Senior Director, Technology - Product Practice Lead

Company: Finra
Location: Rockville
Posted on: January 7, 2021

Job Description:

The Product Management Practice Lead is a visionary member of the management team within Technology and a thought leader for the broader organization that spearheads the product management discipline to drive strategy, usability, and cohesiveness across the portfolio. This role leads the team of product managers that provides oversight of the portfolio and provides solutions to both business and technical problems, and typically reports directly to a Senior Vice President.Essential Job Functions:

• Leads the department's Product Management Practice .
• Owns and drives the department's product strategies, policies, processes, standards, and guidelines; monitors and drives compliance, providing transparency and oversight.
• Lead transition of the product practice to a more "Lean Start-up Mentality" to make better, faster decisions that aligns with Engineering and Architecture, as well as the Business.
• Grow a culture of ownership, transparency, accountability, and personal investment where teams are fully responsible for all aspects of a solution.
• Responsible for product staff performance management and training for up to 12 product managers and their teams.
• Hire and develop exceptional product talent.
• Owns the training curriculums for developing product skills and knowledge to expand the competence of product management.
• Establish high standards for the skills, knowledge, practices, and behaviors of the product practice and demonstrate competency and adherence to those standards.
• Deploy/allocate product resources to gain coverage across the portfolio to achieve business and technical goals.
• Collaborate with the department's leadership to collect needs, solicit feedback, and gain buy-in for resource allocations and opportunities to improve solutions.
• Collaborate and coordinate with other Technology leaders to enable and/or adopt capabilities or otherwise evolve the product landscape.
• Own, manage, mature, and prioritize the department's product backlog and generally fill the role of Product Owner for the product practice.
• Reserve and organize a portion of all deployed product resources into an agile product team that works through the portfolio's product backlog. This backlog contains application agnostic items to improve the effectiveness of the portfolio's technical ecosystem for the portfolio of applications, platforms, services, and tools.
• Analyze and synthesize the portfolio's solution context to develop strategic implementation plans and designs, document and mitigate risks, and provide regular updates and proposals to senior management.
• Reviews product artifacts (i.e. stakeholder analysis, vison and roadmaps) to advance the alignment of solutions.
• Work with the project teams to ensure there is an intentional roadmap and vision that is suitable and sustainable for the problem.
• Ensure that trade-off decisions and assumptions are intentional, rational, and documented.
• Serve on Program Leadership Teams to provide expertise, as necessary.
• Contribute to business cases to ensure prospective initiatives are viable and fit-for-purpose.Other Responsibilities:
  • Develop constructive and cooperative working relationships with peers both within and outside of Technology and maintain them over time.
  • Establish and maintain external relationships with strategic product / service vendors, FINRA clients / customers, FINRA regulators, industry forums (government & private councils, standards bodies, product forums, etc.), as appropriate.
  • Respectfully challenge decisions when necessary, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting.
  • Remain current in technologies and product disciplines that are applicable to the portfolio.Education/Experience Requirements:
    • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems or related discipline and at least 15 years of related experience, which includes minimum of 10 years of product management with demonstrable Subject Matter Expertise in driving solutions through quality attributes and intentional trade-offs, or equivalent combination of education and training or work experience; Master's degree and past Financial Services industry experience preferred.
    • Minimum of 5 years of managing product staff of at least ten (10) resources, comprised of both employees and contractors.
    • Substantial knowledge in the following disciplines: software development, operations, engineering, development services, information security, and compliance.
    • Demonstrated identifying opportunities and applying Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to improve the effectiveness and quality of business processes.
    • Substantial knowledge of business, technology and management principles involved in strategic planning, organizational change management, resource allocation, human resources modeling, leadership techniques, and coordination of people and resources.
    • Demonstrated ability to oversee several initiatives simultaneously and balance competing priorities.
    • Past success contributing to strategic decisions for an organization, identifying investment tradeoffs, and delivering high quality solutions to customer needs.
    • Outstanding organization, time management, interpersonal and management skills.
    • Excellent problem identification, analysis, and solving skills.
    • Excellent written and oral communication skills.
    • Proven change agent who can improve and grow the capability of an organization; keen eye for hiring and motivating teams.To be considered for this position, please submit an application.The information provided above has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work of the position. It is not a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required.Please note: If the "Apply Now" button on a job board posting does not take you directly to the FINRA Careers site, enter www.finra.org/careers into your browser to reach our site directly.FINRA strives to make our career site accessible to all users. If you need a disability-related accommodation for completing the application process, please contact FINRA's accommodation help line at 240.386.4865. Please note that this number is exclusively for inquiries regarding application accommodations.In addition to a competitive salary, comprehensive health and welfare benefits, and incentive compensation, FINRA offers immediate participation and vesting in a 401(k) plan with company match. You will also be eligible for participation in an additional FINRA-funded retirement contribution, our tuition reimbursement program and many other benefits. If you would like to contribute to our important mission and work collegially in a professional organization that values intelligence, integrity and initiative, consider a career with FINRA.Important InformationFINRA's Code of Conduct imposes restrictions on employees' investments and requires financial disclosures that are uniquely related to our role as a securities regulator. FINRA employees are required to disclose to FINRA all brokerage accounts that they maintain, and those in which they control trading or have a financial interest (including any trust account of which they are a trustee or beneficiary and all accounts of a spouse, domestic partner or minor child who lives with the employee) and to authorize their broker-dealers to provide FINRA with duplicate statements for all of those accounts. All of those accounts are subject to the Code's investment and securities account restrictions, and new employees must comply with those investment restrictions-including disposing of any security issued by a company on FINRA's Prohibited Company List or obtaining a written waiver from their Executive Vice President-by the date they begin employment with FINRA. Employees may only maintain securities accounts that must be disclosed to FINRA at one or more securities firms that provide an electronic feed (e-feed) of data to FINRA, and must move securities accounts from other securities firms to a firm that provides an e-feed within three months of beginning employment.You can read more about these restrictions here .As standard practice, employees must also execute FINRA's Employee Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreement without qualification or modification and comply with the company's policy on nepotism.Search Firm RepresentativesPlease be advised that FINRA is not seeking assistance or accepting unsolicited resumes from search firms for this employment opportunity. Regardless of past practice, a valid written agreement and task order must be in place before any resumes are submitted to FINRA. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at FINRA without a valid written agreement and task order in place will be deemed the sole property of FINRA and no fee will be paid in the event that person is hired by FINRA.FINRA is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action EmployerAll qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, citizenship status, color, disability, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status or any other classification protected by federal state or local laws as appropriate, or upon the protected status of the person's relatives, friends or associates.FINRA abides by the requirements of 41 CFR 60-741.5(a). This regulation prohibits discrimination against qualified individuals on the basis of disability, and requires affirmative action by covered prime contractors and subcontractors to employ and advance in employment qualified individuals with disabilities.FINRA abides by the requirements of 41 CFR 60-300.5(a). This regulation prohibits discrimination against qualified protected veterans, and requires affirmative action by covered prime contractors and subcontractors to employ and advance in employment qualified protected veterans.--2020 FINRA. All rights reserved. FINRA is a registered trademark of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc.

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