Head of Software Product (m/f/d)

About us

The world around us is changing rapidly and so is the insurance industry. Now’s the right time to make a bold move and shape the future of insurance – this is Allianz Direct! As a pan-European online insurer of the Allianz Group, launched in 2019, Allianz Direct is on its mission to become “digitally unbeatable” and the most efficient insurer on the market. Allianz Direct is truly changing the face of insurance, in customer experience, and in technology, processes, people and culture. 

An international team of business experts and engineers who live and breathe an agile way of working, we are seeking to improve and change the way you do insurance. Driven by a customer-oriented approach and love for data, Allianz Direct strives for delivering an exceptional experience with a personal touch.

So, what makes Allianz Direct so unique? We believe in the power of simplicity and convenience and by doing so we have managed to set new standards when it comes to online insurance.

Job Purpose Role

The Head of Platform Product is responsible for defining and supporting the building of desirable, feasible, viable, and sustainable products that meet customer needs over the product-market lifecycle. Moreover, the Head of Platform Product has content authority for the Program Backlog. A Head of Platform Product is responsible for identifying customer needs, prioritizing features, guiding the work through the Program Kanban and developing the program Vision and Roadmap. Also, this role coordinates the team of product owners working with individual Agile teams.

Future Challenges: Guide the design of solutions to meet the needs of the foundational models, such as the Allianz Customer Model and Allianz Product Model, and flexibly change.

Key Responsibilities

Essential daily duties

• Development and communication of Program Vision and Roadmap
• Prioritization and Reprioritization of features for every Program Increment (PI) according to customer and stakeholder needs
• Responsibility to understand how Strategic Themes influence the strategic direction, understand the direction provided by the Portfolio Canvas, Lean Budgets, and Guardrails, and work with Epic Owners to develop the Lean business case for proejcts and platforms.

Embrace the Agile Way of Working

• Systematically consider customer benefits and analyze requirements based on stated and unstated customer need.
• Demand collaboration between the Agile Teams and other organizational units, such as System Architecture.
• Help to lead the Lean-Agile transformation, including being a role model, coaching leaders, teams, and product owners in the processes and mindset.
• Improve and support the optimal use of tools and processes - also across teams, for example by participating in the "Community of Practice" (CoP)

Design Thinking

• Apply the principles of design thinking / systems thinking throughout all aspects of your work. Act as a role model for others.

Servant leadership and innovation

• Build an effective global virtual Product Owner Team and product vision
• Closely collaborate with leaders, Product Owners and other Product Managers
• Provide an environment to enable the agile teams to innovate to help grow our business
• Maintain constant interaction with the customers, including Gemba walks, end-user interviews and surveys, brainstorming, trade studies, market research

Technical Excellence

• Close collaboration to the System Engineer/Architect to plan and understand enabler work.
• Define Releases and Program Increments.
• Ensure cohesion and unified goals and vision amongst your product owner team and the impacted business teams.

Growth Mindset

• Work in an agile environment and demonstrate a growth mindset through personal and professional development
• Positive attitude paired with a good portion of curiosity and a customer-centric service attitude
• Achieve a high business impact and customer satisfaction through Product ownership

Technical Skills

Scaling Experience in Lean Agile Practices

Agile Coaching

Lean Agile frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban

Systems Thinking / Design Thinking

General Skills

Influencing others without authority

Influencing others with authority

collaborative and team-oriented

Innovation and continuous improvement

Education & Experience

Bachelor's degree and 8 years experience

Master's degree and 6 years experience

no degree and 12 years experience

Agile Fundamentals and Product Owner certification from an organization such as IC Agile, Scrum.org, ScrumAlliance.org; SAFe POPM certification

Experience in developing others

Experience in the insurance industry domain

Experience in the insurance industry domain

Experience with steering and driving large programs

Change Management

Language: English

Allianz Group is one of the most trusted insurance and asset management companies in the world. Caring for our employees, their ambitions, dreams and challenges, is what makes us a unique employer. Together we can build an environment where everyone feels empowered and has the confidence to explore, to grow and to shape a better future for our customers and the world around us. 
We at Allianz believe in a diverse and inclusive workforce and are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We encourage you to bring your whole self to work, no matter where you are from, what you look like, who you love or what you believe in.
We therefore welcome applications regardless of ethnicity or cultural background, age, gender, nationality, religion, disability or sexual orientation.

Great to have you on board. Let's care for tomorrow.

Note: Diversity of minds is an integral part of Allianz’ company culture. One means to achieve diverse teams is a regular rotation of Allianz Executive employees across functions, Allianz entities and geographies. Therefore, the company expects from its employees a general openness and a high motivation to regularly change positions and collect experiences across Allianz Group.