Senior Director, AI Strategy, Products & Platform

The Director, AI Products & Platform will build and scale reusable AI capabilities across Global Operations — accelerating the path from development to production and enabling consistent adoption across segments and countries. You will own the AI product roadmap and features for what gets built on the Operations AI platform, define platform standards, and enable AI capabilities to scale effectively across 14 countries. You will partner closely with Enterprise AI and Technology teams to ensure solutions are safe, reliable, and measurable.

Position Responsibilities:  

• AI Product Ownership: Own AI product roadmaps and feature priorities, balancing value, feasibility, dependencies, and adoption readiness.
• First-Principles Redesign: Apply first-principles thinking to identify opportunities for AI-driven process transformation beyond incremental automation.
• Vendor & Foundation Model Advisory: Advise on model and vendor selection, assessing capability, cost, risk, and business fit.
• Reusable Capability Delivery: Deliver scalable AI capabilities, including document intelligence, knowledge assistants, and agent-enabled workflows.
• Democratization Across 14 Countries: Develop standards, playbooks, and reference architectures to accelerate AI adoption and consistency globally.
• Platform Standards: Establish reusable APIs, deployment templates, evaluation frameworks, and integration patterns to streamline delivery.
• Production Readiness & Reliability: Coordinate technical, operational, and governance readiness while improving deployment reliability.
• Adoption & Telemetry: Define success metrics and leverage telemetry to drive adoption, performance, and continuous improvement.
• Transformation Roadmaps: Translate strategy into prioritized, multi-quarter roadmaps aligned to business value and delivery readiness.
• Standards & Playbooks: Maintain common frameworks for intake, value assessment, measurement, and adoption planning.
• AI-Augmented Ways of Working: Promote AI-first practices, leveraging agents and enterprise AI tools to accelerate reporting, strategy, and presentation development.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Translate business needs into product requirements, manage dependencies, and support release planning and execution.

Required Qualifications: 

• 8+ years of experience in product management, platform delivery, AI/ML engineering, or technology programs with demonstrated production delivery outcomes.
• Strong understanding of AI platforms and modern AI solution patterns, including evaluation and monitoring considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to own product roadmaps and make sequencing decisions across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Ability to lead across teams without direct authority; strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfort working in ambiguity and driving structured execution across multiple concurrent workstreams.
• Hands-on experience with at least one: cloud-native AI/ML platforms, large language model integration (RAG, agents, evaluation), or intelligent document processing at enterprise scale.
• Demonstrated hands-on use of AI productivity tools and agentic workflows to accelerate research, synthesis, reporting, or content generation in a professional context.

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience with platform adoption measurement, reusable component catalogs, and internal team enablement.
• Familiarity with MLOps/LLMOps, CI/CD, observability, and model governance practices.
• Understanding of evaluation frameworks for LLM-based systems (accuracy, groundedness, latency, cost).
• Experience with multi-geography or multi-segment AI rollouts and democratization of AI capabilities.
• Financial services or regulated industry experience strongly preferred.

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 [email protected].

Referenced Salary Location

Toronto, OntarioHybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$113,260.00 CAD - $210,340.00 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.