Corporate Vice President, Universal Purchase Experience Product Owner

New York Life offers a collaborative, client-focused culture with a strong commitment to inclusion and professional growth. This hybrid role based in New York, NY carries a salary range of USD 119,000 to 160,000 per year, with eligibility for a discretionary annual bonus and additional incentive programs. The Corporate Vice President, Universal Purchase Experience Product Owner leads UPX product ownership to modernize the purchase journey and enable customer-centric digital capabilities across technology, operations, compliance, and distribution. A bachelor’s degree is required, and candidates should bring 7+ years of relevant experience.

Role Overview

The Universal Purchase Experience Product Owner supports the modernization of New York Life’s new business capabilities by delivering on defined priorities while partnering closely with technology, operations, compliance, distribution, underwriting, and other value streams. This role operates with a high degree of autonomy and is regarded as a subject matter expert, driving strategic initiatives and scalable, customer-centric digital capabilities to enhance the purchase experience.

Our Benefits

We provide a comprehensive benefits package designed for a modern workforce. Highlights include generous leave programs, adoption assistance, and student loan repayment programs, with ongoing refinements based on employee feedback to help you thrive both inside and outside of work.

• Comprehensive benefits package
• Flexible leave programs
• Adoption assistance
• Student loan repayment programs
• Annual discretionary bonus and incentive opportunities

Our Commitment to Inclusion

Fostering an inclusive workplace is central to New York Life. We are recognized by Fortune as one of the World’s Most Admired Companies and support a culture of employee giving and volunteerism through the Foundation, reflecting our commitment to communities and the people who serve them.

Responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end execution of UPX initiatives, enhancing purchase processes through digital tools and data insights.
• Collaborate with the Product Manager to maintain a roadmap supporting purchase experience modernization.
• Identify opportunities to streamline workflows and modernize capabilities, offering prioritization recommendations.
• Drive backlog creation, refinement, and prioritization based on customer needs, business value, and strategic direction.
• Lead release planning, sprint alignment, and execution across multiple complex workstreams.
• Ensure solutions meet customer experience, operational, compliance, and quality expectations.
• Partner with the Product Manager to evaluate trade-offs, dependencies, risks, and prioritization decisions.
• Influence delivery strategy and operational execution across teams to achieve business outcomes.
• Address highly complex and ambiguous business problems impacting the purchase experience.
• Lead discovery activities including problem framing, requirements synthesis, process analysis, and solution evaluation.
• Identify opportunities to modernize purchase workflows and improve efficiency through digital capabilities and automation.
• Leverage customer insights, analytics, experimentation, and industry trends to inform recommendations and prioritization.
• Champion intuitive, frictionless experiences for agents, clients, and internal users.
• Contribute to roadmap development and long-term strategic planning for the UPX portfolio.
• Collaborate with UX/UI teams to support user-centered digital workflows.
• Serve as a key liaison across business, technology, operations, underwriting, compliance, distribution, and vendor partners.
• Represent Product in cross-functional forums, shaping execution approach, priorities, and timelines.
• Build alignment across teams while balancing competing priorities and enterprise objectives.
• Act as a trusted proxy for Product Management leadership when presenting strategy, priorities, and delivery decisions.
• Communicate complex concepts, risks, and recommendations clearly to senior stakeholders and leadership.
• Execute sprint-level delivery activities including backlog grooming, sprint planning support, UAT coordination, and release readiness.
• Translate business needs into product requirements, epics, and user stories.
• Partner with technology teams on sprint planning and release execution.
• Manage vendor interactions where applicable.
• Ensure adherence to regulatory and compliance requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Finance, Technology, or related field.
• 7–10+ years of experience in product ownership, product operations, digital delivery, or related strategic roles.
• Experience leading complex digital initiatives in highly cross-functional environments.
• Strong understanding of insurance purchase workflows, including suitability, replacements, funding, underwriting, and new business systems.
• Demonstrated ability to influence strategic decisions and drive execution across multiple teams and stakeholders.
• Advanced proficiency in Jira and Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word).
• Strong analytical, problem-solving, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Experience working in Agile product delivery environments.

Technologies

• Jira
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Microsoft Word