Sr. Director, Life Insurance Product Innovation & Design

National Life Group; Montpelier (VT); Sur place; USD 180 000 - 260 000; Plein temps

Résumé du poste

National Life Group in Montpelier, VT, seeks a Senior Director, Life Product Innovation & Design to lead strategy, innovation agenda, and product design for the Life portfolio. You will translate insights from customers, distributors, competitors, and regulators into differentiated product opportunities that support growth.

The role partners with Distribution and Marketing to prioritize opportunities and ensures effective processes, decision forums, and governance from ideation through

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• 10 or more years of related experience in life insurance.
• Deep knowledge of the Individual Life marketplace, products, distribution practices, and regulatory considerations.
• Demonstrated leadership in product strategy, innovation, or product design.
• Experience leading complex initiatives across functions.

Responsabilités

• Define and execute strategic vision and innovation agenda for the Life Product portfolio, aligning opportunities with growth priorities, customer needs, distribution strategy, and market dynamics.
• Translate voice-of-customer, voice-of-distributor, competitive intelligence, market trends, regulatory developments, and tech insights into actionable product opportunities and recommendations.
• Maintain deep understanding of the Life Insurance marketplace, including product structures, competitive value propositions, distribution practices, and regulatory considerations.
• Partner with key stakeholders to drive product design and concept development, including positioning, target market definition, and value proposition.
• Develop and maintain portfolio-level product innovation roadmaps, staging maps, calendars, and executive communication mechanisms.
• Establish and continuously improve innovation practices that encourage experimentation, rapid prototyping, market testing, learning, and progression from concept to development.
• Provide senior leadership with clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions on emerging product opportunities and design choices.

Connaissances

Leadership

Product strategy

Product design

Innovation

Strategic thinking

Executive presence

Cross-functional collaboration

Formation

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Description du poste

Come join one of America’s fastest-growing insurance companies. Since 1848, National Life Group has aimed to keep our promises, providing families with stability in good times and in bad. Throughout that history, we have provided peace of mind to those families as they plan their futures.

Our mission extends beyond the insurance and annuities policies that we offer. We strive to make the world a better place through our grants from our charitable foundation, paid volunteer time for our employees, environmentally sustainable and healthy workplaces, and events that promote the work of nonprofits in our own backyard.

We foster a collaborative environment with opportunities for growth and encourage our associates to live our values: Do good. Be good. Make good.

Please note that we do not offer visa sponsorship for this position.

Role Summary

The Senior Director, Life Product Innovation & Design leads the strategy, innovation agenda, and product design capabilities for the Life Product portfolio. This role translates customer, distributor, competitive, market, regulatory, and emerging technology insights into differentiated product opportunities that support enterprise growth objectives. The Senior Director partners with Distribution and Marketing to prioritize opportunities, and facilitates the structure and governance needed to move concepts from market insight and ideation through early-stage design and validation. This role serves as the primary bridge between the field and internal product stakeholders, leading product concept development and ensuring effective processes, decision forums, communication mechanisms, and accountability across the product innovation pipeline to improve speed to market and clarity of execution. The ideal candidate combines deep knowledge of the Individual Life insurance marketplace with strong strategic judgment, commercial orientation, executive presence, and the ability to influence across organizational boundaries. This leader operates effectively in ambiguity, translates complex market signals into actionable product strategies and design decisions, and leads supporting product resources and select third‑party relationships with a strong P&L ownership mindset. This position currently offers an onsite work schedule, with the expectation that you will be in the office four (4) days per week during onsite core days. Our current onsite core days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The work schedule type and core days are subject to change with advance notification and manager discretion.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities

• Partner with Distribution and Marketing to define and execute the strategic vision and innovation agenda for the Life Product portfolio, aligning product opportunities with enterprise growth priorities, customer needs, distribution strategy, and competitive market dynamics.
• Help define and execute the front-end of the Life Product Lifecycle, ensuring a disciplined process for identifying, evaluating, designing, and validating new product and product enhancement opportunities.
• Translate voice‑of‑customer, voice‑of‑distributor, competitive intelligence, market trends, regulatory developments, emerging technologies, and business performance data into actionable product opportunities and recommendations.
• Maintain a deep understanding of the Life Insurance marketplace, including product structures, competitive value propositions, distribution practices, technology capabilities, customer expectations, and applicable regulatory, tax, and compliance considerations.
• Partner with key internal stakeholders to effectively drive product design and concept development, including product positioning, target market definition, customer value proposition, feature design, and any field testing, ensuring alignment with strategic objectives and operational capabilities.
• Partner with Product Initiative Leads, Senior Pricing Actuaries, Marketing, and others to ensure the upfront design strategy is understood and carried forward to the implementation process.
• Serve as a senior product thought partner to distribution and field leadership, actively engaging with financial professionals and key internal stakeholders to understand unmet needs, evaluate concepts.
• Partner with the marketing team to ensure effective market sizing and opportunity assessment for product concepts, leveraging internal and external data to inform investment decisions, prioritization, and product strategy.
• Develop and maintain portfolio‑level product innovation roadmaps, staging maps, calendars, and executive communication mechanisms that provide transparency into priorities, progress, decisions, risks, and emerging opportunities.
• Establish and continuously improve innovation practices that encourage experimentation, rapid prototyping, market testing, learning, and disciplined progression from concept to development.
• Identify opportunities to improve product development processes and reduce time to market in support of enterprise growth objectives.
• Lead and develop supporting product resources, establishing clear priorities, expectations, and development opportunities, with an eye towards maximizing impact and influence on Life Product efforts.
• Provide senior leadership with clear recommendations, tradeoffs, and decisions on emerging product opportunities and design choices.
• Champion a customer‑ and distributor‑centered approach to product innovation and design, ensuring that product concepts address meaningful needs and can be effectively positioned and supported in the marketplace.
• All other duties as assigned.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience
• 10 or more years of related experience.
• Deep knowledge of the Individual Life insurance marketplace, including products, use‑cases, distribution practices, and competitive landscape.
• Demonstrated leadership in product strategy, innovation, or product design.
• Experience leading complex