Senior Director of Product, Wealth Management

About the Role

At Northwestern Mutual, we are managing over $425 billion in client wealth assets and delivering integrated wealth management solutions to millions of households nationwide. With a 165-year legacy and the urgency of a company investing boldly in its future, we are executing an ambitious multi-year transformation in our Field and Wealth area — reimagining the advisor and large teams experience, modernizing our technology platform, and building next-generation Data and AI capabilities spanning across client onboarding, financial planning, Investment management and advisor enablement. As we accelerate our investment in Wealth Tech, we are seeking an exceptional Senior Director of Product to lead a dynamic team of product managers to lead and drive the implementation of modern wealth tech stack. The director will possess and apply their wealth business domain expertise while working in close partnership with wealth business leaders to co-develop innovative technology strategies and ensure technology initiatives closely align with business goals. Collaboration across engineering, design, servicing, Investment management, Field and other Enterprise partners is essential to drive product development and deliver impactful solutions.

What You’ll Do in the Role/Skills You’ll Have

• Business Influence:    Collaborates, communicates and influences business partners, direct reports, stakeholders, and other enterprise functions based on understanding of the wealth domain and organizational needs. Building trust with business partners, direct reports, stakeholders, and other enterprise functions and brings positive impact to the overall outcome of the organization. 
• Business Strategy Translation: Translate business strategy into actionable technology capabilities, objectives, and measurable results by partnering with business, engineering, design, servicing, field and enterprise teams and applying wealth domain expertise.
• Roadmap Creation: Develop a long-term (2-5 years) technology roadmap for Wealth business solutions, foster a culture of domain expertise, and enable strategic business objectives. Provide direction that illustrate the epics and features that will be delivered across a portfolio of products or platform and how it integrates with other cross functional team efforts.
• Leadership: Creates the future by fostering an engaging environment and encourage accountability and development. Breaks down barriers so individuals and teams can be accountable and responsible to do their best.
• Accountability: Holds self and their direct reports accountable for measurable, high-quality, timely, and cost-effective results, delivery, and execution. Determines team objectives, sets priorities, delegates work to direct reports, and accepts responsibility for mistakes.
• Business Acumen: Applies knowledge of both general and organization-specific business issues/financial implications for the organization to problem solve.
• Dependency Management: Utilizes data and insights to identify and monitor enterprise dependencies and guides the development and execution of sophisticated product strategies by applying risk management methodologies for optimal results.
• Goal setting: Partner with key functions to set technology objectives and key results aligned to the business strategy for the Wealth product portfolio. Aligns other functions like engineering, design, field, finance, service and enterprise around a common set of measurable goals.
• Requirements Specification: Identify and prioritize technology capabilities and drive the development and implementation of advanced product solutions or platforms for the field and home office customers.
• Team Leadership: Foster an engaging environment, encourage accountability and growth, and remove obstacles to maximize team performance. Identify necessary skills, build or adjust teams to fit those needs, and set long-term goals for both the product portfolio and individual team members.
• Alliance Building: Collaborate with employees and stakeholders, nurture talent, and proactively address skill gaps to maximize business value outcomes.
• Opportunity Creation: Turn challenges into growth opportunities, resolve conflicts, and inspire high-performing teams through expertise, energy, and empathy.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Build and model a culture of data-driven decision-making. that influences business, engineering and other stakeholders to model this behavior.

• Prioritization: Partner with business stakeholders to balance priorities aligned to business strategies, track progress against key metrics and results, and support teams as they achieve ambitious goals.
• Dependency Management: with enterprise dependencies
• Requirements Management: Accountable for their team's product requirements including the ability to evaluate what good requirements look like, teach best practices, and use requirements effectively to build outstanding products.
• Product Definition: Identifies and validates problems and/or opportunities for multiple user groups/scenarios across the organization. Aligns stakeholders and documents high-level business requirements for various user groups, build alliances and help build and maintain vendor relationships and relevant processes from technology perspective.
• Communication: Collaborates cross functionally with business partners and executives in engineering, design, field and enterprise departments to allow for the smooth and efficient flow of product activities.

• Team Building: Aligns employees’ passion to business value outcomes, grow talent and proactively solve for talent gaps. Identifies & recruits internal and/or external industry resources to address those needs. Drives high performing teams and can lead with expertise, energy and empathy.
• Conflict Resolution: Turns challenging teams, interpersonal conflicts, and cross-departmental political initiatives into opportunities. Pinpoints root causes disagreement to resolve conflict.
• Team outcomes: Accountable for helping teams track progress against key results and help balance priorities with strategic initiatives or the introduction of new products, strategies and capabilities.

What You’ll Bring to the Role

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or an equivalent technical, business or financial field.
• Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) or CFA, preferred.
• 15+ years of working as a product manager on technology-powered product teams.
• Working knowledge of modern techniques in product discovery and delivery.
• Domain experience with Investment and Wealth management.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, including experience in high-level business discussions and deep technical discussions.
• 5+ years of formal people management experience managing other product managers.
• Ability to work in a matrix organization.

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Compensation Range:

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We believe in fairness and transparency. It’s why we share the salary range for most of our roles. However, final salaries are based on a number of factors, including the skills and experience of the candidate; the current market; location of the candidate; and other factors uncovered in the hiring process. The standard pay structure is listed but if you’re living in California, New York City or other eligible location, geographic specific pay structures, compensation and benefits could be applicable, click here to learn more.

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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer that welcomes talented individuals of all backgrounds. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.