Product Analyst

Aspida is a tech-driven, nimble insurance carrier backed by Ares Management Corporation, a leading global alternative asset manager. We offer simple and secure retirement solutions and annuity products with speed and precision, focusing on protecting the dreams of our partners, producers, and clients. Our suite of products, available through an elegant and intuitive digital platform, emphasizes secure, stable retirement solutions with attractive features and downside protection.

About the role

Aspida is seeking a Product Analyst to help shape, define, and deliver digital products and business capabilities that support our annuity products, distribution partners, internal operations teams, and end customers. In this role, you will partner closely with Product Managers, technology teams, designers, business stakeholders, and operational teams to turn business objectives and user needs into clear, actionable requirements. You will play a critical role in the product development lifecycle by eliciting requirements, documenting user stories, mapping workflows, analyzing solution options, identifying dependencies, and supporting Agile delivery from discovery through release.

The ideal candidate is detail-oriented, curious, collaborative, and comfortable operating at the intersection of business, technology, and user experience. This role is a great fit for someone with business analysis, product owner, product specialist, or technology delivery experience who wants to grow within a modern product organization. You will work closely with Product Managers and may act as a Product Owner delegate during sprint ceremonies. This role reports to the Sr. Director of Product and requires onsite presence at our Durham office 3 days a week.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Product Managers to elicit, document, and refine business, functional, and non-functional requirements for digital products, platform capabilities, operational workflows, and system enhancements.
• Translate business objectives, user needs, stakeholder feedback, and product direction into detailed, engineering-ready requirements.
• Facilitate requirements-gathering sessions, stakeholder interviews, process walkthroughs, and working sessions with business, operations, compliance, technology, design, data, and vendor teams.
• Create clear documentation, including business requirements documents, product requirements documents, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, decision logs, and supporting artifacts.
• Identify edge cases, dependencies, assumptions, risks, open questions, and downstream impacts early in the delivery process.
• Support Product Managers in breaking down larger initiatives into well-scoped features, epics, stories, and delivery milestones.
• Write well-structured user stories with clear acceptance criteria, testable outcomes, dependencies, and business context.
• Support backlog grooming, story refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, demos, retrospectives, and release planning.
• Act as a Product Owner delegate during Agile ceremonies when needed, ensuring stories are ready for development and aligned to product intent.
• Partner with engineering, QA, design, and architecture teams to clarify requirements, resolve questions, and support delivery execution.
• Help manage story readiness, acceptance criteria, sprint-level scope decisions, and delivery follow-through on behalf of the Product Manager.
• Support user acceptance testing by defining test scenarios, validating expected behavior, triaging defects, and confirming delivered functionality meets business and user needs.
• Track and communicate delivery risks, blockers, scope changes, and dependency impacts to Product Managers and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Conduct solution analysis by evaluating options, documenting trade-offs, and helping teams determine the most practical path to deliver value.
• Map current-state and future-state workflows across users, business processes, digital products, third-party systems, and operational teams.
• Analyze how proposed changes may impact user experience, business processes, downstream systems, data flows, reporting, compliance needs, and support teams.
• Partner with technology teams to document system behavior, integration considerations, API requirements, configuration needs, and operational impacts.
• Help bridge the gap between business stakeholders and technical teams by translating business needs into clear, structured, delivery-ready specifications.
• Identify opportunities to simplify workflows, reduce manual work, improve usability, and increase delivery quality.
• Perform market, competitive, stakeholder, and user research to help inform feature prioritization and product roadmap decisions.
• Support Product Managers in gathering insights from users, producers, distribution partners, internal operations teams, customer service teams, and other stakeholders.
• Analyze feedback, production support trends, operational pain points, and user behavior to identify opportunities for product improvement.
• Assist with defining success criteria and supporting metrics to evaluate whether delivered features meet intended outcomes.
• Help prepare training materials, release notes, stakeholder communications, and support documentation for new or enhanced digital capabilities.
• Stay curious about the annuity, life insurance, financial services, and insurtech landscape to better understand the needs of Aspida’s users and partners.
• Collaborate with stakeholders across operations, distribution, actuarial, compliance, legal, finance, technology, data, design, and strategy.
• Build strong working relationships with Product Managers, engineers, designers, QA analysts, architects, business stakeholders, and vendor partners.
• Communicate complex requirements, decisions, and trade-offs in a clear, structured, and accessible way.
• Help create alignment across teams by ensuring everyone understands what is being built, why it matters, how it should work, and how success will be evaluated.
• Bring a proactive, solution-oriented mindset to ambiguity, changing priorities, and complex delivery environments.

Requirements

• 2–4 years of experience as a Product Analyst, Business Analyst, Product Owner, Product Specialist, Business Systems Analyst, or similar role.
• Experience gathering, documenting, and refining business and functional requirements.
• Strong ability to write user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, and clear delivery documentation.
• Experience working in Agile/Scrum/Sprint environments, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, demos, and delivery execution.
• Proficiency with JIRA, Confluence, Azure DevOps, or similar Agile delivery and documentation tools.
• Ability to translate business objectives and stakeholder needs into detailed, engineering-ready specifications.
• Strong facilitation skills, including interviews, workshops, process mapping, and requirements clarification sessions.
• Foundational understanding of UX flows, wireframes, user journeys, and how design decisions impact requirements.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to organize complex information clearly.
• Comfort working with cross-functional teams, including product, technology, design, QA, business operations, compliance, and vendor partners.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities, identify risks, follow through on details, and operate effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Curiosity and willingness to learn the annuity, life insurance, financial services, and digital product landscape.
• Team player with a collaborative mindset, strong ownership, and a desire to help build better products and experiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in insurance, annuities, life insurance, financial services, fintech, or a regulated industry.
• Experience supporting digital products, customer portals, producer platforms, servicing tools, workflow systems, or policy administration capabilities.
• Experience working with third-party platforms, vendor systems, APIs, integrations, or configurable enterprise software.
• Familiarity with business process modeling, data flow diagrams, BPMN, service blueprints, or journey mapping.
• Basic SQL, analytics dashboard, or data analysis experience.
• Experience supporting UAT, QA coordination, release readiness, or production support triage.
• Experience working closely with Product Managers and acting as a Product Owner or Product Owner delegate for a delivery team.
• Comfort navigating ambiguity and helping teams move from loosely defined business problems to clear delivery requirements.

Benefits

• Salaried, full-time position with full benefits package.
• Relocation assistance available.