Director, Product

The Director of Product is responsible for identifying, validating, and driving business impact across a portfolio of business and/or technology domains through developing and deploying computer software. They internalize the company's strategy,  identify how their product portfolio can best support the company's goals, and guide high-quality execution to achieve business impacts. Key responsibilities in this position include building business plans using research and analysis that drive investment decisions, developing a growing team of product managers to execute on the vision for the product, and driving cross-functional alignment on prioritization and impact for product initiatives.

How You’ll Do It

• Critical thinking & problem solving
• Develop 12+ month product strategy across their portfolio of products (e.g., decision-making frameworks, systematic problem exploration, outcome definition and measurement) and coaches others on how to do the same
• Builds and continuously reinforces deep insurance and business domain expertise, with a strong command of the end-to-end value chain of Pie's business. Proactively seeks & stays close to user sentiment and feedback trends, along with broader competitive landscape and industry trends.
• Proactively recognizing when processes or goals are misaligned with high-value outcomes, and taking corrective actions
• Understands technical fundamentals of how multiple product and/or business domains interact, anticipates potential conflicts or synergies, and takes action to mitigate risk or maximize value
• Ensures their teams have quantitative and qualitative processes for capturing feedback, and regularly get close to users / problems
• Makes complex decisions with minimal oversight, acting as the primary product leader accountable for decision-making, quality-control, and results delivery for their domain of ownership
• Cross-functional execution
• Creates alignment around shared objectives and facilitates adoption of enabling work among other teams; monitors progress and proactively addresses misalignment
• Recognizes and proactively communicates when expectations must be shifted, priorities adjusted, etc. to better optimize for overall business value
• Guides their team to set clear and ambitious goals that drive significant business value; accepts responsibility for team performance and outcomes, regardless of circumstances
• Refining product strategy into relevant suite of impacts that align cross-functional execution with key business outcomes; works with team members to refine and evolve measures over time
• Optimizes speed-to-value across their product domain by creatively addressing dependencies, removing blockers, and maintaining focus on a manageable set of priorities
• People Management
• Attracting, recruiting and evaluating Product,  Engineering, and Design talent as part of hiring panels
• Regular meetings with direct reports to provide coaching, feedback, and guidance (1x1s, development meetings, problem-solving sessions)
• Formal performance management processes including calibrations, written performance summaries, etc.
• Influencing and Communication
• Building high-trust relationships with senior leaders across the business to serve as a trusted advisor and thought partner
• Evangelizing a compelling vision for their product domain to educate and inspire buy-in across the organization
• Distilling complex information across multiple domains into a synthesized, well-supported structure that informs and makes the case for action
• Facilitating or leading large cross-functional meetings with stakeholders of any seniority level

The Right Stuff

• 10+ years overall professional experience working on complex business and/or technology problems 
• 5+ years Product Management experience working in an agile software development lifecycle (SDLC) environment
• 3+ years experience managing direct reports performing complex knowledge work. Must include at least 1+ years managing product managers.
• Advanced communication (written, verbal and presentation) skills, to distill complex information effectively and in alignment with the needs of the audience.
• Advanced problem solving skills and track record of demonstrated "first-principles" based thinking. Able to manage complex situations with multiple layers, and resolve to solution anticipating needs now and into the future
• Advanced understanding of continuous product discovery methodologies, including interviews, ethnographic research, job shadowing, passive feedback collection (e.g., surveys, product usage analytics), prototyping, etc.
• Advanced awareness of workflow, and project tradeoffs to make decisions based on needs now and into the future
• Advanced leadership knowledge, and ability to build, develop and coach the team and manage the overall group/team workflow to successful deliverables/outcomes
• Demonstrated ability to influence strategic direction
• Advanced understanding of modern software development tools, processes, and architecture patterns; knows how to strike a balance between business needs and the scope of software engineering solutions
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple project deliverables, making decisions and understanding tradeoffs, and create processes for efficiency and effective product delivery for their team and broader cross-functional delivery coalitions
• Demonstrated mastery of synthesizing understanding of a given market in terms of key user segments and value sizing, jobs to be done, competitive offerings, and target opportunities for differentiated value creation.               
• Mastery of quantitative analysis across all areas of the business
• High level skillset in program management tools, and project mapping
• High level technical skills and mastery of the industry to mitigate complicated issues and manage multiple complex deliverables simultaneously
• G-Suite Tools, Collaboration tools (slack is preferred), basic office machines, Atlassian SDLC suite (Jira, Confluence, etc.)
• Proficient with Looker or other relevant analytics tools