental trends to support strategies for improving business performance.
Facilitates evaluation and research of new and existing products, procedures and/or workflow needs associated with business systems for the company.
Evaluates new technological developments and evolving business requirements, and recommends appropriate systems alternatives and/or enhancements.
Develops compelling business cases, including gaining senior management input, to accomplish business objectives.
Identifies, assesses and mitigates business risks associated with current operating model and/or desired target state operating models.
May provide direction, training and guidance for less experienced staff.
May assign responsibility for tasks, sets clear objectives and monitors progress and results.
May monitors project schedules and costs.
May develops project plans, work breakdown structures and desired outcomes for overall solution delivery.
Performs other responsibilities as assigned.