US - Staffing - IT - Distribution Experience Product Owner

Product Owner

Duration: 12 Months Contract Location: Remote

Job Description: Distribution Experience Product Owner II/III

Seeking a Product Owner (PO) to support the build-out of a sales experience for a new personal lines Auto insurance product. You will be one of several Distribution-aligned PO's creating, elaborating, and delivering an Auto backlog for a sales flow that is embedded across existing quoting applications. This sales experience will be used by Insurance Professionals representing both internal call center agents and external Independent Agents. This role is part of Frontier and is a critical enabler of the OneAuto product release for 2027. There will be an aligned Engineering Team supporting this PO's portion of the shared OneAuto backlog. This role will report to the Director, Product Owner of the I Buy / I Sell Insurance Professional; Direct & Frontier portfolio. The portfolio's mission is to "Empower our internal & external insurance professionals to deliver value for their customers and our company through profitable New Business Growth. We do this through Sales Experiences that delight users and deliver accurate & efficient quotes."

The ideal candidate has:

• Experience managing large, multi-year modernization efforts
• Deep knowledge of Personal Lines Auto Insurance
• Working knowledge of Direct and Independent Agent distribution channels
• Expert level product mindset to employ product thinking and product ownership best practices across a team (including proficiency with Jira)
• Established history of leveraging user-centric design thinking to make bold decisions based on data and user feedback
• Collaborative mindset to work across multiple groups, including (but not limited to) Experience Design, Distribution, and Insurance Product
• Ability to work with those groups to elaborate, clarify, and confirm complex & evolving requirements that will manifest themselves into front-end designs
• Effective communication skills to work up, down, and across various Experience domains, portfolios, and software products

Overall Product owner roles:

• As a member of the Agile team, the Product Owner represents the voice of the customer and the organization through the delivery of business value. This person works closely with stakeholders (business and technology), including LOB leadership, to define and prioritize features and stories, ensuring alignment with customer needs and organizational goals. This person understands customers` problems in detail and ensures the problems are clearly defined, prioritized and the squad/team is focused on the most valuable work. The Product Owner is the team member always communicating with stakeholders to ensure an aligned understanding of how the squad/team can provide the highest value to the customer through the lens of the portfolio.
• This person collaborates with squads/teams, technologies and architects across portfolios to develop a deep understanding of the technologies and systems they support.

In this role you can expect to:

• Collaborate to create product vision and alignment with strategic priorities with stakeholders. Contribute to the development of the portfolio vision. Communicate product and portfolio vision to their squad/team and other squads/teams outside their portfolio/functional area.
• With the squad/team, collaboratively accountable for developing and achieving product level KPIs. Manage product(s) with a moderate degree of strategy, scope, and complexity.
• Owns and maintains the product backlog and is accountable for its contents and prioritization. Accountable for clear, actionable user stories.
• Sets priorities and actively participates in squad/team quarterly planning. Collaborate with more senior Product Owners to set priorities for portfolio quarterly planning.
• Sets expectations with stakeholders for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities. Participates in squad/team demos, retrospectives, and all other ceremonies.
• Works daily with the agile working group, clarifying business requirements, removing roadblocks, constantly communicating, and supporting alignment around product strategy.
• Collaborates with IT and business leadership to align development and business goals and priorities while working with stakeholders and squad/team to remove roadblocks to execution. Resolves open issues/questions quickly and efficiently.
• Monitors and maintains the product health, supporting long-term product viability and efficiency, and balancing long and short term and costs with desired outcomes.
• Analyzes and reports on feasibility, cost of delay ramifications, economies, or other aspects of planned or potential changes to the product.
• Understands regulatory, compliance, and other industry constraints on the product and prioritizes accordingly. Negotiates with internal and external squads/teams to ensure priorities are aligned across squads/teams both within and outside the portfolio.
• Collaboratively builds the squad/team product roadmap, contributes to strategy inputs from stakeholders. May contribute to program/portfolio level planning. Influences stakeholder expectations for delivery of new capabilities, features, and functionalities.
• Communicates expected value and any changes in value to be delivered in each iteration (sprint, monthly, quarterly, etc.) based on the squad/team-determined capacity.
• Leads customer-driven design and usability testing for the squad/team. Collaborates on CDD and UT across the portfolio. Ensures a well-positioned product through market & industry analysis.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of Agile development methodologies and IT project management as typically acquired through a Bachelors` degree in relevant field (business, computer science, humanities etc.) and a minimum of 3 to 5 years direct experience with agile teams as well as 7 years in business, technology, or consulting.
• Able to depict and explain the importance of complex ideas, issues and designs to varied audiences; educate SBU/department(s) on business vision and plan and the impact of change.
• Able to influence a diverse group of stakeholders; strong leadership skills.
• Able to make difficult and quick decisions daily.
• Strong problem solver with demonstrated ability to lead a team to push the solutions and progress.
• Experience in the insurance industry preferred.
• Knowledge of relevant products and portfolio preferred.
• Strong experimental mindset to drive innovation amongst uncertainty.