VP, Transformation & Product Leader

Job Posting End Date: October 30

When you join the team at Unum, you become part of an organization committed to helping you thrive.

Here, we work to provide the employee benefits and service solutions that enable employees at our client companies to thrive throughout life’s moments. And this starts with ensuring that every one of our team members enjoys opportunities to succeed both professionally and personally. To enable this, we provide: 

• Award-winning culture 

• Inclusion and diversity as a priority 

• Performance Based Incentive Plans

• Competitive benefits package that includes: Health, Vision, Dental, Short & Long-Term Disability 

• Generous PTO (including paid time to volunteer!) 

• Up to 9.5% 401(k) employer contribution 

• Mental health support 

• Career advancement opportunities 

• Student loan repayment options 

• Tuition reimbursement

• Flexible work environments 

*All the benefits listed above are subject to the terms of their individual Plans.

And that’s just the beginning…  

With 10,000 employees helping more than 39 million people worldwide, every role at Unum is meaningful and impacts the lives of our customers. Whether you’re directly supporting a growing family, or developing online tools to help navigate a difficult loss, customers are counting on the combined talents of our entire team. Help us help others, and join Team Unum today! 

General Summary:

This position sits in the leadership team of the Transformation Acceleration Office (TAO) and is responsible for coordinating the Value Stream program end-to-end, establishing and evolving the overall Value Stream structure, and partnering with Value Stream Owners to align scope, outcomes, priorities, phasing, and asset reuse across Value Streams. The role monitors overall program progress, resolves cross-value stream issues and dependencies, and drives alignment with the enterprise roadmap and capability-development priorities.

In parallel, this leader serves as the accountable owner of the Product Chapter, setting and evolving product standards, playbooks, frameworks, and ways of working to ensure consistent product practice across the organization. The role maintains an enterprise view of the Product talent pipeline, partners with leaders and HR on staffing, coaching, learning, and development needs, and builds feedback mechanisms that continuously improve Product Chapter practices.

This role combines program-level strategy and coordination with people and capability leadership. Success requires strong cross-functional stakeholder management, sound value-based decision-making, deep product management expertise, and a demonstrated ability to coach and develop product talent across a distributed, embedded workforce.

Principal Duties and Responsibilities 

·    Establish and continuously evolve the end-to-end Value Stream program structure, governance, and coordination mechanisms.

·    Partner with Value Stream Owners, sponsors, and run-team leaders to align Value Stream scope, intended outcomes, priorities, sequencing, phasing, and reuse of capabilities and assets.

·    Codify and update the organization’s best-practice methodology for scaling front-to-back Value Stream delivery.

·    Ensure Value Stream roadmaps, risk logs, and dependency logs are established, maintained, and used to monitor progress across the overall program.

·    Develop and maintain a clear decision framework for identifying, escalating, managing, and resolving cross-value stream issues and dependencies.

·    Monitor cross-value stream risks, issues, capability gaps, and interdependencies, and coordinate timely resolution with accountable leaders.

·    Drive alignment between Value Stream plans, the enterprise roadmap, and capability-development priorities.

·    Promote transparency and disciplined decision-making by providing an integrated view of Value Stream progress, dependencies, and areas requiring leadership action.

·    Serve as the accountable owner for Product Chapter standards, playbooks, methodologies, and ways of working, ensuring they are practical, current, and consistently applied across the organization.

·    Define and evolve the backlog, minimum viable product, and value-realization frameworks used by embedded Product practitioners.

·    Assess adherence to Product standards in partnership with Value Stream Owners, Product leaders, and run-team leadership; identify improvement opportunities and support adoption.

·    Represent Product in cross-Chapter and enterprise-level forums, escalating and helping resolve standards, capability, tooling, or resourcing conflicts.

·    Coach and develop Product practitioners and leaders, strengthening product craft and supporting visible career pathways.

·    Influence workforce and resourcing decisions to address cross-value stream Product capability gaps and competing priorities.

·    Drive enterprise-wide adoption of consistent Product standards, backlog hygiene, and minimum viable product and value-realization frameworks.

·    Establish, track, and improve relevant Product Chapter measures, including standards adoption, retention of key Product talent, and cycle time for product requirements development.

·    Improve the organization’s ability to identify and resolve cross-value stream Product capability gaps, resource conflicts, risks, and dependencies.

·    Ensure Value Stream Product Managers and Product Owners are equipped to effectively leverage emerging technologies, AI, and automation capabilities by driving awareness, training, readiness, and cross-functional partnerships that enable adoption and accelerate value delivery

 

 

Job Specifications 

·    Bachelor’s degree in business, product management, strategy, technology, or a related field

·    15+ years of relevant experience

·    Significant senior-level product management or product leadership experience in a complex, cross-functional organization.

·    Proven track record of coaching and developing product managers or Product leaders, with evidence of strengthened capability and career progression.

·    Experience partnering with senior leaders, HR, and cross-functional disciplines such as customer experience, data, and technology.

·    Deep knowledge of product management fundamentals, including customer and business outcomes, product strategy, roadmaps, backlog management, requirements, minimum viable product, and value realization.

·    Strong program and portfolio coordination skills, including roadmap integration, risk management, dependency management, governance, and executive-level escalation.

·    Ability to establish credible enterprise standards and influence consistent adoption across distributed teams without relying solely on direct authority.

·    Exceptional stakeholder management and facilitation skills, with the ability to align Value Stream Owners, sponsors, Product leaders, and cross-functional Chapters.

·    Strong coaching, talent-development, and capability-building skills, including the ability to translate capability gaps into practical learning and development priorities.

·    Strategic and value-based decision-making skills, with the ability to prioritize investments and resolve tradeoffs across tools, frameworks, standards, and resources.

·    Ability to synthesize complex information, identify enterprise-level patterns and dependencies, and communicate clear decisions and actions to senior stakeholders.

·    Demonstrated comfort operating in ambiguity, evolving structures, and transformation environments while maintaining delivery discipline

·    Leads through influence, credibility, and enterprise perspective.

Unum and Colonial Life are part of Unum Group, a Fortune 500 company and leading provider of employee benefits to companies worldwide. Headquartered in Chattanooga, TN, with international offices in Ireland, Poland and the UK, Unum also has significant operations in Portland, ME - plus over 35 US field offices. Colonial Life is headquartered in Columbia, SC, with over 40 field offices nationwide.

Unum is an equal opportunity employer, considering all qualified applicants and employees for hiring, placement, and advancement, without regard to a person's race, color, religion, national origin, age, genetic information, military status, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, or protected veteran status.

The base salary range for applicants for this position is listed below. Unless actual salary is indicated above in the job description, actual pay will be based on skill, geographical location and experience.

$163,700.00-$336,000.00

Additionally, Unum offers a portfolio of benefits and rewards that are competitive and comprehensive including healthcare benefits (health, vision, dental), insurance benefits (short & long-term disability), performance-based incentive plans, paid time off, and a 401(k) retirement plan with an employer match up to 5% and an additional 4.5% contribution whether you contribute to the plan or not.  All benefits are subject to the terms and conditions of individual Plans.

Company:

Unum