Innovation Architect

The Innovation Architect is responsible for identifying, shaping, and advancing innovation opportunities from ideation to execution-ready concepts. This role conducts market and competitor research, synthesizes internal and external insights, and manages the front half of the innovation pipeline- primary responsibility for facilitating concepts through the innovation wheel from ideation through validation and prototyping-until they are ready for a formal go/no-go decision. The Innovation Architect translates ambiguous market signals and business needs into clear, testable concepts, supporting evidence-based prioritization and investment decisions.

Key Responsibilities

Market & Opportunity Intelligence

• Conduct market research, competitive analysis, and trend monitoring to identify relevant opportunities and threats.

• Synthesize external findings with internal insights from teams and client engagements.

• Identify opportunity spaces aligned to strategic priorities and articulate why they matter (client value, differentiation, feasibility).

Idea Sourcing & Intake

• Source ideas from the Innovation Council, internal teams, client engagements, RFPs, and market insights.

• Manage the end-to-end intake and triage process, including documentation, routing, and initial evaluation.

• Assess ideas for relevance, differentiation, and feasibility at an early stage.

• Ensure consistent documentation and evaluation across all submissions and findings.

Use Case & Concept Definition

• Define structured use cases, including personas, pain points, frequency/impact, current solution analysis, and key constraints.

• Translate ambiguous ideas into testable concepts with clear problem statements, hypotheses, and success measures.

• Produce concise concept artifacts that enable stakeholder alignment and fast decision-making.

Innovation Wheel Facilitation

• Own the day-to-day project management while facilitating Facilitate concepts through the innovation wheel in strong partnership with business, design, product, and technical leaders.

• Coordinate desirability, feasibility, and viability validation activities and ensure appropriate rigor at each stage.

• Run the operating cadence for each concept (kickoffs, working sessions, stakeholder check-ins, and stage-gate reviews), including agendas, notes, action items, and decision capture.

• Track progress and manage risks/issues (blockers, resourcing gaps, decision delays, scope creep), escalating proactively to maintain momentum and clarity.

• Ensure stage-gate readiness by confirming required evidence and artifacts are completed to standard at each stage (problem statement, use case, validation findings, prototype outputs, feasibility considerations, and decision materials).

• Maintain portfolio visibility across in-flight concepts by reporting status, timelines, upcoming gates, risks, and support needed to the Innovation Lead and governance stakeholders.

• Drive timely progression and closure by enforcing timeboxes, aligning stakeholders on next steps, and ensuring concepts either advance with clear ownership or are paused/closed with documented rationale.

• Ensure required materials and artifacts are produced at each stage to support governance and progression.

Prototyping & Validation Support

• Create or facilitate low- to mid-fidelity prototypes to support concept testing.

• Coordinate validation activities with end users, clients, and/or internal stakeholders to gather actionable feedback.

• Capture insights and translate learnings into iterations, recommendations, and go/no-go inputs.

Business Case Development

• Develop preliminary business cases to support go/no-go decisions (value hypothesis, target users, benefits, risks, and directional sizing).

• Partner with the Innovation Lead on final business case development and presentation-ready decision materials.

Thought Leadership & External Engagement

• Support conference planning and leadership engagement by translating innovation work into market-facing narratives and materials.

• Contribute to Mercer's innovation visibility through succinct storytelling of problems, solutions, and outcomes.

Additional Skills & Experiences

• Market Research & Synthesis: Strong ability to conduct competitive research, identify patterns, and convert findings into crisp opportunity narratives.

• Structured Problem Solving: Proven skill in shaping ambiguous problems into actionable, testable concepts and use cases.

• Facilitation & Collaboration: Experience facilitating cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder workshops across business and technology teams.

• Concept Communication: Ability to create clear artifacts (one-pagers, use cases, problem statements, concept briefs) that accelerate alignment and decisions. Confidence presenting concepts to internal and external stakeholders.

• User-Centered Validation: Familiarity with lightweight validation methods (interviews, surveys, prototype tests) and integrating feedback into iterations.

• Influence in a Matrix: Demonstrated success driving progress without direct authority in a complex organization.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in innovation, strategy, product, consulting, or market research roles.

• Experience working in the broader healthcare and/or health benefit consulting industry

• Strong experience in market research, competitive analysis, and insight synthesis.

• Demonstrated ability to structure ambiguous problem statements into actionable concepts and use cases.

• Experience facilitating cross-functional collaboration, workshops, and concept progression activities.

• Nice to have: experience in service design and/or prototyping

Why Join Us

This role turns market signals and internal insights into well-formed, evidence-backed innovation concepts ready for executive decision-making. As Innovation Architect, you will shape and progress opportunities through structured intake, use-case definition, validation support, and early business case development-helping Mercer US H&B focus innovation investment where it can create differentiated client value and measurable impact.

Mercer is a business of Marsh (NYSE: MRSH), a global leader in risk, reinsurance and capital, people and investments, and management consulting, advising clients in 130 countries. With annual revenue of over $27 billion and more than 95,000 colleagues, Marsh helps build the confidence to thrive through the power of perspective. For more information about Mercer, visit mercer.com, or follow us on LinkedIn and X.

Marsh is committed to embracing a diverse, inclusive and flexible work environment. We aim to attract and retain the best people and embrace diversity of age background, disability, ethnic origin, family duties, gender orientation or expression, marital status, nationality, parental status, personal or social status, political affiliation, race, religion and beliefs, sex/gender, sexual orientation or expression, skin color, veteran status (including protected veterans), or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. If you have a need that requires accommodation, please let us know by contacting reasonableaccommodations@mmc.com.

Marsh is committed to hybrid work, which includes the flexibility of working remotely and the collaboration, connections and professional development benefits of working together in the office. All Marsh colleagues are expected to be in their local office or working onsite with clients at least three days per week. Office-based teams will identify at least one "anchor day" per week on which their full team will be together in person.

The applicable base salary range for this role is $115,200 to $230,400.

The base pay offered will be determined on factors such as experience, skills, training, location, certifications, education, and any applicable minimum wage requirements. Decisions will be determined on a case-by-case basis. In addition to the base salary, this position may be eligible for performance-based incentives.

We are excited to offer a competitive total rewards package which includes health and welfare benefits, tuition assistance, 401K savings and other retirement programs as well as employee assistance programs.