Agile Product Owner

As a Product Owner for Commercial Lines Underwriting you will lead the agile scrum team(s) and ensure product planning and effective prioritization. This includes managing the product throughout the product lifecycle, gathering and prioritizing product and customer requirements, and working closely with agile teams to deliver value. This position bridges the gap between product strategy and development. It is responsible for health and management of the product backlog, organizing sprint activities, and is expected to answer questions from developers as needed. Additionally, this position works with support partners to ensure that revenue, customer satisfaction goals, and other outcomes are met in alignment with the product’s overall strategy and goals.

What You'll Do

• Breaks down overall product strategy and roadmap into program increment (quarterly) and sprint level goals and priorities (in partnership with the Product Manager).
• Connects with customers and internal stakeholders needs to inform the product strategy and roadmap. This includes relevant competitive knowledge and industry trends.
• Maintains the content and integrity of the product team’s backlog of stories, enablers, and defects. Ensures stories are well informed and represent the intent of agile release train (ART) level features.
• Prioritizes the sequence of the backlog items and communicates that sequence to the product team during backlog refinement and iteration planning.
• Models servant leadership to the product team and incorporates feedback and suggestions made during team retrospectives into future delivery activities.
• Ensures working product demos are presented to key stakeholders for awareness, transparency, and input.
• Collaborates with other leaders across the ART to ensure transparency of work, dependencies are understood and properly sequenced, working methods are consistent across the teams, and priorities are aligned-on.
• Evaluates the individual agile team members for effectiveness and contributions and ensuring the teams are high performing. This includes making recommendations to remove or add team members as needed.
  
  

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree.
• At least three years of agile Product Owner experience in scrum and scaled agile environments.
• Experience delivering software products using agile principles, including planning and estimating with a continuous improvement mindset.
• Proven track record of bringing successful products to market on time, incorporating a variety of development and delivery strategies (third party, insourcing, outsourcing).
• Proven success in leading, coaching, and motivating cross-functional empowered teams.
• Experience with market research, competitive analysis, and technology trend analysis.
• Ability to assess the impact of new product initiatives on the delivery team environment.
• Demonstrated understanding and empathy for customer needs and pain points, amplifying the voice of the customer throughout product development and delivery.
• Facilitation and collaboration skills, including ability to facilitate decision-making and broker agreements among diverse, differing, and/or conflicting perspectives/priorities.
• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills, particularly with establishing and advocating for both customer and delivery team points of view.
  
  

Our job titles may span more than one career level. The actual base pay is dependent upon many factors, including training, transferable skills, work experience, business needs, and market demands. The base pay is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

American National offers eligible employees and their families medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance. Employees are able to enroll in our company’s 401k plan. Employees also receive annually a bank of paid time off and paid holidays. We aspire to see people for what they bring to our corporate culture by supporting an inclusive work environment, including an emphasis on a healthy work-life balance, development opportunities, and a casual dress code.

American National is an established, stable, and successful multi-line insurance corporation that has provided financial strength and a sense of security to employees, customers and business partners since 1905. With focus on our organization’s values and cultural richness: Financial Strength, Integrity, Respect, Service and Teamwork (FIRST) and Agility, Collaboration, and Engagement (ACE) we continue to pursue our vision to be a leading provider of financial products and services for current and future generations.

Hiring Practices

The preceding job posting was designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees assigned to this position. It is not intended to be interpreted as a comprehensive list of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications. We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role, but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with the job qualifications, we still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this position or other opportunities at American National.

American National’s recruitment policies help us place individuals in a timely and efficient manner. Only the most qualified candidates will be contacted by our recruiting team. Candidates may check the status of their application(s) by logging into their account. Learn more about our company, by following us on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram

American National is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, genetic information or any other legally protected categories. American National is committed to providing access, equal opportunity and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities.