Sr. Director, Life Product Innovation Design

nationallifeinsurancecompany; Addison (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

National Life Group in Texas is seeking a Senior Director, Life Product Innovation & Design to lead strategy, innovation agenda, and product design for the Life Product portfolio, translating insights into differentiated opportunities that support growth and speed to market.

This role serves as the bridge between field and internal stakeholders, leading concepts and ensuring governance across the product innovation pipeline with executive accountability.

Qualifications

• Deep knowledge of the Individual Life insurance marketplace.
• Strong strategic judgment and executive presence.
• Ability to influence across organizational boundaries and manage P&L.
• Experience leading product concept development and design processes.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the strategic vision and innovation agenda for the Life Product portfolio, aligning opportunities with enterprise growth priorities, customer needs, distribution strategy, and competitive market dynamics.
• Define and execute the front-end of the Life Product Lifecycle with a disciplined process for identifying, evaluating, designing, and validating new product opportunities.
• Translate voice-of-customer, voice-of-distributor, competitive intelligence, market trends, regulatory developments, emerging technologies, and performance data into actionable 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 regulatory considerations.
• Partner with key internal stakeholders to drive product design and concept development, including positioning, target market definition, customer value proposition, feature design, and field testing.
• Collaborate with Product Initiative Leads, Senior Pricing Actuaries, Marketing, and others to ensure upfront design strategy is understood and carried forward to implementation.
• Serve as a senior product thought partner to distribution and field leadership, engaging with financial professionals and internal stakeholders to understand unmet needs.
• Partner with the marketing team to ensure market sizing and opportunity assessment for product concepts, informing investment decisions and prioritization.
• Develop and maintain portfolio-level product innovation roadmaps, staging maps, calendars, and executive communications to provide transparency into priorities and risks.
• Establish and continuously improve innovation practices that encourage experimentation, rapid prototyping, market testing, and disciplined progression from concept to development.
• Identify opportunities to improve product development processes.

Job description

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