At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.
Summary
Lead teams of product managers that work on empowered cross functional teams to solve hard problems for both customers and the business. Work with other Directors in engineering, design, architecture, and the business on everything from strategy and vision to building and maintaining our data products and platforms.
Primary Duties & Responsibilities

• Vision: Sets the long-term (2-3 year) vision of a product portfolio (multiple products) including how they will be funded and produce business outcomes. Responsible for cultivating an environment of understanding the products and championing the strategy.
• Goals: Sets the product objectives and key results for the product portfolio. Aligns other functions like engineering, design, finance, etc. around a common set of measurable goals.
• Requirements: Specifies the market needs in relation to the product for both existing and future products based on research. Uses data and research to prioritize and create complex business cases, with enterprise dependencies, and leads the development and implementation of complex product strategies for both internal and external customers.
• Roadmap: Provides a high-level direction that illustrates the epics and features that will be delivered across a portfolio of products or platform and how it integrates with other cross functional team efforts.
• Leadership: Creates the future by fostering an engaging environment and encourage accountability and development. Breaks down barriers so individuals and teams can be accountable and responsible to do their best. Aligns employee's passion to business value outcomes, grow talent and proactively solve for talent gaps. Turns challenging teams, interpersonal conflicts, and cross-departmental political initiatives into opportunities. Pinpoints root causes of disagreement to resolve conflict. Drives high performing teams and can lead with expertise, energy and empathy.
• Data Driven: Builds a culture of making data driven decisions that influence business, engineering and other stakeholders to model this behavior. Combines data across multiple products or departments to create broader insights.
• Architect a Team: Identifies the people and skills needed for a team and can go out and build or change a team based on those needs. Identifies & recruits internal and/or external industry resources to address those needs.
• Prioritization: Sets long term goals for both the product portfolio and team members. Accountable for helping teams track progress against key results and help balance priorities with corporate strategic initiatives or the introduction of new Risk or Investment products.
• Requirements: Accountable for their team's product requirements including the ability to evaluate what good requirements look like. Teaches and leads others through how to write requirements and effectively use them to build a product.
• Defines the Product: Identifies and validates problems and/or opportunities for multiple user groups/scenarios across the company. Aligns stakeholders and documents high-level business requirements or manages vendor relationships and any applicable request for proposal (RFP) or proof of concept (POC) processes.
• Communication: Collaborates cross functionally with business partners and executives in engineering, architecture, design, and business lines to allow for the smooth and efficient flow of product activities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or an equivalent technical, business or financial field.
• Preferably also holds a Masters in Business Administration (MBA).
• 15+ years of working as a product manager on technology-powered product teams.
• Working knowledge of modern techniques in product discovery and delivery.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including experience in high-level business discussions and deep technical discussions.
• Certification or course-completion in agile methods (General Assembly, Pragmatic Marketing, svpg etc.).
• 5+ years of formal people management experience managing other product managers.
• Ability to work in a matrix organization.

Skills-Proficiency Level:
Agile Methodologies - Advanced
Atlassian JIRA - Advanced
Backlog Management - Expert
Business Cases - Advanced
Continuous Improvement (CI) - Advanced
Daily Scrum - Advanced
Data Analysis - Advanced
Data Architecture/Ecosystems - Advanced
Industry Benchmarking - Advanced
Microsoft Power BI - Advanced
Product Demonstrations - Intermediate
Product Management - Advanced
Product Roadmapping - Expert
Requirements Gathering - Advanced
Structured Query Language (SQL) - Advanced
Storytelling - Advanced
Technical Writing - Advanced
User Research - Advanced
Wireframing - Intermediate
This job is not covered by the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Required Certifications:
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We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.
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