Senior Digital Product Manager

Position Summary

The Senior Digital Product Manager – Insurance & Annuities drives the vision, strategy, and execution of digital solutions in partnership with Financial Product Management, Supervision, Operations, Compliance, and Advisor Operations groups for First Command's Insurance and Annuity solutions. The role defines and prioritizes an outcome-based roadmap in collaboration with key stakeholders, translates business needs into actionable Features (Vision, Business Needs, Value), and partners with business and delivery teams to ensure solutions deliver measurable value, quality, and compliance readiness.

As the primary business-context Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the solution teams, this role communicates the 'why' behind the work and ensures alignment across stakeholders and delivery teams.  The Senior Digital Product Manager owns the product roadmap, Feature backlog, and Feature definition for Insurance and Annuity solutions and is accountable for product outcomes. They translate business needs into well-defined Features, prioritize and maintain a healthy backlog that supports continuous delivery, proactively identify risks, constraints, and dependencies that could impact delivery or value realization, and define and monitor product success metrics. Through ongoing analysis of product performance and business outcomes, they drive decisions that maximize value realization and product effectiveness.

The immediate focus of this role is the Annuity Platform initiative, which implements FIG as First Command's annuity platform. FIG provides a First Command-branded portal, FireLight e-applications, approved product access, and Lifecycle Manager. This role leads the advisor experience, requirements, backlog, and releases for the integrations, controls, data, and operating model needed to launch and sustain the platform, from Early Access through Full-Field Release.

Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Roadmap Ownership

Own the product vision and an outcome-based roadmap for Insurance and Annuity solutions and be accountable for product outcomes, ensuring alignment with business strategy and enterprise OKRs.

Proactively identify and manage cross-product and cross-team dependencies,  partner with stakeholders and delivery leadership to align priorities, sequencing, and release planning.

Maintain visibility and traceability of prioritized opportunities and features in Azure DevOps (or equivalent) to keep roadmap, backlog, and delivery synchronized.

Champion strategic roadmap practices and standards to improve roadmap quality, alignment, and value delivery.

Feature Definition

Translate business needs into complete, actionable features that articulate Vision, Business Needs, Value, and acceptance intent.

Maintain a prioritized feature backlog that supports delivery planning through Current Sprint +2; ensure clarity, priority, and sequencing align to the roadmap.

Collaborate deeply with Digital Product Owner, architecture, engineering, and quality partners to validate feasibility and reduce churn through early alignment.

Intake and prioritize technical debt and platform enablement work; communicate tradeoffs and implications to outcomes and delivery plans.

Anticipate constraints (security, legal/compliance, privacy, operational readiness) and mitigate early through discovery and feature definition.

Champion feature definition standards and reduce rework through clearer acceptance intent and earlier alignment.

Value Assurance

Perform feature/solution acceptance to verify delivered work solves the original business problem and supports intended value realization.

Define product and experience metrics and monitor trends; use evidence to refine priorities and value-capture plans.

Independently escalate delivery gaps, value risks, and quality concerns early; drive resolution and prevention with delivery and stakeholders.

Alignment

Build and maintain relationships with First Command business leaders to align product strategy with business strategy. 

Communicate the "why" behind priorities and features; facilitate decisions and resolve misalignment across business and technology partners.

Act confidently as SME for business logic and value for the solution teams; remove friction between business and delivery teams through proactive alignment.

Discovery, Business Case & Go-to-Market

Conduct or partner on customer/market research and discovery to validate problems and identify opportunities for Insurance and Annuity solutions.

Develop business cases (hypotheses, benefits, costs, risks) and synthesize research into investment recommendations.

Partner with UX/CX, operations, and adoption/change leaders to ensure releases are business-ready and adoption is supported.

Evaluate emerging technologies and relevant innovative propositions to identify new opportunities.

Product & Domain Expectations

Maintain deep knowledge of Insurance and Annuity solution capabilities and non-functional requirements; ensure alignment to security, privacy, regulatory, and audit expectations.

Own the advisor digital experience for the annuity platform, including the First Command-branded FIG portal, FireLight e-applications, approved product and carrier shelf access, and Lifecycle Manager.

Define requirements and sequence integrations across Salesforce/ACE (including advisor entry points and single sign-on), RightBRIDGE recommendation workflows, product information management, document management, and policy, compensation, and reporting systems.

Partner with Data & Analytics on DTCC, carrier, and platform data feeds for product, policy, status, and transaction data; reduce duplicate entry and manual processing.

Partner with Supervision, Compliance, and Operations to embed application review, best-interest (Reg BI) recommendation, disclosure, NIGO handling, carrier follow-up, and books-and-records requirements into the end-to-end workflow.

Coordinate with the platform partner, carriers, and Advisor Operations on carrier transition, appointments and registrations, producer codes, advisor hierarchy, and compensation impacts.

Lead release readiness for phased launches (Early Access, Full-Field Release, and Hypercare), including integration, end-to-end, and UAT testing, training, and adoption measurement.

Establish baselines and track outcomes such as annuity sales, application volume, number of advisors selling annuities, NIGO rate, and manual processing effort.

Tooling & Communication Artifacts

Create and maintain product artifacts and ensure tooling traceability from opportunity -> feature -> acceptance outcomes.

Align product work to the Product Management lifecycle (Discover, Define, Design, Align, Build, Release) so that each Feature moves through consistent stages with clear entry and exit expectations.

Collaboration Model

Other Digital Product Managers: Sync with adjacent Product Managers to align roadmaps, manage cross-product dependencies, and prevent overlap in ownership; take full accountability for the delivery of owned Features and ensure integrations across product lines are seamless.

Digital Product Owner: Partner with the Digital Product Owner by providing complete, actionable Features (the "what" and "why") for decomposition, and keep the DPO aligned on Vision, Business Needs, and Value so the team backlog reflects business urgency and the DPO can make day-to-day decisions without constant escalation.

Solution Architects: Collaborate with Solution Architects and delivery leadership to validate feasibility, inform architectural runway, and ensure shared understanding of requirements and sequencing; align them on long-term vision and business context, and keep technical debt visible and managed.

Software Engineers: Act as SME for business logic and requirements, communicate product vision and business intent to the delivery team, and perform feature-level acceptance to reduce rework.

Test Leads and SDETs: Align Test Leads and SDETs on Vision and Business Needs so test strategy and automation validate real business scenarios, improve quality visibility, and support confident release readiness decisions.

Shared outcomes: A unified roadmap, a backlog aligned to strategy, predictable delivery, and clear go/no-go confidence for each release.

Skills & Qualifications

Education 

Bachelor’s degree required (may consider experience in lieu of degree) 

Work Experience 

4 - 7 years of experience in product management, business analysis, or a related field, with a strong track record in product management (owning product vision, roadmaps, backlogs, and measurable product outcomes)

Financial services industry experience highly preferred (e.g., wealth management, broker-dealer, insurance, or annuity distribution)

Experience with insurance and annuity solutions such as FIG, Aplifi, Pershing Subscribe, FireLight, or similar order-entry and e-application platforms strongly preferred

Experience implementing or integrating third-party platforms with CRM (e.g., Salesforce), carrier/DTCC data feeds, and supervision workflows preferred

Certifications

The preferred candidate will have one or more certifications in the following areas: 

Product Management 

Agile and Scrum 

Insurance and annuity platforms and technology (e.g., FireLight, DTCC Insurance & Retirement Services, Salesforce) 

Process Improvement 

Financial Services Licenses (e.g., Life, Accident & Health insurance license; FINRA Series 6, 7, or 63) 

 

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

Knowledge

Strong knowledge of insurance and annuity platforms and distribution systems such as FIG, Aplifi, Pershing Subscribe, FireLight e-applications, and DTCC data feeds, and enterprise constraints to anticipate impacts and mitigate risks early.

Annuity and insurance business lifecycle, including product shelf management, new business applications, suitability and Reg BI, supervision, NIGO handling, carrier appointments and producer codes, and advisor compensation.

Outcome-based product strategy and roadmap practices; dependency management across products/teams and OKR alignment.

Advanced feature definition practices and discovery techniques to reduce churn and rework.

Agile delivery collaboration across PO/architecture/engineering/QA; understanding of sequencing and delivery constraints.

Product measurement and value realization: KPI definition, trend interpretation, and evidence-based prioritization.

Risk, compliance, privacy, security, and operational readiness considerations in regulated environments.

Skills

Strategic storytelling and stakeholder alignment: communicate "why," tradeoffs, and outcomes; drive decisions.

Problem framing: translate ambiguity into clear scope, acceptance intent, and success measures.

Requirements clarity: write actionable features and supporting artifacts that reduce rework.

Cross-functional leadership: partner with PO/architecture/engineering/QA to ensure feasibility and quality.

Metrics fluency: define and use signals to refine sequencing and measure value realization.

Tool fluency: maintain traceability and transparency in ADO (or equivalent).

Abilities

Operate independently while maintaining accountability for outcomes, quality, and value.

Influence without authority across teams and stakeholders to resolve misalignment.

Anticipate risks and constraints early and adjust plans accordingly.

 

 

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