Product Owner - Insurance

Product Owner / Product Manager – Insurance Technology

Location: Summit, NJ

Job Type: Contract

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Product Owner / Product Manager to shape and deliver digital products that improve the experience and effectiveness of employees, clients, and business partners within the insurance domain.

This role combines strategic product management with hands-on product ownership . You will serve as the primary bridge between business stakeholders and cross-functional technology teams, translating complex insurance workflows and business challenges into scalable digital solutions.

The successful candidate will own the product vision, strategy, roadmap, backlog, prioritization, and delivery outcomes , guiding products and capabilities from initial discovery through development, launch, adoption, and continuous improvement.

Key Responsibilities

Product Strategy, Vision & Business Value

• Define and communicate a clear product vision, strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes aligned with business priorities.
• Partner with business leaders and users to understand operational processes, pain points, customer needs, and opportunities for improvement.
• Evaluate product ideas based on customer impact, business value, cost, risk, technical feasibility, ROI, and build-versus-buy considerations .
• Drive alignment across stakeholders regarding product priorities, trade-offs, scope, and release decisions.
• Monitor product adoption, performance, and business outcomes and use feedback and insights to guide future enhancements.

Product Discovery & Requirements

• Lead discovery workshops and working sessions with business leaders, SMEs, users, architects, developers, data teams, UX, and QA .
• Analyze and document current-state and future-state workflows , business rules, data requirements, integrations, exceptions, dependencies, and controls.
• Translate product strategy and business requirements into well-defined epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, process maps, and supporting documentation/prototypes .
• Break complex requirements into clear, appropriately sized, and testable backlog items.
• Identify unclear, conflicting, or missing requirements early and drive decisions to minimize delivery risk and rework.
• Leverage AI-powered tools and technologies to improve product discovery, requirements definition, backlog management, stakeholder communication, and decision-making.

Backlog Ownership & Agile Delivery

• Own, refine, and prioritize the product backlog based on business value, customer impact, risk, urgency, dependencies, and engineering capacity.
• Ensure backlog items are clear, testable, and ready for development.
• Actively participate in Agile ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily collaboration, sprint reviews, and retrospectives .
• Partner with engineering teams to evaluate solution options and make informed scope and sequencing decisions .
• Review and accept completed work against agreed acceptance criteria and intended business outcomes.
• Make timely product decisions when priorities, requirements, or delivery trade-offs arise.

Stakeholder Leadership & Product Adoption

• Serve as the voice of the user and trusted product advisor to business stakeholders.
• Balance competing stakeholder requirements while maintaining focus on overall product and business outcomes.
• Facilitate product demonstrations and feedback sessions throughout development.
• Communicate product priorities, progress, decisions, risks, dependencies, and expected business value to executive, business, and technical audiences .
• Support UAT, training, release readiness, communications, adoption, and post-launch activities .
• Collaborate across business lines, technology/platform teams, vendors, and other Product Owners to manage shared capabilities and dependencies.

Data, Integration & Product Quality

• Work closely with QA and business users to define expected system behavior and support testing and functional validation.
• Understand and analyze data flows, data quality, system integrations, transformation rules, error handling, exception scenarios, and retry mechanisms .
• Use qualitative and quantitative information to evaluate product effectiveness, validate assumptions, and recommend future investments.
• Promote strong standards around usability, accessibility, security, reliability, maintainability, and operational readiness .

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of progressive experience as a Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Product Lead, or similar role delivering software or digital products.
• Strong knowledge of the Insurance industry and insurance operations.
• Understanding of insurance processes and terminology including:
• Policies and policy servicing
• Underwriting
• Endorsements and renewals
• Claims
• Premiums and exposures
• Client servicing
• Billing
• Accounts Receivable / Accounts Payable
• Financial transactions
• Demonstrated success defining product direction and delivering digital products or capabilities that users value and adopt.
• Hands-on experience owning and prioritizing a product backlog within Agile/Scrum environments .
• Strong experience translating complex business requirements into user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, business rules, and functional requirements .
• Experience leading discovery, requirements, process-mapping, training, and decision-making sessions with business users and leadership.
• Strong written, verbal, presentation, facilitation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to communicate effectively with executives, business teams, engineers, QA teams, and SMEs .
• Strong analytical, prioritization, problem-solving, and decision-making capabilities.
• Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, integrations, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms .
• Ability to independently own responsibilities and consistently deliver with limited supervision.
• Working proficiency with AI tools , Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, or comparable productivity/process-mapping tools.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience within Insurance Brokerage or Commercial Insurance technology and business workflows.
• Experience with policy administration, CRM, document management, finance, billing, or client-servicing platforms .
• Exposure to Salesforce, Sagitta, Azure DevOps, Jira , and related integrations/data flows.
• SQL or comparable querying experience for data validation and analysis .
• Technical background or hands-on exposure to software development, web technologies, data platforms, APIs, or systems integration .
• Relevant certifications in Product Management, Agile, Scrum, Business Analysis, Insurance, or Project Management .

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role means delivering more than features. The Product Owner / Product Manager will ensure that:

• Product roadmap and backlog investments translate into measurable business outcomes.
• Engineering teams receive clear, prioritized, testable requirements and timely product decisions .
• Users actively participate in product development, successfully adopt released capabilities, and provide actionable feedback.
• Delivered solutions meet functional expectations and continue to improve based on data, user feedback, and measurable results .