Product Owner

Pinnacol Assurance does just one thing, and does it better than anyone: provide caring workers’ compensation protection to Colorado employers and employees. And while we may be a little biased, we believe that our work shapes communities and changes lives.

We have big hearts and love big ideas. We’ve been around for more than  100 years, but don’t let that fool you. Pinnacol is committed to taking care of Colorado employers and workers in the most innovative ways. We celebrate continuous improvement, new ideas, compassion, teamwork, integrity and excellence.

What you’ll do:

As a Product Owner, you will be a key link to the translation of ambitious new innovation ideas into practical solutions and the prioritization of product maintenance and enhancements to drive implementation through agile development teams within the platform domain. The Product Owner will focus on improving the developer experience, making sure that the team has the proper priorities between supporting their customers/infrastructure demands and building tools to enhance the developer workflows..  You will be responsible for building strategies on how the organization leverages platform related tools. The Product Owner will be provided with broad innovation ideas that are intended to drive strategic business impact.  These prioritized investments are defined at a high level within an overall enterprise approach for business and technology.   The Product Owner is responsible for leading research and discovery efforts that translate this big picture vision into detailed actionable designs.

Leveraging the solution design, the Product Owner will then be responsible for creating an overall roadmap for implementing the technology and business elements of the solution.  This roadmap will be divided into iterative ‘thin slices’ of functionality that progressively test and evolve complex systems.  The Product Owner will enable ongoing learning and adaptation of both the proposed design and roadmap as new insights are obtained during implementation.

For each ‘thin slice’ of functionality to be developed the Product Owner will develop the needed stories used by development and business teams to deliver elements of the solution.   The Product Owner will actively support a dynamic and flexible agile delivery effort, leading efforts to build collaboration between delivery teams, business leaders and others in the Product Organization. The Product Owner and Scrum Master will partner to support the domain team to deliver quality and timely solutions.

What you can expect:

• Discovery and Design: Working with strategic guidance and goals provided by the Opportunity Architecture team, define how a strategic innovation will be designed to achieve its goals and how that design will fit within the broad vision of Pinnacol business and technology architecture.  
  • Collaborate with Opportunity Architects, business stakeholders and other collaborators to understand and refine the business goals and impact of innovation investments that are moving to development.
  • Working with User Experience Design specialists perform user and market research to clarify both internal and external needs and constraints on solution designs
  • Develop a detailed design vision that realizes the goals of the innovation within the overall enterprise technical and functional architecture
  • Assess opportunities to create synergies, shared functionality, and future flexibility within the solution design, to maximize the long term value of the innovation.
    Identify business and market efforts that must be implemented alongside the technical elements of the solution
  • Define overall measures of innovation progress and success that are based on outcomes (not just project completion outputs)
  • As new insights are gained through the evolving implementation, work with the Opportunity Architect and Technical Architect to design pivots in the design approach.
  • Spending time with developers to understand their workflow, routines, and pain points.
  • Build relationships and solicit feedback from engineers to build trust.

• Execution Roadmap: Create and continuously update the roadmap for iteratively delivering the innovation. 
  • Lead efforts to identify key issues such as unknowns, questions, and areas of risk that need to be resolved through iterative testing and implementation
  • Collaborate with the Opportunity Architect and Technical Architect to define ‘thin slices’ of functionality that resolve key issues, build system elements, and provide measurable business value
  • Lead efforts to break the ‘thin slices’ of delivery into epics and stories that can be prioritized and analyzed in greater detail
  • Develop an overall roadmap for implementation of the ‘thin slice’
  • Define outcome based measures for each thin slice
  • Collaborate with the Opportunity Architect, technologists, Data Science, UX, scrum master and other business stakeholders to revise the roadmap based on new insights and changing needs
  • Address and prioritize product bugs, tech debt and enhancements in balance with innovation work.

• Solution Implementation: Develop stories that provide a product backlog for the development team and other key stakeholders. 
  • Create stories that can be effectively used by agile development teams to drive technical development
  • Create stories that describe business stakeholder and other non-technical activities needed to implement the solution
  • On an ongoing basis lead efforts to groom and prioritize backlog items
  • Support QA team members in their efforts to test and accept stories that are completed by developers
  • Actively participate in the Agile Delivery process, coordinating with Scum Masters and team members to manage a steady flow of work and identifying and resolving roadblocks.
  • Work with others to manage inter-team dependencies to prevent impediments and foster collaboration
  • Act as a liaison between the development team and the rest of the organization to help resolve questions and negotiate decisions on details of implementation
  • Lead efforts to gather and evaluate outcome based measures for the implementation effort (not output/throughput measures)
  • Acquires, maintains and applies knowledge of the business, its products and processes

Additional Duties:

• Expand and improve personal knowledge in the area of product management and innovation best practices
• Participate in and promote the development and adoption of new processes or changes to existing processes
• Perform other duties as assigned

What you need to be successful:

• Experience translating business and innovation objectives into specific tactical system development plans with the ability to define, measure, and improve key product metrics
• Experience in an agile product development environment is strongly preferred, with responsibility for activities such as identifying opportunities, defining a product roadmap, creating business cases, driving execution activities, and measuring results.
• Broad knowledge of technology concepts and system design principles which enable productive collaboration with technologists.
• Ability to work collaboratively and cross-functionally across all levels of the organization.
• Ability to work independently, with the ability to lead efforts that address complicated problems with adaptability and flexibility.

We can’t do our work without people like you.
Our employees are extraordinary and committed to making a difference. Here’s some of the ways we show our appreciation.

• Our benefits go beyond the basics. You’ll get to choose from diverse benefit offerings for medical, dental and vision.
• We care about each other. We enjoy a positive, collaborative work environment. We are hard workers and high performers.
• We love who you are. Pinnacol is on a journey to embody diversity, equity and inclusion. We’re committed to creating a culture that deeply values differences, where everyone feels like they belong.
• Take a day (or 20!) off. Enjoy 20 paid days off your first full year plus 9 paid holidays.
• Take care of yourself. Sign up for unique wellness programs, including on-site, company-paid fitness facilities and classes
• Get your learning on. We promote a learning culture to help you master your current job and cultivate the skills of the future through a variety of on-site, online, and off-site professional development opportunities.
• Give back and get paid. Through our employee volunteer program, Pinnacol in Action, employees receive paid time off to volunteer with Colorado nonprofits.
• Share in our success. You’ll have the opportunity to earn a quarterly incentive, up to 12 percent of your annual base salary, when your team exceeds their goals and objectives.

When we find the right person, we try to put our best foot forward with an offer that excites you. We consider what you’d like to be paid, the skills and experience you bring, what similar jobs pay in the Denver area and make sure there’s equal pay for equal work among those you’ll be working with. The compensation amount for this role is targeted at $101,500-$108,600. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including your experience and expertise and may vary from the amounts listed above.

Want to love your work? Apply today!

Pinnacol is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities. To request assistance with the application process, please email [email protected].