Sr. Product Manager

Aspida Financial Services LLC•Durham, NC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Aspida is seeking a Sr. Product Manager to shape and own the company's externalized partner platform. This strategic role focuses on APIs, data feeds, status services, event streams, and emerging interfaces that connect Aspida to its ecosystem of distribution partners and integrators. The ideal candidate will act as a product strategist, platform architect, and industry voice, translating industry standards into a roadmap, designing desirable API and data products, and influencing how Aspida modernizes. This role requires collaboration across various departments to ensure partner-facing capabilities reflect the full Aspida experience. The position reports to the Director of Product and requires 3 days a week onsite at the Durham office.

Requirements

7+ years of experience as a Digital Product Manager, with significant time spent on API, platform, or developer-facing products
Insurance, fintech, wealth-tech, or similarly regulated enterprise domain experience; annuity or life insurance experience strongly preferred
API-first mindset: you understand that the API is the product, and you've defined technical requirements for developers and systems integrators — not just feature specs for an internal UI
Demonstrated ability to take a vague market opportunity and turn it into a concrete, successful product
Experience with platform-style software where partners build differentiated experiences on top of your foundation
Ability to synthesize complex internal needs across the company while considering both partner value and future growth
Aptitude and willingness to deeply understand the annuity industry, the distribution ecosystem, and the regulatory environment
Experience using Agile/Scrum/Sprint methodology including sprint planning and execution, as well as strong fluency with software development management tools
Track record of leading new initiatives in a fast-paced environment and driving them through ambiguity to outcome
Excellent written and verbal communication; comfort representing the company externally to partners, industry working groups, and at industry events
Team player who thrives at the intersection of strategy, delivery, and cross-functional collaboration

Nice To Haves

Prior involvement with industry standards bodies (IRI, ACORD, NAIC, LIMRA)
Experience with annuity or life lifecycle systems — illustration, e-application, suitability, PAS, post-issue servicing
Familiarity with how carriers and distribution platforms integrate today, and where those patterns are heading
Experience with event-driven architecture, webhooks, OpenAPI/Swagger specs, and developer experience design
Exposure to emerging integration patterns and how enterprise systems will be consumed by the next generation of tools

Responsibilities

Define and own the digital product roadmap and go-to-market execution for Aspida's externalized partner platform — covering APIs, data feeds, status services, event streams, and the foundation for emerging integration patterns
Translate evolving industry standards (including IRI Digital First for Annuities) into Aspida's product roadmap, ensuring we don't just conform to the standard but use it as a launchpad for differentiation
Represent Aspida in relevant industry working groups, influencing how carriers, distributors, and vendors define and adopt modern annuity APIs and data exchange patterns
Conduct deep voice-of-partner research with IMOs, banks, broker-dealers, RIAs, and wealth platforms to understand friction in the current ecosystem and how Aspida's externalized services can solve it
Build a long-term vision for how Aspida's products and capabilities are consumed across multiple channels and surfaces, today and into the future
Author clear, actionable specs for complex API workflows, balancing configurability for partners with the standardization needed to scale
Partner closely with engineering to deliver a high-performance, scalable platform layer that is genuinely developer-friendly for both internal teams and external systems integrators
Optimize and enable collaboration between stakeholders across operations, actuarial, distribution, strategy, compliance, technology, finance, and data
Own roadmap prioritization to balance speed to market, new platform features, partner-driven feature requests, and emerging opportunities at the edge of where our industry is heading
Manage external vendor relationships and identify build / buy / partner opportunities to accelerate speed to market
Research emerging market trends and translate them into actionable product moves
Define clear outcomes that measure partner adoption, integration velocity, transaction volume through external surfaces, and business impact, and use them to drive decision-making
Support the development of partner-facing materials including API documentation, developer portal content, and integration guides