Product Owner

The Product Owner at Manulife partners with Product Managers, Business Analysts, and key stakeholders to translate strategic priorities into Agile delivery plans for the US Retirement business. The role is responsible for backlog ownership and prioritization, shaping requirements and quality through delivery, and connecting strategy to measurable outcomes.

Responsibilities

• Own and prioritize the squad backlog, converting business needs into clear user stories with detailed acceptance criteria.
• Maintain user story readiness by ensuring stories are well-defined, properly scoped, and prepared for development team intake.
• Work closely with stakeholders, UX/Design, Operations, and engineering teams to refine requirements and deliver customer-centric solutions.
• Support Agile ceremonies, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives, providing ongoing clarification to delivery teams.
• Define test scenarios and acceptance criteria, coordinate with QA, and participate in User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to support quality delivery.
• Serve as the primary liaison between business stakeholders and the delivery team, managing priorities, risks, dependencies, and issue resolution.
• Lead or support initiatives such as business process transformation, platform implementations, plan conversions, and data migration efforts, ensuring business requirements and operational impacts are understood.
• Analyze business processes, data flows, operational impacts, and cross-functional dependencies to support solution delivery and implementation readiness.
• Coordinate testing, validation, deployment readiness, and post-implementation support activities to help ensure successful business outcomes.
• Communicate progress, risks, decisions, and delivery milestones clearly and consistently.
• Drive continuous improvement using feedback, metrics, lessons learned, and iterative delivery practices.

Requirements

• Minimum 5 years of experience in product, business analysis, operations, project delivery, or a related business function.
• At least 2+ years supporting Agile or SAFe teams as a Product Owner, Business Analyst, or similar role.
• Experience owning and prioritizing backlogs, developing user stories, and supporting end-to-end delivery.
• Strong stakeholder management, communication, facilitation, and problem-solving capabilities.
• Demonstrated ability to manage complex business and technology dependencies across multiple teams.
• Experience supporting requirements gathering, UAT, release readiness, implementation, and post-production support.
• Experience supporting business transformation, platform modernization, conversion, migration, or implementation initiatives is preferred.
• Knowledge of business process analysis, operational impacts, data mapping, data validation, reconciliation, and implementation readiness activities is a plus.

Benefits

• Incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.
• Health insurance, dental insurance, mental health, and vision.
• Short- and long-term disability, plus life and AD&D insurance coverage.
• Adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits.
• Employee and 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 in the U.S., including up to 11 paid holidays, 3 personal days, 150 hours of vacation, and 40 hours of sick time each year (or more where required by law).
• Statutory leaves of absence.

Role Details

• Location: Massachusetts (remote), USA
• Working arrangement: Remote
• Salary range: USD 92,475 to USD 160,290 per year
• Minimum experience: 5 years
• Full-time: Yes