Title: Sr. Product Owner Location: Chicago, IL- 100% Remote (Need EST and CST Candidates) Duration: 12+ Month Contract Interview: Phone then Video Top Skills needed: Product Owner, Agile SAFe, Insurance, Guidewire Job Description: We are looking for a Sr. Product Owner with at least 8+ years of experience and strong Insurance domain experience. This resource must have experience with Policy Administration Systems (Guidewire is preferred, Duck Creek would also work They also must have Agile SAFe experience. Top Desired Skills: - Experience Product Owner with at least 8 years of IT experience - Insurance Experience is a MUST (Commercial Insurance experience preferred) - Working with a Policy Admin System is a MUST- They use Guidewire. This is preferred, but open to Duck Creek and other similar tools - Agile SAFe (Scaled Agile) is a MUST - Need to have strong Jira experience Senior Product Owner The ideal candidate will possess experience working within the commercial insurance industry with an emphasis owning policy administration projects from small to national accounts throughout all areas of the industry. The Senior Product Owner serves as the customer proxy to the Agile team within the agile process and is the final authority for decisions regarding priority, business value, and functionality for all the work done by the Agile development team. The Senior Product Owner has the ability to analyze complex cross functional business processes and define integrated user stories using industry standard techniques and is able to apply modified approaches and techniques to meet different circumstances. In partnership with their Scrum Master, the Senior Product Owner will monitor metrics and suggest new ways of increasing quality and verify the business value delivered by the team. The Senior Product Owner will directly work with one to two Agile teams dependent upon initiative complexity. The Senior Product Owner may be working on a Scaled Agile Release Train as part of the Product Management team, or they may work on independent Agile teams and have Feature as well as story ownership. Job Duties & Responsibilities: Performs a combination of duties in accordance with departmental guidelines: Supports 1-2 Agile Scrum teams on initiatives of medium to large complexity Owns, defines, and prioritizes the team backlog, establishes story acceptance criteria, drives content via prioritized user stories, obtains customer validation and accept stories, ensuring that the solution effectively addresses overall program priorities. A thought leader in Scrum ceremonies (such as daily standups, sprint review meetings, retrospective meetings, cross-team coordination, and etc, alongside the Scrum Master, ensuring that Scrum Teams adhere to the Scrum values of courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness in delivering high quality solutions. Fosters an environment of continuous improvement / learning. Leading by example, facilitates Product Backlog Refinement including reviewing and updating backlog item definition and developing acceptance criteria and value statements, providing information to the team so they can establish technical feasibility and scope estimates, analyzing ways to split backlog items into smaller chunks of incremental value, helping to inform the enablers required to support new features and capabilities, and establishing their capacity allocation. Builds customer and user insights into all stages of the Scrum planning and execution process, ensuring the continuous validation of stories with Customers and business users. Proactively analyzes metrics, and recommends changes to the product based on data from feedback loops Inspire and motivate a team where the members constructively challenge each other, have a sense of ownership, and advocate for the right long-term decision making. Builds a trusting and safe environment within the team, customers, and other stakeholders. May collaborate with Product Managers and other Senior Product Owners and other Product Owners, to ensure Stories align to value, goals and objectives of overall program priorities. Skills, Knowledge & Abilities: Strong executor, proven across complex initiatives Champion for the adoption of new Agile technologies and methodologies Ability to build and maintain collaborative relationships with stakeholders Highly collaborative with good conflict resolutions skills Proven ability to enact change quickly Willingness to develop Agile team members by inspiring, encouraging and providing constructive feedback Solid leadership skill Proven ability to work directly with Product Management, business stakeholders and technical/product teams Domain knowledge of solutions being developed Education & Experience Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience Typically a minimum of five years as a Product Owner or equivalent role Experience with insurance or finance based products Successful track record with Agile methodologies Applicable certifications preferred (e.g. SAFe PO/PM, CSPO or PSPO) Notes from call with the Hiring manager: CNA has invested in migrating their Legacy Policy Admin OS2 system to Guidewire Cloud. This is a multi-year effort. Deployment is targeted for June 2026 as of now. They need 4 PO's to join. Candidates will have to have strong insurance experience and have to have worked on policy admin systems efforts. They use Guidewire, but tools like DuckCreek are also okay. CNA currently has IT BA partners to help the POs, but only a couple BAs. They will need these POs to assume some BA responsibilities. Sometimes this job becomes a level of analysis that we expect the BA to do. They'll need to have the ability to analyze a form, understanding how it works, etc Again, this role is primarily traditional PO work with some BA work. Because the project is so fast paced, they will share product owner responsibilities. It's not 1 PM with 1 PO scenario. They have to break the team up into assignments so the product owner owns their piece of work. "A day in the life" of the role: -Work in team environment. Currently prepping for PI planning. One of the products is doing new business and renewal requirements. Some might have cancellation requirements. Other PO may be creating a deck and getting ready for PI planning. Standard standups. - Teams within the migration teams are broken up multiple ways; they have a configuration team, forms team, and a rating team. They're all dependent on each other. - Went through 2000 forms in this PI to product model them. Over 40 integrations. There is a lot of work to get through.
