We are seeking an experienced Digital Product Owner to lead the strategy, roadmap, delivery, and ongoing optimization of our mobile app. In this role, you will champion user-centered design while balancing customer needs, business priorities, technical feasibility, security, and regulatory requirements. You will translate insights into a prioritized backlog, deliver measurable value through iterative releases, and partner with design, engineering, analytics, marketing, operations, and compliance teams to create intuitive, reliable mobile experiences. Your leadership will improve adoption, engagement, and customer outcomes across the app.
Position Responsibilities:
Product Discovery and Strategy:
- Use app analytics, customer research, usability testing, app store reviews, support feedback, and competitive analysis to identify customer needs and refine product strategy.
- Lead the creation and continuous refinement of a mobile product roadmap aligned with strategic goals, customer needs, platform capabilities, and iOS and Android release considerations.
- Foster collaboration with cross-functional teams to ensure a deep understanding of stakeholder needs and alignment with strategic goals and roadmap priorities.
Product Delivery and Implementation:
- Actively engage in agile ceremonies, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, and daily standups, to drive effective product delivery.
- Own backlog prioritization and make transparent trade-offs across customer value, business impact, risk, effort, technical dependencies, and regulatory requirements to support efficient product delivery.
- Communicate delivery progress, dependencies, risks, and decisions to stakeholders, and work with cross-functional teams to keep releases aligned with 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.
Data-Driven Insights and Strategic Decisions:
- Analyze mobile product data to monitor adoption, activation, engagement, retention, conversion, crash rates, latency, and customer journey completion; identify trends and use findings to guide product decisions.
- Partner with data and engineering teams to define and maintain mobile tracking, event taxonomy, release instrumentation, and reporting needed for accurate and timely analysis.
- Apply appropriate prioritization methods to keep the product backlog and roadmap aligned with customer needs, strategic objectives, delivery capacity, risk, and measurable business value.
Change Management and Go-to-Market Activities:
- Develop 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 to deliver effective training, communication, and demos.
- Monitor adoption metrics and gather feedback to continuously refine product adoption strategies.
Stakeholder Alignment:
- 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 a path forward and engage leadership when escalation is required.
- Use clear 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. Product management or agile certifications, such as CSPO, SAFe, or Pragmatic Institute credentials, are a plus.
- Skills: Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities for navigating complex mobile product challenges. Effective communicator with the ability to influence across all levels, align cross-functional teams, and translate customer, business, and technical needs into clear product decisions.
- Product Lifecycle: In-depth knowledge of managing the mobile product lifecycle from discovery and concept development through launch and optimization, including app store submission, release planning, change management, adoption, and digital engagement strategies.
Preferred Qualifications
- Digital Enablement: Experience supporting customer-facing mobile products across end-to-end servicing workflows. Proficient in applying native mobile patterns and enterprise design systems to create consistent, accessible experiences. Familiar with mobile experimentation and personalization capabilities and their impact on customer and business outcomes.
- Mobile Platform Expertise: Experience with iOS and Android product ecosystems, mobile analytics, API-based integrations, authentication, app store operations, and secure, scalable enterprise platforms.
- Privacy, Security, and Compliance: Experience partnering with legal, compliance, privacy, and security teams to translate regulatory and enterprise requirements into mobile product capabilities, including consent, permissions, authentication, data handling, and customer communications.
- Collaboration & Influence: Proven ability to collaborate cross-functionally with design, engineering, and marketing teams. Skilled at articulating product vision, aligning priorities, and influencing stakeholders to drive product growth and innovation—without direct people management responsibilities.
- Customer-Centric Mindset: 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.
- Iterative Delivery Proficiency: Demonstrated experience delivering product increments that improve business results and customer experience. Proven ability to collaborate across teams using approaches such as Lean, Scrum, and Kanban and tools such as Jira to maintain alignment and visibility throughout the product lifecycle.
- Stakeholder Management: Adept at engaging and handling stakeholders to align product vision and strategy, ensuring a unified approach to product development.
- Data-Driven Decisions: 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 by driving innovation and growth through evidence-based strategies.
- AI Familiarity: Familiarity with the latest AI trends and technologies, providing a forward-thinking perspective that can be a significant asset in future product enhancements.
- Strategic Planning: Ability to define and drive long-term product vision and roadmap, aligning digital product strategy with business objectives. Skilled in prioritizing initiatives to maximize customer and business impact.
- Market & Competitive Analysis: Proficient in analyzing industry trends, customer needs, and competitor offerings to inform product strategy. Skilled at identifying market opportunities and translating insights into innovative, differentiated solutions that drive relevance and competitive advantage.
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-JH
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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
Boston, Massachusetts
Hybrid
Salary range is expected to be between
$92,475.00 USD - $160,290.00 USD
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/John Hancock 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/401(k) savings plans and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in the U.S. includes 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, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence.
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Company: John Hancock Life Insurance Company (U.S.A.)