Product Owner

About Guardian

Every day, Guardian helps our 29 million customers realize their dreams through a range of insurance and financial products and services. Our Purpose, to inspire well-being, guides our dedication to the colleagues, consumers, and communities we serve. We know that people count, and we go above and beyond to prepare them for the life they want to live, focusing on their overall well-being — mind, body, and wallet. As one of the largest mutual insurance companies, we put our customers first. Behind every bright future is a Guardian.  Learn more about Guardian at guardianlife.com.

About the Opportunity

• You will be a key contributor to the product vision, capturing and prioritizing requirements, creating a roadmap, and facilitating successful product implementation in EBTS (Enterprise Business & Technology Services) Applied Innovation Team.
• You will work closely with our user experience, development, quality assurance teams in addition to other internal stakeholders to deliver new capabilities to both internal and external customers.

You will:

• Serve as product and project owner on several high impact deliverables.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders, including cross-functional teams and business units, to understand their needs, translate them into technical solutions / user stories, and set expectations.
• Partner with technology teams to meet the overall release plan at the project and team level, understand blockers/limitations and their impact on the product and relevance to end users.
• Set priorities, create a roadmap, and establish clear objectives for the technology team responsible for building and enhancing the product.
• Create release and launch plans in coordination with the Business and Engineering teams.
• Grooming and prioritization of the backlog.
• Monitor and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) and user feedback to identify opportunities for improvement and drive continuous enhancements (feedback loops).
• Stay up to date with industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices related to insurance and user experience.
• Filter requests—pushing back when necessary—and prioritize requests in order to keep the team focused on delivering impactful solutions.

You Are:

• Output oriented:  Biased toward action and delivering quantifiable results. Passion for driving continuous improvement and delivering value to the organization. You are proactive/ self-driven and can operate with minimal supervision
• Data Driven and Customer Focused: Detail-oriented with strong analytical and problem-solving abilities that balances quantitative and qualitative inputs to optimize the user experience and/or business objectives.
• Team Player: You enjoy working with diverse people and driving the team toward a common goal. You value establishing long-lasting relationships.
• Intellectually curious: You have an appetite to learn new things and are comfortable speaking up and challenging the status quo. You are comfortable with ambiguity and can easily adapt to changing priorities, manage multiple tasks, and meet deadlines in a fast-paced environment.

You Have:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• At least 12 years of digital or technical experience, as a Product Owner, Product Manager, or in a similar role, a plus if in a technical or regulated environment.
• At least 3 years of Agile experience or a demonstrable understanding of Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, SAFE, etc.)
• Familiarity with Jira or similar backlog management tools and software development lifecycle methodologies
• Experience working on both customer facing products as well as backend products (DBs and APIs)
• Knowledge of data privacy regulations, and security best practices is a plus.
• Ability to break down technical issues into easily digestible data points for stakeholder consumption.
• Excellent communication skills and a high level of emotional intelligence to effectively collaborate with cross-functional teams and stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to initiate, define and deliver on strategic initiatives.
• History of working well in a group setting and proven ability to deliver results.

This position can be based in any of the following locations:

For internal use only: