Head of Product (Darwin)

Company:

Mercer

Description:

As the Head of Product, you will report to the Product and Proposition Leader  accountable for the product roadmap and delivery outcomes across Darwin’s portfolio of solutions, ensuring our products are client-centric, commercially sound, and feasible within Darwin Services and Technology strategy and capability. You will lead a high-performing Product team of 10 FTE, and you will work closely with peers across the Darwin Commercial, Technology and Service Delivery teams as well as the wider Marsh organisation. 

This is a senior, multi-faceted role in a large and complex organisation, requiring excellent judgement, structured prioritisation, and the ability to lead through influence as well as line management. The roll will also importantly involve client facing meetings and presentations so require ability to be a vocal advocate for the product. You will balance strategic direction with hands-on leadership of delivery, ensuring product decisions translate into measurable outcomes for clients and the business.

We will count on you to:

• Define and own Darwin’s multi-year roadmap, aligning to business goals, market needs, and Darwin’s delivery capabilities.
• Lead and develop a multi-disciplinary product organisation of 10 FTE, creating clarity of purpose, strong ways of working, and high performance across Product Management and UX (supported by the Head of UX).
• Partner with Sales, Client Management, Technology and Services leadership to shape sequencing priorities and investment decisions, ensuring plans are realistic, resilient and deliverable.
• Work with sales and client management to deliver a cohesive message to clients building positive belief in the existing capabilities and future direction of the Darwin Product.
• Champion the use of AI (including Agentic AI) to improve client outcomes and internal delivery efficiency across the Darwin product portfolio.
• Define and prioritise an AI/automation roadmap, identifying where agentic workflows can safely augment user journeys and operational processes (with appropriate human-in-the-loop controls).
• Partner with Technology, Data, Security, Risk and Legal to ensure Responsible AI governance (privacy, security, model risk, auditability, and regulatory compliance) is embedded from discovery through to live service.
• Establish clear success metrics and quality gates for AI features (evaluation approaches, experimentation/A-B testing, monitoring, incident response and continuous improvement).
• Build AI capability within Product (ways of working, tooling, training and change adoption), and shape build/buy/partner decisions for AI platforms and vendors.
• Engage directly with clients, in partnership with commercial teams, on an ad hoc basis to communicate product strategy and roadmap as well as listen to feedback and requirements.
• Drive a client-centric experience across the product portfolio, ensuring UX and product design quality are embedded from concept through to delivery and continuous improvement.
• Oversee the commercial success of the product portfolio, working with Commercial, Sales and Client Management teams to support positioning, packaging, pricing inputs (where relevant), enablement and go-to-market execution.
• Create clear product narratives and stakeholder communications, including updates for senior leadership, and ensuring teams across Darwin and Mercer understand “what’s changing and why”.
• Put in place effective governance, reporting and performance management (OKRs/KPIs), using insight to drive continuous improvement in outcomes, throughput and quality.
• Drive continuous improvement in ways of working within your team and across the business.
• Build strong relationships across Mercer to connect product direction with broader strategic initiatives, operational needs, risk/compliance considerations, and client commitments.

What you need to have: 

• Significant experience leading product teams and delivering outcomes across complex, multi-stakeholder organisations, with demonstrable people leadership at scale. 
• You bring a strong SaaS or software product background, ideally in a business that serves enterprise clients and operates at scale.
• Proven track record of owning product strategy and translating it into prioritised roadmaps, measurable outcomes and successful launches. 
• Direct experience engaging with prospects and clients to support the broader business agenda. 
• Strong experience of end-to-end product lifecycle management: discovery, market/problem analysis, business casing, delivery and early life optimisation. 
• Experience embedding user-centred design, research and service design practices into product development. 
• Strong commercial acumen, with experience working with Sales/Commercial/Client Management teams on go-to-market planning, client messaging and enablement. 
• Excellent stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to craft and present clear, compelling narratives to senior leaders and cross-functional audiences. 
• Experience operating in an environment with technology and operational constraints, able to balance strategic ambition with pragmatic delivery sequencing. 
• Strong analytical mindset and comfort with data-informed prioritisation, benefits tracking, and performance reporting. 
• A friendly, open-minded and collaborative leadership style, comfortable navigating ambiguity, changing priorities and complex problem spaces. 
• AI experience, including designing and delivering AI-enabled user experiences (e.g., GenAI/agentic workflows and automation) with appropriate Responsible AI controls and human-in-the-loop governance. 

What makes you stand out?

• You have led product teams in large, complex, matrixed organisations, and you know how to influence across multiple stakeholders to get the right outcomes.
• You have a proven ability to turn strategy into delivery, translating business goals, market insight, and client needs into clear roadmaps and measurable results.
• You are confident operating with commercial, technology, service delivery, and client teams, and can align different priorities without losing momentum.
• You have experience leading multi-disciplinary teams, including Product and UX, and know how to create clarity, accountability, and high performance.
• You have experience working with or within benefits, HR, employee experience, or similar client-facing platform environments.
• You are a clear communicator and trusted leader who can simplify complexity and help teams and senior leaders understand what is changing and why.

Why join our team:

• We help you be your best through professional development opportunities, interesting work and supportive leaders.
• We foster a vibrant and inclusive culture where you can work with talented colleagues to create new solutions and have impact for colleagues, clients
• and communities.
• Our scale enables us to provide a range of career opportunities, as well as benefits and rewards to enhance your well-being

Marsh (NYSE: MRSH) is a global leader in risk, reinsurance and capital, people and investments, and management consulting, advising clients in 130 countries. With annual revenue of over $27 billion and more than 95,000 colleagues, Marsh helps build the confidence to thrive through the power of perspective. For more information, visit marsh.com, or follow us on LinkedIn and X.

Marsh is committed to embracing a diverse, inclusive and flexible work environment. We aim to attract and retain the best people and embrace diversity of age background, civil partnership status, disability, ethnic origin, family duties, gender orientation or expression, gender reassignment, marital status, nationality, parental status, personal or social status, political affiliation, race, religion and beliefs, sex/gender, sexual orientation or expression, skin color, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to providing reasonable adjustments in accordance with applicable law to any candidate with a disability to allow them to fully participate in the recruitment process. If you have a disability that may require reasonable adjustments, please contact us at reasonableaccommodations@marsh.com.

Marsh is committed to hybrid work, which includes the flexibility of working remotely and the collaboration, connections and professional development benefits of working together in the office. All Marsh colleagues are expected to be in their local office or working onsite with clients at least three days per week. Office-based teams will identify at least one “anchor day” per week on which their full team will be together in person.