Manager, Production Support

**_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

**The Opportunity**

GWAM Canada Operations team is seeking a **Manager, Production Support **to support the iFast production system. The incumbent will be accountable for providing day-to-day operations support to partners on incidents and issues, inquiries, and other ad hoc tasks. **Please note that is not an IT support function. The tasks for this role are related to operations functions.**

This position is responsible for providing production support on a critical platform while working in a flexible and supportive environment.

Responsibilities**:

- Leading an engaged team of 7 Support Analysts through coaching, recognition, recruitment, and development.
- Providing leadership with day-to-day support issues affecting the iFast system and liaise with both IT and business partners on effective resolution of issues.
- Communicating effectively and regularly to a varied audience of direct reports, peers, and senior management on issues and changes affecting iFast.
- Proactively interacting and communicating with users and building strong relationships with partners in GWAM Operations, IT, Shared Services and the greater Manulife teams.
- Providing leadership and direction on security access protocols for staff and ensuring processes and approvals are adhered to in a timely manner.
- Owning and maintaining the intake model for all issues, incidents, system access, and changes and enhancements (tech or non
- tech).
- Managing risks and supervising key controls for the team.
- Using analytical and critical thinking skills to ask questions, understand business drivers and needs, and bring order to resolving raised issues to mitigate customer and business impact and coordinate our response.
- Owning resource estimation & scheduling within the team, ensuring we are in alignment with business priorities and our financial plan.

**What motivates you?**
- You obsess about customers, listen, engage and act for their benefit.
- You think big, with curiosity to discover ways to use your agile approach and enable business outcomes.
- You thrive in teams and enjoy getting things done together.
- You take ownership and build solutions, focusing on what matters.
- You do what is right, work with integrity and speak up.
- You share your humanity, helping us build a diverse and inclusive work environment for everyone.

**What we are looking for**
- Demonstrable experience in production support roles supporting an operations function.
- University degree in Finance, Accounting or MIS with a minimum of (7-10) years of related experience.
- Familiarity with financial services and products and the types of technology solutions that allow a business to handle them.
- Supporting other teams/peers with problems and helping to bring groups together to solve issues and facilitate resolution.
- Accountability - you make it happen, you own it and you find solutions.
- Customer focused; putting customer's needs first when considering how to address and resolve an issue and acting as their champion.
- Strong relationship and stakeholder management skills - building trust.
- Experience with technology and translating technical information into plain business language.
- Ability to consider operational risks and ensure effective controls are in place.
- Ability to clearly articulate business needs between technical and non-technical resources as well as present strategy and vision to senior management.
- Resilience, adaptable to change and leading others through change.
- Fast Learner; ability to pick up new ideas, concepts, technologies, and tools easily.
- Dedicated to continuous improvement, including digitization and innovation
- Familiarity with Agile principles, continuous improvement, and Lean methodologies.
- Strategic problem solver, with the ability to think conceptually beyond day-to-day business realities and to effectively consider downstream and partner impacts, while coaching the team to do the same.
- Demonstrated ability in collaborating and negotiating with various partners with multiple priorities, while maintaining composure and bringing your best-self during challenging times and interactions.
- Comfortable driving solution progress forward - even when the team doesn’t have all the answers yet.
- Ability to lead people in different locations.

**Assets**
- Knowledge of the fund life cycle and fund operations is an asset.
- Related experience with leading teams that are in a supportive role.
- Related experience in leading teams that partner well and often with IT colleagues.
- Agile experience.
- Solid understanding of financial servi