Location: Union Beach, NJ (Onsite) – Need Locals or relocation candidates who are open to relocate day one
Duration: 12-18 months Contract
MOI: Phone/Video (MSTeams)
Recruiter Additional Notes:
Recruiter Focus Notes: A senior-level Product Owner / Product Manager with strong insurance industry expertise who can own product direction while also working hands-on with Agile delivery teams. The ideal candidate can understand complex insurance workflows, turn them into clear requirements and backlog items, facilitate discovery, make prioritization decisions, and communicate effectively with both business and technical stakeholders.
7+ years of progressive Product Owner, Product Manager, Business Product Lead, or similar experience delivering software/digital products.
Strong insurance domain knowledge, including insurance operations and terminology.
Proven product strategy, vision, roadmap, and value-delivery experience.
Strong ability to translate complex business needs into user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, business rules, and functional requirements.
Hands-on product backlog ownership and prioritization in an Agile/Scrum environment.
Strong stakeholder leadership and facilitation, including business leadership, users, engineering, QA, architects, and SMEs.
Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms.
Working proficiency with AI tools, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio or comparable tools.
Niche combination to prioritize: Candidates combining senior product ownership + deep insurance domain knowledge + hands-on Agile backlog/requirements management + understanding of data/integration concepts.
Job Description:
Senior Product Owner – Insurance Technology
Position Overview
Drive the vision and delivery of digital products that improve the experience and effectiveness of employees, clients, and business partners within the insurance environment. This role combines strategic product management with hands-on product ownership, translating complex insurance workflows and business needs into actionable requirements for cross-functional technology teams.
The successful candidate will establish product vision and roadmaps, prioritize the backlog, lead discovery and requirements activities, guide Agile delivery, and use customer and business insights to drive continuous product improvement.
What You'll Do
Product Strategy, Vision, and Value
Define and communicate product vision, strategy, roadmap, and measurable outcomes aligned with business priorities.
Partner with business leaders and users to understand goals, operating processes, pain points, and opportunities.
Evaluate product ideas based on customer impact, business value, cost, risk, technical feasibility, return on investment, and build-versus-buy considerations.
Build stakeholder alignment around product priorities, trade-offs, and release decisions.
Monitor product adoption, performance, and business outcomes to guide ongoing enhancements.
Discovery, Process, and Requirements
Lead discovery workshops and working sessions with business leaders, subject-matter experts, users, architects, developers, data teams, UX, and QA.
Document current-state and future-state workflows, business rules, data needs, integrations, exceptions, dependencies, and control requirements.
Translate product strategy and stakeholder needs into epics, features, user stories, acceptance criteria, process maps, and supporting documentation.
Break complex requirements into appropriately sized, testable backlog items while maintaining an end-to-end view of the product and user journey.
Identify unclear, conflicting, or missing requirements and drive timely decisions.
Leverage AI-powered tools and technologies to improve product discovery, requirements definition, backlog management, stakeholder communication, and decision-making.
Backlog and Agile Delivery
Own, refine, and prioritize the product backlog based on business value, customer impact, risk, urgency, dependencies, and team capacity.
Ensure backlog items are clear, testable, and ready for development.
Participate actively in Agile ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily collaboration, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
Partner with engineering to evaluate solution options and make informed scope and sequencing decisions.
Accept completed work against agreed acceptance criteria and intended business outcomes.
Stakeholder Leadership and Change Adoption
Act as the voice of the user and a trusted advisor to business stakeholders.
Facilitate product demonstrations and feedback sessions throughout development.
Communicate product status, priorities, decisions, risks, dependencies, and expected value to executive, business, and technical audiences.
Support user acceptance testing, training, release readiness, communications, and post-launch support.
Build relationships across business lines, platform teams, vendors, and other Product Owners to coordinate shared capabilities and dependencies.
Quality, Data, and Continuous Improvement
Partner with QA and business testers to define expected behaviors, support test planning, review results, and resolve functional questions.
Analyze data flows, data quality, integration behavior, and exception scenarios.
Use qualitative and quantitative evidence to assess product effectiveness and validate assumptions.
Promote standards for 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.
Demonstrated success defining product direction and delivering products or capabilities that users value and adopt.
Strong knowledge of the insurance industry and familiarity with insurance operations and terminology, including policies, endorsements, renewals, claims, underwriting, premiums, exposures, client servicing, billing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financial transactions.
Proven ability to translate complex business needs into clear user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, business rules, and functional requirements.
Hands-on experience managing and prioritizing a product backlog within an Agile or Scrum delivery environment.
Experience facilitating discovery, requirements, process-mapping, training, or decision-making sessions with business users and leadership.
Excellent written, verbal, facilitation, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills, with the ability to communicate effectively with executives, business teams, engineers, QA professionals, and subject-matter experts.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, prioritization, and decision-making skills.
Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms.
Self-directed ownership, sound judgment, attention to detail, and a consistent record of timely delivery with limited supervision.
Working proficiency with AI Tools, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio or comparable productivity and process-mapping tools.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience in insurance brokerage or with commercial insurance technology and workflows.
Familiarity with policy administration, CRM, document management, finance, billing, or client-servicing platforms.
Experience with Azure DevOps or Jira, Salesforce, Sagitta, and related integration or data flows.
Working knowledge of data mapping, transformation rules, APIs, error handling, exception management, and retry mechanisms.
Ability to use SQL or comparable query tools for data validation and analysis.
Technical background or hands-on exposure to software development, web technologies, data platforms, or systems integration.
Relevant product, Agile, Scrum, business analysis, insurance, or project management certification.
What Success Looks Like
Business Value: Roadmap and backlog investments connect to measurable business outcomes.
Delivery Readiness: Teams receive clear, prioritized, testable requirements with timely decisions.
User Adoption: Users participate, adopt released capabilities, and provide actionable feedback.
Product Quality: Solutions meet functional expectations and improve through evidence and learning.
