VP, Global Practices - Professional Services

Summary

The VP, Global Practices leads the technical and methodological backbone of Guidewire Professional Services. This leader owns the global capability, technical standards, and innovation agenda across five practices — InsuranceSuite & INOW, Data, Digital, Tech & Integration, and Business Consulting — and is accountable for ensuring Guidewire-led implementations and SI partner-led programs are delivered to the highest technical bar in the industry.

This role is a true VP on all three Guidewire PS VP framework dimensions: global in scope (every practice, every region, every product), strategy-setting in authority (defines the multi-year capability roadmap and the technical bar for Guidewire implementations worldwide), and externally facing (the senior technical voice of PS with customers, SI partners, analysts, and industry forums).

Job Description

What you’ll do

Strategic Accountabilities
 

Technical Methodology and Standards

• Own deployment of global technical methodology — architecture standards, integration patterns, product-specific implementation methods, design patterns, and code standards — for every Guidewire product implemented through PS.

• Maintain practice IP (toolkits, accelerators, reference architectures) in partnership with Services Product and Portfolio team, and ensure it is versioned, governed, and accessible to regions, GDC, and SI partners globally.

• Set the engineering rigor expected of every implementation, every region, and every partner; establish the quality bar and the enforcement mechanisms that hold to it.

• Partner with Delivery Assurance & Global PMO on integration into the end-to-end PS delivery standard, and with Global Delivery on operationalizing technical methodology into GDC and productized services.
   

Innovation and Practice Evolution

• Set the multi-year vision for how each of the five practices evolves to support new products (Pricing & Rating, Underwriting, Industry Intelligence), new delivery models, and AI-accelerated implementation.

• Lead the integration of AI methods and tools into technical practice methodology — AI-accelerated prototyping, document ingestion, intelligent automation, code-gen, and agentic workflows — in partnership with the PS AI CoE.

• Partner with Product, Platform, and AI engineering to ensure practice capability stays ahead of product roadmap commitments — and that Guidewire-led implementations are a proof point for new product capability.

• Champion the productization of repeatable services solutions (e.g., BOLT, US Admitted Lines) and own the technical quality of those offerings in partnership with Global Delivery and Product & Portfolio.
   

Talent and Capability Bench

• Build and maintain a world-class bench of architects, technical experts, and methodologists across all five practices.

• Define the technical career path and leveling expectations for practice talent — from senior consultant to principal architect — in partnership with People Solutions on the broader PS career framework.

• Drive workforce planning across practices in coordination with Global Operations and Global Delivery — anticipating skill needs 12–24 months ahead of demand.

• Drive high levels of utilization and overall productivity across practices, managing the impacts of AI on the various tasks and roles in the organization.

• Develop succession depth for each Senior Director practice lead and identify high-potential talent for cross-practice rotation.
   

Sales and Strategic Deal Support

• Serve as the senior technical voice on strategic deals — partner with GTM and regions on deal shaping, technical pre-sales, and complex proposal development.

• Provide escalation support for at-risk programs, bringing the right practice expertise to recover delivery and protect customer outcomes.

• Own the technical credibility of Professional Services with major customers, partners, and Guidewire executive leadership.
   

Partner Technical Enablement

• Partner with Delivery Assurance & Global PMO (which owns partner program quality standards) to set the technical bar that SI partners must meet to deliver Guidewire programs successfully, and align technical certification with overall partner accreditation.

• Build the practice tools, training, and reference assets that enable SI partners to scale quality delivery without Guidewire bottlenecks.

• Influence the partner ecosystem strategy — which partners to invest in, where capability gaps exist, and how to close them.
   

Practice Areas Under Leadership
 

Five Senior Director-led practices, each with its own strategic mandate:

• InsuranceSuite & INOW — global product methodology, architecture standards, and integration patterns for Guidewire's flagship core product suite.

• Data — data architecture, platform integration, ETL, analytics enablement, and Industry Intelligence implementation methodology.

• Digital — Jutro, digital experience layer, customer and agent portals, and modern front-end engineering practices.

• Tech & Integration — integration architecture, API design, cloud platform engineering, DevOps, and the cross-cutting technical foundation that all practices depend on.

• Business Consulting — insurance domain expertise, business process design, change management, and value realization advisory.
   

External Representation
 

Represents Guidewire externally as the senior technical voice of Professional Services — at customer executive briefings, customer advisory councils, SI partner technical summits, analyst engagements, and industry forums. The role is the public face of “how Guidewire implements”, with credibility to engage architects and engineers as a peer, not just a manager.

Decision Rights

• Owns: Global technical methodology, reference architectures, architecture and integration standards, practice IP (toolkits, accelerators, design patterns, code standards), engineering quality bar for implementations, technical certification standard for SI partners, technical career path and leveling for practice talent, practice headcount plan.

• Influences: Regional delivery execution (regions own customer P&L), program management and assurance methodology (owned by Delivery Assurance & Global PMO), engineering and delivery-execution methodology for GDC and productized services (owned by Global Delivery), product roadmap (owned by Product & Engineering), AI tooling roadmap (owned by AI CoE), partner commercial strategy (owned by GTM and Alliances).
   

What Success Looks Like in the First 12-18 Months

• Each practice has a refreshed, multi-year capability roadmap aligned to Guidewire's product strategy and AI direction.

• Measurable improvement in implementation quality and consistency — fewer escalations, more predictable technical outcomes, fewer rework cycles.

• AI-accelerated methods are integrated into core technical practices and produce demonstrable productivity gains as well as measurable returns – in speed, accuracy, and cost-efficiency to both Customers and Guidewire.

• The SI partner ecosystem is operating to a clearer, more rigorous technical bar with defined accreditation.

• Senior Director practice leads are operating with greater autonomy and have credible succession plans in place.

• Regions and customers experience Global Practices as a force multiplier — not a bottleneck.

What you’ll bring

Required experience

• 15+ years in technology services, software implementation, or enterprise consulting, with significant time in a practice or capability leadership role.

• Proven track record leading a global, multi-practice or multi-discipline technical organization at scale.

• Deep experience implementing complex enterprise software — ideally in insurance, financial services, or a comparable regulated industry.

• Demonstrated experience driving technical methodology and engineering rigor in cloud-based delivery models.

• Experience integrating AI and automation into delivery practices — agentic tooling, code-gen, document ingestion, intelligent automation.

• Experience operating in or alongside a major SI partner ecosystem.

Required capabilities

• Strategy-setting leadership: defines a multi-year technical vision for a global function — anticipates market and technology shifts and translates them into clear capability priorities.

• Stakeholder influence: builds alignment across executives, regions, partners, and customers — solves for the enterprise rather than for a single function.

• Technical credibility with senior architects and engineers — engages as a peer, not just a manager.

• Talent architecture: builds future-ready leaders and capability; leads transformations in skills, methodology, and ways of working.

• Executive presence: communicates with clarity, confidence, and credibility across cultures and audiences; able to represent Guidewire externally at the highest levels.

Preferred

• P&C insurance domain depth, or comparable depth in another core-systems-driven regulated industry.

• Prior CTO, Chief Architect, or VP of Engineering experience in a services or product company.

• Track record building or scaling a global practice function from earlier-stage to enterprise scale.

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $232,000 - $377,000. Your base pay will depend on your experience, skills, education, training, and location among other factors. All full-time positions or part-time roles working 30 hours or more a week at Guidewire are eligible for benefits that support their health and well-being including health, dental, and vision insurance, paid time off, and a company sponsored retirement plan. In addition, some roles may be eligible for the annual company bonus plan, commissions, and/or long term incentive awards which are contingent on a variety of factors including, but not limited to, company and employee performance.

Disability Accommodations and Guidewire’s Appeals Process. Guidewire provides accommodations to the hiring process to create a fair opportunity for candidates with disabilities to contend for open positions. Accommodation requests should be directed to Accommodations@guidewire.com. If things do not go as hoped, we invite you to use our appeals process. Guidewire promises to independently review any denied accommodation and any decision not to offer you the position. The appeals process is the same in either case. Within five business days of receiving a notice of denial of an accommodation, or receiving a notice of your non-selection for a vacancy, e-mail Accommodations@guidewire.com to make an appeal. Guidewire will assign a new decision-maker to review the request and/or hiring decision, who will then notify you in writing of a decision within 10 business days.

About Guidewire

Guidewire is the platform P&C insurers trust to engage, innovate, and grow efficiently. We combine digital, core, analytics, and AI to deliver our platform as a cloud service. More than 540+ insurers in 40 countries, from new ventures to the largest and most complex in the world, run on Guidewire.

As a partner to our customers, we continually evolve to enable their success. We are proud of our unparalleled implementation track record with 1600+ successful projects, supported by the largest R&D team and partner ecosystem in the industry. Our Marketplace provides hundreds of applications that accelerate integration, localization, and innovation.

For more information, please visit www.guidewire.com and follow us on Twitter: @Guidewire_PandC.

Guidewire Software, Inc. is proud to be an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. We are committed to an inclusive workplace, and believe that a diversity of perspectives, abilities, and cultures is a key to our success. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, citizenship, marital status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability. All offers are contingent upon passing a criminal history and other background checks where it's applicable to the position.