Product Owner

**_Are you looking for a supportive, collaborative workplace with great teams and inspiring leaders? You’ve come to the right place. We’re looking for ambitious people who share our values and want to make every day better for people around the world. If this sounds like you, and the career below sounds exciting, we’d like to hear from you. _**

**Working Arrangement**

Hybrid

Job Posting Description

**Who are we?**

Manulife is on a journey to become a customer obsessed, digital leader; we’re transforming, and we need you Individual Insurance Canada (IIC) has designed the broadest product shelf and offer the most innovative tools to help our customers every step of the way. We have a clear vision of our strategy, and the result will be exceptional experiences for our customers.

The Individual Insurance Product Owners are part of the IIC Continuous Delivery team responsible to establish our go-forward Agile organization on our quest to achieve our Mission: “ _Decisions made easier. Lives made better _”.

**What role will I play?**

As a Product Owner within the Affinity Life and Health & Dental Value-Stream, you will work closely with a team of Product Owners, delivery teams and Business partners to deliver insurance products, services and capabilities to our customers and advisors. This is a fast paced, changing environment where every day brings something new, and innovative ideas are encouraged. Your contributions will help evolve the customer and advisor experience through simplified and intuitive design; putting the client’s needs first by providing the right tools and solutions to facilitate a positive digital experience.

In our quest to enhance and deliver new digital and self-service capabilities for our customers and advisors, your collaborative nature will bring together internal players from various functions including, but not limited to Technology, Sales, Marketing, Compliance and Operations. You possess an excellent balance of analytical, communication, and leadership skills and are comfortable challenging others to continually improve our offering.

As a Product Owner, you will be responsible for:

- defining, planning and delivery of products, services and capabilities for features/epics
- explaining the ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of the features to the delivery squad and stakeholders through use of storyboards and other tools available
- create and refine user stories in collaboration with stakeholders while maintaining and continuously prioritizing product and release backlog
- clearly identifying acceptance criteria, assumptions, risks and dependencies along with leading the acceptance testing in conjunction with business partners
- conducting analysis and incorporate findings, feedback and insights from customer and business research
- facilitating discussions with stakeholders regarding features in development, obtaining feedback, to make decisions on MVP and adjust user stories accordingly to close the feedback loop with stakeholders
- developing and maintaining appropriate tracking and reporting of features post-launch to evaluate future investment

**Who are you?**
- You don’t like to sit idle, and enjoy working in fast-paced environments - you tend to gravitate to roles where every day can present something new
- You obsess about customers, seeking ways to listen, engage and act for their benefit
- You think big, with a constant curiosity to discover ways to use an agile mindset and enable the business to achieve its outcomes
- You thrive in teams establishing relationships, believing getting it done together drives innovation
- You take ownership with an entrepreneurial mindset that builds solutions, focusing on what matters
- You do what is right, working with integrity and speaking out when needed
- You share your humanity, building a diverse and inclusive work environment for everyone

**Competencies required for the role**
- 2-5 years of relevant work experience
- Knowledge and experience working with scrum/agile framework along with common tools such as Confluence, JIRA, release planning
- Experience working in the Insurance industry
- Strong organizational and problem-solving skills while working in a face-paced environment with changing priorities
- Excellent verbal & written communication skills including the ability to clearly articulate business needs to technical resources
- Ability to influence and resolve conflict without having direct authority; confidence to raise issues as required
- Ability to foster positive relationships and effectively lead various sized groups to attain collaborative and innovative solutions
- Proactively identify potential problems to prevent unfavorable outcomes
- Adaptable and great aptitude for change; reprioritize conflicting workloads and deliverables

**What we bring**
- A bold ambition and set of goals to drive transformation in our industry
- A leadership team dedicated to your growth and success
- Our best, everyday