Director, Life Underwriting

About Ethos:

Ethos (Nasdaq: $LIFE) is a leading life insurance technology company on a mission to protect families by democratizing access to life insurance and empowering agents at scale. With its robust three-sided technology platform, Ethos is transforming the life insurance experience for consumers, agents, and carriers alike. Ethos offers instant, accessible products and a seamless online process that requires no medical exams and just a few health questions; it eliminates traditional barriers, making it easier than ever for everyone to protect their families. Ethos is redefining how life insurance is bought, sold, and underwritten.

About the Role:

We are looking for a Director, Life Underwriting to lead our underwriting production function, with a strong emphasis on team performance, people development, and operational excellence. This role is accountable for ensuring consistent, high-quality underwriting output while building and developing a high-performing, scalable team that meets production targets, turnaround time (TAT), and service level agreement (SLA) commitments.

This is a hands-on leadership role for someone who can balance strategic oversight with day-to-day operational rigor, and who is equally comfortable coaching underwriters as they are managing dashboards and production metrics. You will be a champion of AI-enabled ways of working, continuously looking for ways to remove manual effort, shorten cycle times, and raise the productivity of every team member.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• UW Production & Quality: Own underwriting production output, ensuring volume and quality targets are met.
• UW Production & Quality: Identify and recommend automation opportunities (straight-through processing, AI-assisted case review) to increase throughput without compromising quality.
• UW Production & Quality: Partner with Underwriting Auditors to track audit findings and drive corrective action.
• UW Production & Quality: Ensure decisions align with guidelines, risk appetite, and regulations.
• People Development: Lead and grow a team of underwriters and supervisors/managers.
• People Development: Oversee onboarding/training programs and build career development pathways.
• People Development: Drive a coaching culture and strong team retention.
• Performance Management: Establish clear, measurable performance standards for underwriters and supervisors across productivity, set productivity targets, quality standards, TAT, and compliance.
• Performance Management: Drive performance against TAT/SLA targets across case types.
• Performance Management: Build reporting to track real-time production and SLA performance.
• Performance Management: Resolve issues causing breaches; coordinate with Sales/Ops/Claims on escalations.
• Performance Management: Conduct regular performance reviews, using audit findings and production data to identify trends and root causes of underperformance.
• Performance Management: Lead structured, constructive conversations on performance gaps, including formal Performance Improvement Plans where warranted.
• Performance Management: Ensure consistency in performance evaluation standards across teams, especially in distributed/cross-geography setups.
• Performance Management: Recognize and reward high performers to reinforce a strong performance culture alongside accountability.
• Team & Org Leadership: Build and scale teams as business needs grow.
• Team & Org Leadership: Manage capacity planning against volume forecasts.
• Team & Org Leadership: Ensure consistency in UW practices across distributed teams.
• Team & Org Leadership: Foster a culture of continuous improvement, experimentation, and openness to new technology.
• Stakeholder Management: Serve as key UW point of contact for Sales, Operations, Compliance, and Engineering.
• Stakeholder Management: Represent UW in cross-functional meetings; influence stakeholders on process changes using data.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 15+ years in Life Insurance Underwriting, with strong people management experience.
• Proven track record managing production to standards at scale.
• Proven experience managing large teams (80/100+ members).
• Experience building/leading UW teams (direct and/or cross-geography).
• Strong technical UW knowledge, data-driven decision-making, and stakeholder influencing and communication skills.
• Bachelor's degree required; UW certifications (LOMA, FALU) are preferred.