Group Data Programme Manager | Hiscox
Position: Data Ecosystem Product Manager
Reporting to: Group Head of Engineering
Contract Type: Permanent
Location: UK
Band: III
Company description: Hiscox is a diversified international insurance group with a powerful brand, strong balance sheet and plenty of room to grow. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and headquartered in Bermuda (with the bulk of group leadership sitting in London), Hiscox has over 3,000 staff across 14 countries and 34 offices. Structured by geography and product, Hiscox’s long‑held business strategy has helped them grow from a niche Lloyd’s underwriter to an international insurance group with a powerful consumer brand. Hiscox is comprised of the following business lines: London Market, Reinsurance & Insurance Linked Securities (ILS), Retail (Hiscox USA, Hiscox UK, Hiscox Europe). For the financial year 2022 GWP grew to $4.425m, with net premiums earned growing to $2.928m. Hiscox’s Purpose: “We give people and businesses the confidence to realise their ambitions”. Hiscox values: Courage; dare to take a risk, Human; clean, fair, and inclusive, Ownership; passionate, commercial, and accountable, Integrity; do the right thing, however hard, Connected; together, build something better.
The Role
- Hiscox intends to operate a Data Mesh architecture for supporting Analytics and Integrations across the group. This will be known as “the data ecosystem”. The Ecosystem is being established in 2026 and this role will be a key part of its establishment as well as ongoing maintenance.
- The Ecosystem Product Manager (Band 3b) is a key leadership role within the Global Data Function. Responsible for setting the product strategy and detailed roadmap for the Data Ecosystem, ensuring the Ecosystem is capable of meeting both present and future Analytics, AI and Integration needs.
- The role is responsible for ensuring that the Ecosystem is kept evergreen, working with data engineering leads to adopt product changes from vendors in the ecosystem. The role is also responsible for identifying where changes in the underlying technology may drive a need to change engineering standards.
- Acting as the intersection between engineering teams, architecture and data this role ensures that the Ecosystem roadmap delivers tangible benefits, is aligned with stakeholder expectations, and adheres to industry best practices. This role is also responsible for matrix management of delivery teams and the ongoing coaching and mentoring of stakeholders in best practice environments, release management, deployment, estimating and testing.
The strategic data platform will be built on GCP. As Hiscox uses a federated model with platforms in Databricks and Snowflake, this role requires strong GCP experience and familiarity with Databricks and/or Snowflake.
Key Responsibilities
- Product Strategy & Vision: Define and communicate a clear vision for data ecosystem, setting strategic goals and roadmap that align with business objectives and market opportunities.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Collaborate with stakeholders (e.g. business, software engineering, architecture, data) to understand requirements, prioritise initiatives, and manage expectations.
- Strategic partnerships: Work with 3rd parties to generate fresh perspectives and also ensure successful delivery partnerships.
- Product Development Lifecycle Management: Lead cross‑functional teams through ideation, design, development, testing, and deployment of data products, ensuring timely delivery and quality standards.
- Data Culture: Support the Data Engineering Chapter, ensuring technical blockers to good data culture are resolved within the roadmap.
- Data Governance & Compliance: Ensure compliance with data privacy regulations (such as GDPR), data quality management practice are embedded in ecosystem design.
- Performance Monitoring & Optimisation: Track product performance using key metrics, conduct regular reviews, and implement enhancements based on data‑driven insights.
- Communication & Documentation: Produce clear documentation, reports, and presentations for stakeholders, ensuring transparency and alignment throughout the product lifecycle.
- Backlog Management: Own, refine, and prioritise the data ecosystem product backlog (features, tasks, improvements) based on business value, technical needs, and stakeholder input as well as encouraging user adoption for new features.
- Cost Optimisation: Establish a value‑driven FinOps framework in collaboration with engineering (who build), finance (who budget) and business (who own the products).
Key Requirements / Person Specification
- Technical Proficiency:
- Deep hands‑on expertise with GCP data and analytics services (BigQuery, Dataflow, Pub/Sub, IAM, monitoring), plus working knowledge of Databricks and/or Snowflake in federated enterprise environments.
- Strong understanding of modern data architectures including Data Mesh, event‑driven patterns, API‑based data products, and cloud‑native engineering standards.
- Good working knowledge of emerging technologies e.g. AI and Machine Learning.
- Business Acumen:
- Strong understanding of commercial strategies, market trends, governance frameworks and competitive landscapes.
- Analytical Thinking:
- Ability to interpret and analyse complex operational and financial datasets to inform product decisions, prioritisation and derive actionable insights.
- Product and Project Management:
- Experience delivering regulated, cloud‑based data platforms.
- Proficiency in Agile product delivery, backlog management, roadmap ownership, and leading matrixed teams of engineers, analysts, and architects.
- Strong vendor and partner management skills, supporting platform upgrades, licensing, product enhancements, and technical enablement.
- Communication Skills:
- Exceptional communication skills, able to translate technical concepts for non‑technical stakeholders and align diverse teams behind a clear product vision.
- Problem‑Solving Mindset:
- Proactive problem‑solver, able to identify and address platform risks, tech debt, cost inefficiencies, and blockers to robust engineering and data culture.
Nice to Have
- Knowledge or experience of Insurance industry.
- Experience leveraging Jira, Confluence or similar collaboration tools to support multi‑disciplinary geographically spread teams.
Diversity & Benefits
At Hiscox we care about our people. We hire the best people for the job and we’re committed to diversity and creating a truly inclusive culture, which we believe drives success. Working life doesn’t always have to be in the office, so we have introduced hybrid working to encourage a healthy work life balance. This hybrid working model is set by the team rather than the business to enable you to manage your own personal work‑life balance. We see it as the best of both worlds; structure and sociability on one hand, and independence and flexibility on the other.
Our benefits package includes a bonus, contributory pension, 25 days annual leave plus 2 Hiscox days and a 4 week paid sabbatical with every 5 years’ worth of service, private medical for all the family and much more.
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