Guidewire Practice Leader (InsuranceSuite & InsuranceNow)
Role Summary
The Guidewire Practice Leader is accountable for defining, governing, and evangelizing endtoend solution architecture for Guidewire platformsInsuranceSuite (PolicyCenter, ClaimCenter, BillingCenter, DataHub/InfoCenter, Digital/Jutro) and InsuranceNowensuring scalable, secure, cloudready solutions that meet P&C insurance business outcomes. The role bridges business and technology, guiding product configuration, custom extensions, integrations, data, and nonfunctional requirements (NFRs), while aligning with enterprise architecture standards and the Guidewire Cloud Platform operating model.
Key Responsibilities
1) Solution Architecture & Design
- Lead architecture for new implementations, transformations, upgrades, and cloud migrations across InsuranceSuite and InsuranceNow.
- Translate business capabilities (UW, rating, issuance, billing, collections, claims FNOL through settlement) into target architectures and solution roadmaps.
- Define crossdomain architecture: policy, billing, claims, data/analytics, digital/portals, and ecosystem integrations.
- Establish architectural principles, patterns, and guardrails (configuration-first design, extension strategy, event-driven integrations, domain-driven data contracts).
- Produce and own architecture artifacts: context diagrams, logical and physical views, data flow diagrams, integration catalogs, sequence diagrams, and NFR traceability.
2) Guidewire Platform Expertise (InsuranceSuite)
- Architect solutions leveraging PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, and DataHub/InfoCenter.
- Guide configuration vs. customization decisions; govern Gosu extensions, product model changes, rating configuration, and workflow orchestration.
- Design digital experiences using Guidewire Jutro (React) and Digital Portals (Producer, Customer, Service Rep).
- Define and enforce integration strategies (REST APIs, messaging, events/Kafka, ESB/MuleSoft, ETL to DWH, Cloud Data Access).
- Govern Guidewire Cloud Platform (GCP) environment strategy: tenants, regions, environments, CI/CD, CloudOps, observability, and incident response.
3) Guidewire InsuranceNow Expertise
- Architect endtoend solutions on InsuranceNow (allinone, cloudnative) including product configuration, rating, workflows, documents, forms, and integrations.
- Optimize for SMB/mid-market insurer needs: faster time to market, prebuilt accelerators, SaaS constraints, and release cadence.
- Define integration approaches with PASadjacent systems (payments, document management, CRM, DWH, reporting) using InsuranceNow APIs/events and iPaaS patterns.
- Balance suite vs. platform extension tradeoffs within InsuranceNow's guardrails to maintain upgradeability and SaaS compliance.
4) Data, Analytics & Reporting
- Design data flows across operational stores, DataHub, InfoCenter, and enterprise DWH/Lakehouse.
- Govern reporting, BI/analytics (loss triangles, premium/claims KPIs, regulatory/statutory reporting), and Cloud Data Access (CDA).
- Define master data strategies (party, policy, product, coverage) and data lineage, retention, and privacy controls.
5) Cloud, DevOps, Security & NFRs
- Define cloud architectures (Guidewire Cloud Platform on AWS/Azure) with clear NFRs: performance, scalability, resiliency, DR/RTO/RPO, and cost efficiency.
- Architect CI/CD pipelines, environment promotion, test automation, and release governance; ensure blue/green or canary strategies where applicable.
- Implement security architecture: IAM, SSO/OAuth2/OIDC, rolebased access, data encryption (at rest/in transit), secrets management, and compliance (PCI/PII/GDPR).
- Establish SRE/observability: logging, metrics, tracing, alerting, and error budgets aligned to platform SLAs.
6) Delivery Governance & Stakeholder Leadership
- Serve as Design Authority; chair architecture reviews and approve solution designs, integration specs, and technical debt management plans.
- Partner with product owners, enterprise architects, engineering leads, QA, and InfoSec; conduct workshops and technical walkthroughs.
- Provide estimates, phasing plans, release strategies, and migration cutover designs; identify risks and define mitigations early.
- Mentor teams on Guidewire best practices, extension discipline, coding standards (Gosu), and cloud operating model maturity.
Required Skills & Experience
Guidewire Expertise
- InsuranceSuite: Deep hands-on architecture across PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, DataHub/InfoCenter, and Digital/Jutro.
- InsuranceNow: Proven experience designing and delivering InsuranceNow implementations, including product/rating/workflow configuration and SaaS-compliant integrations.
- Experience with Guidewire upgrades (major/minor), cloud migrations, and multiLOB/multijurisdiction implementations.
Technical Skills
- Programming/scripting: Gosu, Java, JavaScript/TypeScript (for Jutro), SQL.
- Integrations: REST/SOAP, event streaming (Kafka), ESB/iPaaS (MuleSoft, Dell Boomi), file/ETL patterns.
- Cloud & DevOps: AWS/Azure services, containerization basics, CI/CD (Azure DevOps/GitHub Actions/Jenkins), IaC (Terraform), observability (CloudWatch/AppInsights).
- Data & Reporting: dimensional modeling, ETL to DWH/lakehouse, Cloud Data Access (CDA), regulatory/statutory reporting.
- Security: OAuth2/OIDC, SSO, TLS, KMS, secrets management, leastprivilege designs.
Insurance Domain Knowledge
- Strong P&C domain across personal/commercial lines: rating, underwriting, endorsements, issuance, billing & collections, claims (FNOL to subrogation). Knowledge of North America and ANZ geographies required.
- Knowledge of regulatory/compliance (GDPR/PII, IFRS, APRA/ASIC if ANZ, NAIC if US) and marketspecific practices (brokers, agents, direct).
Qualifications
- Bachelor's/Master's in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
- 15+ years in enterprise software with 8+ years in Guidewire implementations.
- Guidewire certifications (any of PolicyCenter, BillingCenter, ClaimCenter, DataHub/InfoCenter, Digital/Jutro) strongly preferred.
- InsuranceNow implementation or configuration certifications highly desirable.
- Cloud certifications (AWS/Azure) and SAFe/Agile certifications are a plus.
Desirable Attributes
- Architecture leadership in complex, multivendor, multiteam programs.
- Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and facilitation skills.
- Pragmatic decisionmakingbalancing product guardrails, speed, and total cost of ownership.
- Strong problemsolving; bias toward standardization, reuse, and upgradeable designs.
Success Measures (KPIs)
- Timetomarket and upgradeability achieved through configurationfirst designs.
- Stable, performant platforms meeting SLA/SLOs and NFR targets (latency, throughput, resilience).
- Reduction in custom code and technical debt, measurable reuse of integration patterns and components.
- High business adoption and satisfaction; reduction in production incidents and faster release cadence.
- Data accuracy and completeness across DataHub/InfoCenter/DWH, supporting regulatory reporting and analytics.
