Technical Product Owner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at Kuvare

About Kuvare

Kuvare is on a mission to serve hardworking consumers overwhelmed by the complexities of retirement and is built from the ground up to do so. Our unified financial hub protects the retirement of everyday Americans and the distributors, carriers and investors that serve them. We create life insurance and annuity products that protect consumers’ retirements, and are simplified for distributor partners and financial professionals to sell and service.

Kuvare family of companies:

Retail Annuity and Life Insurance Solutions:
- United Life Insurance Company
- Guaranty Income Life Insurance Company
- Lincoln Benefit Life

Institutional Insurance:
- Kuvare Life Re

Bespoke Insurance Solutions:
- Ignite Partners

About the role:

The position of Technical Product Owner is responsible for defining, prioritizing, and communicating the status of work for Agile development teams. The TPO must be aware of customer needs, company goals, and employee coordination to create business solutions. This individual will apply proven communication, organizational, and leadership skills to help technical staff maximize the benefit of IT systems investment.

This role has significant business systems analysis and business relationship management components, analyzing detailed business needs to ensure effective product design, and coordinating across departments to prioritize disparate goals into a unified product roadmap. In many cases the role will serve as a part of a triad that includes also the team’s Solution Architect and the Scrum Master, so that together the triad will be able to manage the customer communication and prioritization; the technical assessment, design, and breakdown of the work; and the successful execution of work by all team members.

What you'll do:

• Duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to
• Plan, prioritize, coordinate, and track the IT portion of project timelines, deliverables, milestones, and reporting.
• Define scope, goals, and deliverables within IT in support of higher-level project plans, strategic vision, and organizational goals.
• Develop and deliver progress reports, proposals, and presentations to effectively communicate product expectations and status to team members and stakeholders in a timely manner.
• Collaborate with other Technical Product Owners, project managers, business analysts, project business owners, SMEs, IT Development, QA, and vendors to ensure project deliverables and timelines are aligned.
• Collaborate with the team’s Solution Architect and Scrum Master to ensure technical architecture and work estimation are correct, and that all team members understand the work and the timelines for execution.
• Proactively manage changes in technology, project scope, identify potential crises, and devise contingency plans.
• Define product success criteria and disseminate them to involved parties throughout the product life cycle..
• Foster relationships that contribute to the success of the product and associated business capabilities
• Demonstrate an awareness of critical concepts in DevOps and Agile principles.
• Actively manage the product backlog for an Agile team.
• Work with the Project Management Organization to translate business requirements documents into product backlog items (user stories, features, bugs, spikes, etc.
• Create product roadmaps, communicate forecasted delivery dates to stakeholders, and manage team feedback.

Upon request, reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the

Qualification

Experience:

• Preferred bachelor's degree in data science, computer science, information systems, computer engineering or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Five or more (preferred 5+ years) of Product Management experience
• Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Experience with Waterfall and Agile development methodology and concepts.
• Experience in overseeing the design, development, and / or implementation of software and hardware solutions, systems, or products.
• Industry experience in Financial Services and / or Insurance Services.

• Preferred experience using Azure DevOps for work item tracking.

Skills/Competencies:

• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Excellent listening and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to communicate ideas in both technical and user-friendly language.
• Analytical and creative problem-solving abilities.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
• Strong customer service orientation.
• Ability to function in multiple delivery facilitation roles as necessary.

Salary Range $130,000 to $150,000