Senior Product Owner, Mobile

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Locations: Toronto, Ontario; Waterloo, Ontario

Time Type: Full time

Posted on: Posted Yesterday

Job Requisition ID: JR24070905

We are a leading financial services provider committed to making decisions easier and lives better for our customers and colleagues around the world. From our environmental initiatives to our community investments, we lead with values throughout our business. To help us stand out, we help you step up, because when colleagues are healthy, respected and meaningfully challenged, we all thrive.

Working Arrangement: Hybrid

Job Description: We are looking for a Senior Product Owner to lead our mobile squad for Manulife Bank’s Android and iOS apps. Working in a fast-paced, changing environment where every day brings something new and innovative ideas are encouraged, Manulife Bank’s Delivery team is seeking a passionate Product Owner who can drive our mobile banking transformation.

You will be responsible for leading a squad who is passionate about developing great mobile experiences that provide value to customers. You are naturally curious, have a love for data and have a proven track record at making data driven decisions. You take initiative and are experienced in building platform capability roadmaps.

You will collaborate with cross-functional teams to translate business and customer needs into innovative digital banking solutions. You will leverage your technical background to lead product development, ensuring alignment with our digital strategy and customer needs. The Product Owner contributes to the realization of Value Stream strategy, vision, and OKRs by aligning and prioritizing business goals with actionable results.

Key Accountabilities:

• Define and communicate the product vision and roadmap to the squad, stakeholders, and technology partners.
• Define and prioritize product features and enhancements based on customer needs, market trends, and business priorities.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather and prioritize product requirements, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Work closely with the squads and FinTech partners to ensure timely delivery of product features and improvements.
• Lead PI Planning activities ensuring prioritized features are refined and sized to deliver on commitments.
• Leverage your deep technology background to lead the squad members, focusing on leveraging technology for creative problem solving.
• Possess a foundational understanding of the technologies being used by the engineering team such as APIs, front end applications, and vendor integrations for effective communication and decision making.
• Conduct market research and analysis to identify customer needs, market trends, and competitive landscape.
• Define and supervise key product metrics and KPIs to measure product success and identify areas for improvement.
• Lead and prioritize the product backlog, ensuring that it aligns with the product vision and business goals.
• Engage with team members to gather feedback and ensure alignment on product priorities and direction.
• Identify trade-offs to ensure alignment on priorities between the team and partners.
• Lead product demonstrations, gather feedback, and iterate on product features and functionality.
• Act as the primary point of contact for stakeholders, providing regular updates on project status, progress, and any changes to priorities.
• Manage expectations and negotiate priorities across different business units and stakeholders.
• Participate in release planning and sprint planning sessions, ensuring that team commitments align with product goals.
• Monitor and track key performance indicators (KPIs) and user metrics to measure the success of product features and iterate as necessary.

Backlog Management:

• Lead the squad in ensuring value creation for the business, customers, and end-users by leading the squad backlog and ensuring that the highest value work is always being implemented.
• Work with the squad to define hypotheses, run experiments (surveys, concept testing, analytics tools, A/B testing), and analyze data to make decisions on user stories that influence the direction of delivery.
• Build and groom the backlog ensuring it’s clear and understood by all squad members.
• Incorporate feedback from team member demos, interviews, user research, and engineering into the squad backlog.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to gather requirements, refine user stories, and ensure they are actionable for development.
• Accept completed user stories of the squad by ensuring all stories meet the definition of done.

Squad Alignment & Communication:

• Lead a high-performing squad, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning. Set clear objectives, provide guidance, mentorship, and support to enable individual and team success.
• Provide strategic team leadership in leading delivery of business outcome-focused work.
• Encourage and empower the team and lead without direct authority. Ability to gauge how the team is doing and drive the necessary actions to improve.
• Effective communication to clearly articulate priorities to the team and stakeholders and create strong relationships with team members.
• Bring a coaching attitude to scaled agile practices and banking product knowledge.
• Encourage innovation within the team by helping establish a culture that nurtures creativity, facilitate brainstorming sessions, and rapidly prototype innovative ideas to stay ahead of market trends.

Requirements:

• Proven experience as a Product Owner or similar role in agile software development, specifically with mobile applications and preferably in the banking or fintech industry.
• Above average technical background.
• Ability to challenge a team and drive for superior results.
• A natural curiosity, and the ability to dig deeper to find hidden insights and creative solutions and challenge norms.
• Strong understanding of good UX/UI principles and mobile practices.
• Understanding of APIs and a strong comprehension of how to leverage APIs for creative solutions.
• Deep understanding of the mobile landscape and how users of mobile applications differ from web app users.
• Strong understanding of mobile app development processes, UX/UI design principles, and agile methodologies.
• Experience with effective A/B testing.
• Skilled at leveraging various forms of feedback to drive design and experiences.
• Analytical mindset with a data-driven approach to decision-making and problem-solving.
• A flair for turning complex business problems into successful digital experiences.
• Experience using agile methodologies and human-centered design principles to deliver value in a fast-paced, matrixed environment.
• Both big picture thinking and detail-oriented doing.
• Experienced in leveraging technology to tackle business problems.
• Degree in computer science, information technology, or business is an asset.
• Experience using JIRA and Confluence.
• Ability to understand the trade-offs between a technical target state and near-term deliverables.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to effectively collaborate with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What can we offer you?

• A competitive salary and benefits package.
• A growth trajectory that extends upward and outward, encouraging you to follow your passions and learn new skills.
• A focus on growing your career path with us.
• Flexible work policies and strong work-life balance.
• Professional development and leadership opportunities.

Our commitment to you:

• Values-first culture: We lead with our Values every day and bring them to life together.
• Boundless opportunity: We create opportunities to learn and grow at every stage of your career.
• Continuous innovation: We invite you to help redefine the future of financial services.
• Delivering the promise of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: We foster an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives.
• Championing Corporate Citizenship: We build a business that benefits all stakeholders and has a positive social and environmental impact.

Location: Primary Location- Toronto, Secondary Location - Waterloo

#LI-Hybrid

About Manulife and John Hancock:

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Asia, Canada, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. We provide financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups, and institutions.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop, and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals.

Salary & Benefits:

The annual base salary for this role is listed below.

Primary Location: Toronto, Ontario

Salary range is expected to be between: $92,190.00 CAD - $171,210.00 CAD