Technical Data Ecosystem Product Manager

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, 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’s Purpose: “We give people and businesses the confidence to realise their ambitions”.

The Role

Hiscox intends to operate a Data Mesh architecture for supporting Analytics and Integrations across the group, known as “the data ecosystem”. This role is pivotal for its establishment in 2026 and ongoing maintenance. The Technical Data Ecosystem Product Manager is a key leadership role within the Global Data Function, responsible for setting the product strategy and detailed roadmap for the Data Ecosystem, ensuring it meets present and future Analytics, AI, and Integration needs.

You will ensure the Ecosystem is kept evergreen, working with data engineering leads to adopt product changes from vendors and identifying where changes in underlying technology necessitate new engineering standards. Acting as the intersection between engineering teams, architecture, and data, this role ensures the Ecosystem roadmap delivers tangible benefits, aligns with stakeholder expectations, and adheres to industry best practices. You will also be 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 the data ecosystem, setting strategic goals and a roadmap aligned 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 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) and embed data quality management practices 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 prioritize the data ecosystem product backlog (features, tasks, improvements) based on business value, technical needs, and stakeholder input, while 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.

Work with amazing people and be part of a unique culture.

Key skills/competency

• Product Strategy
• Data Mesh Architecture
• GCP Data Services
• Stakeholder Management
• Agile Product Delivery
• Data Governance
• FinOps Framework
• Cloud-Native Engineering
• Databricks/Snowflake
• AI/Machine Learning