Senior Director, Product and Engineering - Private Investments

Summary - Northwestern Mutual is seeking an enterprise-minded product and engineering leader to define and drive the strategic technology roadmap and implementations for Private Investment Management within our Institutional Investments technology area. This high-impact role is part of our technology division and sits at the intersection of business, technology, and innovation-ideal for someone who thrives on transforming complex financial ecosystems into scalable, future-ready platforms. As Senior Director, you will shape and execute the vision for private investment management capabilities-spanning private deal lifecycle, asset servicing, IBOR/ABOR implementation, risk, performance, investment data platforms implementation and integration with the overall Institutional Investments technology/data ecosystem to accelerate scaling private assets under management.

Job Description: As Senior Director, you will work closely with senior business stakeholders across Investments, Risk, and Operations to translate strategic business goals into world-class products powered by cutting-edge technology. You'll lead with a product-first mindset, ensuring each solution delivers clear business value, seamless integration, and scalable architecture. You'll also represent engineering and product leadership in enterprise forums, guiding investment in emerging tech and championing change. Apply in-depth knowledge of asset management domain, vendor implementations, data and technology integrations and customizations, on-prem/cloud data and application technologies, architectural patterns, and frameworks to create efficient, scalable business solutions to meet Private asset management business goals. Adept at building strong relationships across Investment and Risk business organizations as well as enterprise technology partners.

Primary Duties & Responsibilities

• Define long-term product and technology strategy that aligns with private asset growth goals and AUM scaling targets
• Own product roadmaps, delivery frameworks, and business outcomes for private Investments domain across front, middle, and back-office technology areas
• Collaborates with the business to understand business drivers, strategy, and critical business outcomes for Private Asset Management business.
• Serve as the executive voice of Product & Engineering for Private Investments across the organization
• Leads the Private asset management technology and data capabilities strategy and its implementation to enable Private Deal Management, Investment Management life cycle, Portfolio management, Asset Servicing, IBOR/ABOR, Deal Analytics, Risk, and Performance Reporting capabilities.
• Champion data platform evolution-cloud-native data mesh strategy and AI enablement to investment intelligence and analytics
• Provides technical leadership to build State-of-the-art technology capabilities for the Private asset management business, spearhead vendor product implementations (e.g., eFront Blackrock) and integrations with legacy and modern ecosystems and guide multi-functional teams through solution design and drive its execution to agile delivery.
• Partner with senior leadership to influence strategic planning and investment priorities for private Investments area
• Create strong alignment across Technology, Business, and Vendor partners in the private investments space-driving efficiency and collaboration
• Leads the talent strategy, build a high-performing culture, develop future product and engineering leaders and embraces NM's behaviors in bringing the best out of people.
• Leads with enterprise vision and manages budgets for optimal business results
• Demonstrates a strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive and instills these behaviors within the team.

Qualifications:

• Must have 10+ years of experience in software engineering and product strategy leadership roles with domain expertise in financial services and investment/asset management area
• Must have experience in leading through multiple engineering and product teams and their respective leads/managers.
• Must have a product-focused mindset and start-up spirit to execute and deliver business outcomes-experience with growing business relationships.
• Must have experience with vendor platform implementations, customizations, integrations, implementing large-scale distributed technology and data solutions (on-prem and cloud), and in-house software platform implementations to achieve business outcomes.
• Prior hands-on proficiency with various architecture concepts, application design, cloud-native architectures (AWS), cloud data platforms (Snowflake), Front end frameworks will be beneficial in this role
• Proven experience designing and scaling technology platforms for private/public investments, trading, risk, and portfolio analytics
• Track record of modernizing legacy systems and harmonizing vendor, legacy, and proprietary applications
• Experience providing direct constructive feedback and conducting periodic performance reviews for the team.
• Ability to learn and teach others and employs an organic approach to upskill broader organization.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, shape strategy, and lead transformation across organizational boundaries
• Strong communication and storytelling skills across executive, business, and technical stakeholders
• Demonstrated passion for product excellence, innovation, and creating a culture of ownership
• Can influence technology or business leaders on impactful issues and decisions. Takes pride in bringing people together for a higher purpose despite ambiguity and organizational boundaries.
• Strong communication skills at all levels (verbal and written). Ability to successfully communicate to technical and non-technical audiences in varying forms and all levels of detail.
• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience

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Compensation Range:

Pay Range - End:

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Northwestern Mutual is an equal opportunity employer who welcomes and encourages diversity in the workforce. We are committed to creating and maintaining an environment in which each employee can contribute creative ideas, seek challenges, assume leadership and continue to focus on meeting and exceeding business and personal objectives.

We're excited about the potential people bring to Northwestern Mutual. You can grow your career here while enjoying first-class perks, benefits, and our commitment to a culture of belonging.

• Flexible work schedules
• Concierge service
• Comprehensive benefits
• Employee resource groups