Director of Product Management Japan

Summary

Are you a Japanese insurance industry professional with crossover business and technical knowledge? Do you have great interpersonal skills, the ability to dig into detail and a focus on customer value? Are you looking for a new challenge? Then join us at Guidewire Software and help build the next generation of insurance solutions for the Japanese market.
Our APAC development centres are responsible for developing and delivering software that leverages and extends the business value of our insurance SaaS platform to global insurance markets. Our centres include teams delivering key market-specific and business-specific functionality as a critical layer of added value designed to meet the varying needs of our diverse customer community.
Directors of product management at Guidewire assume responsibility for product strategy across a market. You should have experience driving product strategy and researching broad customer needs within a market and be comfortable engaging in product strategy discussions with both internal and external executives. You will have a high degree of comfort with technology, and exceptional analytical and communication skills. You will lead our product management effort in Japan.
When applying for this role include a cover letter that explains why you want to be part of our team and how your experience sets you up for success.

Job Description

As a leading member of this team, you will:

• Lead the product strategy for Japan across Guidewire’s suite of cloud products to align with the Japan and APAC business strategies and discovery of market and customer needs through direct customer interaction. 

• Be a part of the Japanese leadership team, using your product knowledge and insights and understanding of market needs to contribute to the market’s business strategy.

• Collaborate with Guidewire engineering leadership to identify how Guidewire’s platform capabilities are used to solve market needs in innovative ways.

• Guide or influence delivery efforts to ensure consistency with overall product strategy and business objectives.

• Manage priorities across multiple product streams in Japan and advocate for effective resourcing to deliver market needs across delivery channels

• Represent product as a thought leader in discussions and presentations with customer executives and line of business and technology leadership to highlight the value of Guidewire’s solutions and how they contribute to achieving our customer’s goals and objectives.

We have a work environment that encourages individual initiative, experiments with new ideas for continuous improvement, and lets great people do great work by minimizing the hassles of hierarchy and bureaucracy. You must be self-motivated and able to work with minimal supervision while collaborating in a team environment, communicating effectively with developers, business analysts and other product managers.

Required skills/experience:

• Previous experience in the insurance industry, preferably in a technical or business leadership role driving technology and digital enabled innovation and transformation.

• Previous experience setting strategic goals, and realising those goals through planning and implementation, providing visibility into progress to stakeholders

• Technical capacity. You are able to participate as a peer with the engineering leadership in strategic technical discussions with an effective understanding of technology architectures and how those architectures are realised through implementation.

• Enterprise software experience, preferably in a product management role.

• Ability to manage complex initiatives with multiple stakeholders, both internal and external

• Bachelor’s degree, preferably in business, technology or a related field

• Hands-on experience with Agile development

• A passion for solving real world insurance problems and seeing those solutions implemented as product

• Exceptional written and oral communication skills

• Strong decision-making skills

• Ability to excel in a team-oriented environment

Other requirements:

• Proficiency in English and Japanese, spoken and written

• If not already resident, must have rights to work in Japan and be willing to relocate 

Guidewire Software is a leading provider of flexible, enterprise software products focused on servicing the USD$1.5 trillion property and casualty (general) insurance industry. Our products enable companies such as Sompo Japan Insurance (損保ジャパン), Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire (東京海上日動火災保険) and Mitsui Sumitomo & Aioi Nissay Dowa (三井住友海上火災保険株式会社、あいおいニッセイ同和損害保険株式会社) to efficiently run their high volume, complex and mission-critical insurance operations, including underwriting, policy administration, claims, and billing. Guidewire is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with regional development centres in Dublin, Kraków, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Chennai and Toronto.

Insurance is the most complicated and under-served software market in the financial services space. The applications we build are large and extraordinarily complex, and support the needs of customers across the diverse global property and casualty insurance market.

If working in a fast-moving, low-bureaucracy environment sounds good to you; if you'd like to work with a team of great engineers, and you would enjoy being part of a financially strong and growing company, then please contact us. If you'd like to learn more about our work environment, please visit http://careers.guidewire.com.

About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.