Director, Product

Pie's mission is to empower small businesses to thrive by making commercial insurance affordable and as easy as pie. We leverage technology to transform how small businesses buy and experience commercial insurance.   Like our small business customers, we are a diverse team of builders, dreamers, and entrepreneurs who are driven by core values and operating principles that guide every decision we make.

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 dem