Job Description

PeopleComms AI Product Lead

The Opportunity

At Manulife, we are creating AI-powered experiences that enable colleagues to thrive and better support our customers. Our PeopleComms Technology North Star is to make every interaction simple, personalized, connected, and intuitive. Realizing this ambition requires the right technology, data, integrations, and intelligence to operate as one connected ecosystem.

As the PeopleComms Ai Product Lead you will help shape the solutions behind this future across the broader PeopleComms experience ecosystem. You will translate colleague and business needs into scalable AI-enabled products, connect capabilities across our people technology landscape, and turn emerging possibilities into practical improvements in how colleagues work, grow, and access support.

You will look beyond initial requests to uncover the underlying need, challenge assumptions, assess trade-offs, and recommend solutions that balance colleague value, business outcomes, enterprise safeguards, and technical feasibility. Success requires curiosity, sound judgment, and the ability to influence decisions through evidence and insight.

Working across PeopleComms, technology, and enterprise partner teams, you will bring together colleague feedback, analytics, Human-Centered Design, operational insights, and emerging trends to shape priorities and continually improve the product.

Your impact will be measured by how effectively strong ideas become valuable, sustainable solutions that evolve with colleague needs.

Key Responsibilities 

• Lead discovery with Global People Services, COEs, knowledge owners, HR SMEs, and business product owners to define the business problem, desired colleague experience, and highest-value AI-enabled opportunities.
• Convert approved opportunities into clear product decisions, requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, and prioritized Jira backlog items.
• Help shape the product vision and roadmap using colleague research, journey insights, service data, business value, dependencies, and delivery feasibility.
• Make transparent product trade-offs across experience, value, operational impact, enterprise safeguards, and long-term supportability.
• Provide product demos, stakeholder updates, and executive-ready materials that explain capabilities, planned enhancements, risks, decisions, and trade-offs.
• Define outcomes and use adoption, quality, feedback, and operational data to communicate impact, identify improvements, and adjust priorities.
• Partner with the AI Solutions BA & Test Lead to enable release readiness through UAT planning, test scenario validation, defect triage, acceptance criteria alignment, and post-release learnings.
• Partner with technology, architecture, cybersecurity, privacy, legal, compliance, risk, and governance teams to build enterprise requirements into product design and delivery without losing sight of the intended colleague experience.
• Translate product intent into technical requirements and support design decisions with architects, engineers, technical teams, and experience owners across workflows, agents, integrations, prompts, knowledge grounding, and feedback mechanisms.
• Use evidence from testing, adoption, quality, and colleague feedback to support decisions to iterate, scale, pause, or retire capabilities.
• Influence communication, change readiness, training, and enablement plans by translating product changes into practical stakeholder guidance.

What You Bring

• 5+ years of progressive experience in HR technology, product management, business analysis, digital employee experience, HR operations enablement, or a related discipline.
• Strong understanding of HR functions, HR service delivery, employee lifecycle events, HR policies, and colleague support channels.
• Experience with HR technology, employee experience platforms, AI-enabled services, or digital service delivery, with the ability to move from ambiguous stakeholder needs to clear problem statements, options, recommendations, requirements, and practical product outcomes.
• Experience with Jira backlog management, story creation, acceptance criteria, backlog refinement, sprint support, and cross-functional delivery coordination.
• Experience facilitating stakeholder workshops, discovery sessions, Human-Centered Design activities, user interviews, or journey mapping.
• Experience navigating regulated enterprise environments and incorporating privacy, compliance, risk, security, architecture, and responsible AI considerations into product decisions.
• Strong product judgment, analytical thinking, problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills, including the ability to evaluate trade-offs, assess downstream impacts, recommend practical solutions, and deliver executive-ready updates and credible product demonstrations.
• Ability to influence without authority and work effectively across diverse, cross-functional teams and time zones.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ServiceNow HR Service Delivery, HR case management, employee service portals, knowledge management, or Workday.
• Experience with enterprise AI platforms such as Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, or Microsoft Copilot Studio, including agent concepts, prompt design, retrieval-augmented generation, knowledge grounding, and answer quality improvement.
• Experience shaping AI-enabled product strategy or product discovery in People Services, HR technology, employee experience, or enterprise service delivery.
• Experience supporting enterprise AI, privacy, compliance, or risk assessments and translating findings into practical product requirements and controls.
• HCD, product management, business analysis, Agile, PMP, CHRP/CHRL, or related certification.
• Post-secondary education in HR, Business, Information Technology, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Success Measures

• Priority opportunities are validated with colleagues and stakeholders, tied to measurable outcomes, and reflected in the product vision and roadmap.
• Product and technical decisions are clear, delivery teams receive decision-ready requirements, and ambiguity and rework are reduced.
• Released experiences demonstrate improved usability, adoption, quality, service effectiveness, or colleague satisfaction.
• Solutions progress in a timely way with enterprise safeguards, ownership, and dependencies addressed early.
• Post-launch evidence leads to clear decisions to iterate, scale, pause, or retire capabilities.

Why Join Us? 

• Shape the connected technology ecosystem behind AI-powered experiences across People & Communications.
• Turn emerging capabilities into sustainable products used by colleagues at enterprise scale.
• Influence how colleagues work and thrive, strengthening their ability to support our customers.

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

#LI-Hybrid

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

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. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact hr@manulife.com.

Referenced Salary Location

Waterloo, Ontario

Working Arrangement

Hybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$85,300.00 CAD - $135,300.00 CAD

Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact hr@manulife.com for the salary range for your location.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.