Director Of Operations Jobs

About The Position

Requirements

• 10 or more years of progressive P&C insurance experience, including significant experience in underwriting, portfolio management, or underwriting operations.
• 5 or more years of experience managing teams.
• Deep understanding of P&C underwriting principles, portfolio management, premium audit, and profitability drivers, including loss ratio, rate adequacy, retention, and mix.
• Strong analytical skills and comfort with data, business intelligence tools, staffing and productivity models, and predictive model outputs.
• Demonstrated leadership of cross-functional, technology-enabled initiatives, process mapping, and workflow redesign.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to turn complex data into concise, actionable executive updates.
• Strong leadership skills, including leading through other managers and guiding teams through organizational change.
• Excellent organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to operate at both strategic and operational levels and deliver strategic initiatives on time.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Ability to work on-site at the Home Offices in the Greater Seattle area and live within driving distance.
• Ability to sit for prolonged periods and work on a computer, including video conferencing.

Nice To Haves

• Commercial or Farm insurance experience; familiarity with Personal Lines.
• Experience leading managers.
• Experience with portfolio analytics, quality review programs, or premium audit.
• Experience leading workflow automation or technology implementations; AI-enabled solutions or workflow platforms are a plus.
• Advanced degree.
• CPCU, CIC, AU, or another insurance industry designation or certification.
• Project management, process improvement, or change management certification.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, coach, and guide assigned staff; conduct succession planning, set goals and performance expectations, and build leadership bench strength.
• Foster data-driven decision-making, continuous improvement, and accountability across the organization.
• Manage external vendor relationships for underwriting data, tools, inspections, and service providers.
• Monitor portfolio loss performance, appetite, segmentation, growth, retention, rate adequacy, and mix by line, segment, territory, and agency.
• Lead a disciplined cycle of portfolio review, investigation, recommendations, partnership, and measurement.
• Bring underwriting guideline and authority recommendations to the Field/Production Underwriting Director and line managers, and measure results after changes.
• Oversee the underwriting quality program, including file reviews, guideline adherence, and exception analysis; route findings to UW Training for targeted training.
• Oversee premium audit, including audit ordering, exposure verification, and class validation, and use results to identify exposure, class, and agency patterns.
• Direct inspection strategy as an expense and insurance-to-value lever in partnership with Loss Control / Risk Services and Product Management.
• Lead one Operations team across Personal, Commercial, and Farm through the Operations Manager; own service levels, accuracy, timeliness, workflow, and the ability to flex capacity across lines.
• Set standards for associate- and operations-level work, maintain a dotted line to underwriting, and build a career path into underwriting.
• Own the operations KPI framework, including SLA attainment, throughput, first-pass quality, cycle time, touch ratios, and straight-through processing.
• Lead workforce and capacity planning using time studies, touch-ratio studies, process mapping, and productivity models measured against industry staffing benchmarks.
• Own the underwriting solutions roadmap, including AI-enabled new business underwriting, renewal and endorsement efficiency, agent self-service, account dashboards, and workflow automation.
• Prioritize enhancements using performance data and underwriter pain points, and serve as business lead for underwriting technology initiatives in partnership with IT.
• Create charters and CBAs for underwriting projects, ensuring business cases, requirements, testing, measurable ROI, and defined success metrics.
• Track initiative capacity gains and translate released capacity into staffing plans through attrition and no-backfill decisions.
• Lead vendor evaluation, selection, contracting, and performance management, ensuring solutions deliver measurable value.
• Champion change management and adoption of new tools and processes across underwriting and operations.
• Deliver concise, bottom-line-first executive reporting on portfolio performance, operational KPIs, benchmark status, and initiative results.