Digital Product Owner

The Digital Product Owner leads the strategy, roadmap, delivery, and continuous optimization of Manulife’s mobile app, with a focus on user-centered design and measurable improvements to adoption, engagement, and customer outcomes. The role manages a prioritized backlog and partners across teams to deliver intuitive and reliable mobile experiences.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify customer needs and refine product strategy using app analytics, customer research, usability testing, app store reviews, support feedback, and competitive analysis.
• Own the creation and continuous refinement of a mobile product roadmap aligned to strategic goals, customer needs, platform capabilities, and iOS and Android release considerations.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment on stakeholder needs, strategic goals, and roadmap priorities.
• Drive agile delivery by participating in agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, and daily standups.
• Manage backlog prioritization and make transparent trade-offs across customer value, business impact, risk, effort, technical dependencies, and regulatory requirements.
• Communicate delivery progress, dependencies, risks, and decisions to stakeholders, supporting releases that match agreed outcomes and timelines.
• Oversee user acceptance testing and partner with engineering and quality assurance teams to validate functional quality, accessibility, security, performance, and compatibility across supported devices and operating-system versions.
• Analyze mobile product performance data, including adoption, activation, engagement, retention, conversion, crash rates, latency, and customer journey completion, and use insights to guide decisions.
• Work with data and engineering teams to define and maintain mobile tracking, event taxonomy, release instrumentation, and reporting for accurate and timely analysis.
• Apply prioritization methods to keep the product backlog and roadmap aligned with customer needs, strategic objectives, delivery capacity, risk, and measurable business value.
• Create adoption and rollout plans for new mobile capabilities, including phased releases, customer communications, support readiness, monitoring, and post-launch optimization.
• Collaborate with marketing, sales, and support teams on training, communication, and demos to support successful rollouts.
• Monitor adoption metrics and gather feedback to continuously refine adoption strategies.
• Build strategic relationships with stakeholders at all levels, establish clear decision rights, and maintain alignment on product vision, priorities, dependencies, risks, and expected outcomes.
• Surface delivery risks, dependencies, and unresolved decisions early, recommend next steps, and engage leadership when escalation is required.
• Use goals, decision rights, accountability models, and measurable outcomes to guide product governance and strategic decision-making.

Required Qualifications

• Experience: 5-7+ years of product management or product ownership experience, including a consistent record of delivering and optimizing customer-facing mobile or digital products.
• Education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience required.
• Certifications: Product management or agile certifications (CSPO, SAFe, or Pragmatic Institute) are a plus.
• Skills: Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities; effective communication to influence across all levels and translate customer, business, and technical needs into product decisions.
• Mobile lifecycle: In-depth knowledge of managing the mobile product lifecycle from discovery through concept development, launch, and optimization, including app store submission, release planning, change management, adoption, and digital engagement strategies.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting customer-facing mobile products across end-to-end servicing workflows.
• Proficiency applying native mobile patterns and enterprise design systems to create consistent, accessible experiences.
• Familiarity with mobile experimentation and personalization capabilities and their impact on customer and business outcomes.
• Experience with iOS and Android product ecosystems, mobile analytics, API-based integrations, authentication, app store operations, and secure, scalable enterprise platforms.
• Experience partnering with legal, compliance, privacy, and security teams to translate regulatory and enterprise requirements into mobile capabilities, including consent, permissions, authentication, data handling, and customer communications.
• Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally with design, engineering, and marketing teams.
• Skilled at articulating product vision and aligning priorities to influence stakeholders without direct people management responsibilities.
• Strong understanding of mobile UX, accessibility, and user behavior.
• Experience combining analytics, customer research, usability testing, app store reviews, and support feedback to prioritize improvements and increase customer satisfaction.
• Demonstrated experience delivering product increments that improve business results and customer experience.
• Proven ability to collaborate across teams using Lean, Scrum, and Kanban, and tools such as Jira, to maintain alignment and visibility.
• Adept at engaging and handling stakeholders to align product vision and strategy.
• Strong ability to leverage data analytics to inform product decisions and optimize performance.
• Skilled in using tagged user interactions to uncover behavioral insights, identify friction points, and guide iterative improvements through evidence-based strategies.
• Familiarity with AI trends and technologies as a forward-thinking asset for future enhancements.
• Ability to define and drive long-term product vision and roadmap aligned with business objectives.
• Skilled in prioritizing initiatives to maximize customer and business impact.
• Proficient in analyzing industry trends, customer needs, and competitor offerings to inform product strategy.
• Ability to identify market opportunities and translate insights into differentiated solutions.

Technologies

• iOS
• Android
• Jira
• Lean
• Scrum
• Kanban
• CSPO
• SAFe
• Pragmatic Institute

Compensation and Location

• Location: Boston, MA (hybrid)
• Salary range: USD 92,475 - 160,290 per year

Benefits

• Health, dental, mental health, vision
• Short- and long-term disability
• Life and AD&D insurance coverage
• Adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits
• Employee/family assistance plans
• Retirement savings plans, including pension/401(k) savings plans and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions
• Financial education and counseling resources
• Paid time off program in the U.S. including up to 11 paid holidays, 3 personal days, 150 hours of vacation, and 40 hours of sick time (or more where required by law) each year
• Statutory leaves of absence
• Incentive programs and incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance