Director, AI Delivery Squad Lead, Underwriting

Manulife/John Hancock; Toronto; On-site; CAD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Manulife Insurance Malaysia is seeking a Director of AI to lead the end-to-end delivery of AI-powered underwriting initiatives. You will translate strategic priorities into executable roadmaps and manage data scientists and cross-functional squads to deliver measurable business impact.

In this role, you will guide solution design with deep underwriting knowledge, balance growth with risk, and drive adoption across underwriting operations, actuarial, product, and distribution teams for

Qualifications

• Extensive experience delivering AI initiatives in life insurance or financial services.
• Proven ability to translate strategy into executable roadmaps.
• Strong stakeholder management across IT, actuarial, product and risk.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end delivery of AI initiatives from planning to production deployment and value realization.
• Translate strategy into execution-ready plans with clear scope, sequencing and timelines.
• Lead underwriting AI portfolio delivery with cross-functional collaboration across data science, eng, product and risk.
• Orchestrate multi-team delivery across data science, product, business, risk and shared services.
• Manage the delivery portfolio with milestones, dependencies, capacity, and governance.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Delivery management

Cross-functional leadership

AI/ML expertise

Underwriting domain knowledge

Job description

The Director of AI, Delivery Squad Lead is accountable for the end-to-end execution of AI powered underwriting initiatives (i.e., Life Insurance Underwriting, Automated Underwriting, Underwriting Decision Support, Advisor Underwriting Experience, and Underwriting Transformation). The role translates Solutioning-defined priorities into delivered AI solutions, ensuring execution with speed, quality, and measurable business impact. This role requires a deep understanding of life insurance risk assessment and underwriting decision-making to ensure AI solutions appropriately balance growth, customer experience, risk selection, and operational efficiency. This role is the single point of accountability for delivery execution, ensuring initiatives are effectively scoped, sequenced, executed, and aligned to timelines, capacity, and governance requirements. The role also provides financial oversight of the delivery portfolio, coordinates dependencies across IT, data, architecture, and business stakeholders, and ensures delivery teams have clear scope, sequencing, and execution expectations.

Position Responsibilities

End-to-End Delivery Execution

Own the full lifecycle delivery of assigned AI initiatives, from execution planning and backlog readiness through production deployment, adoption, and value realization. Translate prioritized initiatives into clear work packages, defined scope, team tasks, sequencing, and delivery timelines; ensure the squad understands priorities, responsibilities, and expected outcomes. Lead the day-to-day execution of data scientists and cross-functional squad members by setting clear accountabilities, monitoring commitments, and maintaining delivery momentum and discipline. Proactively identify risks, remove blockers, and resolve delivery issues to maintain pace and quality. Establish and maintain the squad’s delivery operating rhythm, including sprint planning, backlog management, quality controls, and performance reviews.

Translation of Strategy to Execution

Apply deep domain expertise in life insurance risk assessment, underwriting philosophy, and risk selection to guide solution design, prioritize opportunities, and ensure AI capabilities address meaningful underwriting challenges. Convert Solutioning priorities into execution-ready plans Leverage deep domain expertise to tailor execution plans to operational, regulatory, and market context, driving measurable business impact Actively bridge business strategy and technical delivery by contextualizing priorities with industry trends, stakeholder needs, and organizational objectives to ensure alignment and value realization. Align delivery to business strategy and defined scope Execute approved priorities within established intake and governance frameworks; provide delivery feasibility, capacity, dependency, and sequencing input without owning intake or portfolio prioritization decisions.

Underwriting AI Delivery Leadership

Lead execution of the underwriting AI portfolio, ensuring each approved initiative progresses through planning, build, validation, production deployment, adoption, and outcome measurement. Translate underwriting priorities into executable roadmaps and delivery plans. Partner with underwriting leaders to modernize underwriting operations through AI. Partner with underwriting leaders to plan and execute change, training, communications, and operating-process updates required for adoption of AI-enabled underwriting capabilities. Lead the translation of complex underwriting challenges into data-driven and AI-enabled solutions through close collaboration with data scientists, engineers, and business stakeholders. Identify opportunities to standardize and reuse underwriting data, models, components, controls, and delivery patterns across products and business units, and coordinate their implementation with platform owners. Balance growth, risk, operational efficiency, and customer experience objectives.

Cross-Functional Delivery Orchestration

Lead cross-functional delivery across data science, engineering, product, business teams, and shared services. Orchestrate delivery across underwriting, actuarial, product, distribution, data science, engineering, risk, compliance, technology, architecture, and other shared-service partners. Maintain an integrated dependency plan across systems, data, architecture, controls, operating processes, and delivery partners; resolve or elevate constraints before they affect committed milestones. Confirm stakeholder decisions, control requirements, operating readiness, and handoffs at each stage of the delivery lifecycle.

Portfolio Management & Delivery Orchestration

Maintain the integrated delivery portfolio view for approved underwriting AI initiatives, showing alignment to segment priorities, OKRs, AI strategy, dependencies, milestones, capacity, risks, and expected outcomes. The portfolio may include automated underwriting platforms, underwriting requirement optimization, advisor-facing underwriting assistants, underwriting knowledge and decision-support capabilities, fraud detection, and future-state underwriting transformation initiatives. Translate the approved roadmap into sequenced, executable portfolio plans with defined milestones, dependencies, resource requirements, and capacity constraints. Coordinate delivery across initiatives by identifying cross-portfolio dependencies, assessing execution trade-offs, and escalating decisions that require Product, Solutioning, or stakeholder prioritization. Maintain disciplined execution through project controls, risk management, performance reporting, and transparent escalation; recommend re-baselining when assumptions or commitments change and drive approved corrective actions.

Resource & Budget Management

Own resource and financial planning for the approved delivery portfolio, aligning squad capacity, external spend, and funding requirements to committed outcomes and delivery milestones. Monitor actual and forecast spend, explain variances, and identify emerging resource or funding constraints early enough to support corrective action. Provide leadership with decision-ready budget updates, including actuals, forecasts, variance drivers, funding risks, and cost estimates for approved or emerging opportunities.

Delivery Governance & Reporting

Operate within established intake, delivery governance, risk, compliance, architecture, and responsible AI frameworks, ensuring required approvals and evidence are completed before key delivery gates. Contribute delivery estimates, dependency assessments, resource requirements, acceptance criteria, and technical feasibility input so approved initiatives are ready for squad execution. Provide timely, decision-oriented reporting on progress, milestones, capacity, financial performance, risks, dependencies, outcomes, and required leadership actions.

Value Realization

Ensure each initiative has approved KPIs, baseline measures, target outcomes, accountable business owners, and an agreed measurement approach before delivery begins.