Senior Product Innovator – Personal Lines (Hybrid)

Wawanesa; Winnipeg; Hybrid; CAD 100,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company is seeking a Senior Product Development Specialist for Personal Lines to lead complex, high-impact product innovation from concept through delivery and optimization. The role requires broad collaboration across Canada with internal stakeholders and external partners in a hybrid work setting.

With 8+ years in product-related roles, you will influence strategic priorities, shape scalable delivery plans, and ensure governance, readiness, and post-launch

Qualifications

• 8+ years of progressively responsible experience in product, product delivery, product operations, or related insurance or financial services roles, preferably within P&C insurance.
• Demonstrated success leading complex, cross-functional initiatives with enterprise impacts, multiple stakeholder groups, external partners, and measurable business outcomes.
• Proven ability to influence strategic business decisions and secure alignment among Director, VP, and Executive stakeholders in highly matrixed environments without direct authority.
• Strong understanding of product lifecycle delivery, operational readiness, change enablement, risk management, compliance, and post-launch performance measurement.
• Advanced analytical capability with experience connecting KPIs, financial outcomes, operational data, customer feedback, and business case assumptions to actionable recommendations.
• Experience establishing governance practices, improving delivery processes, and coaching peers or junior team members.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide initiatives, large-scale transformation efforts, or strategic external partnerships.

Responsibilities

• Stakeholder Leadership: Lead alignment across business, technology, operational, compliance, and external partner stakeholders on complex product innovation priorities. Influence senior leader decision-making and provide strategic recommendations regarding prioritization, scope, investment decisions, implementation approaches, and business value realization.
• Strategic Solution Shaping: Translate product innovation strategies and business cases into scalable delivery approaches, operating models, success measures, and implementation plans. Evaluate complex business opportunities and emerging capabilities, balancing member value, operational impact, financial outcomes, technical feasibility, and organizational readiness.
• Complex Delivery Oversight: Oversee multiple enterprise-impacting initiatives while proactively managing dependencies, capacity constraints, risks, milestones, and scope trade-offs across portfolios. Provide executive-ready visibility into progress and recommend actions to optimize delivery outcomes.
• Quality, Testing & Governance: Establish expectations for quality assurance, user acceptance testing, release governance, approvals, and audit-ready documentation. Own the continuous improvement of governance practices, frameworks, standards, and controls that strengthen delivery effectiveness, consistency, and compliance.
• Operational Readiness Leadership: Lead readiness planning for complex or higher-risk launches, ensuring operational teams, business partners, technology teams, brokers, and external partners are prepared to support successful implementation, adoption, and ongoing operations.
• Performance Strategy & Optimization: Define performance measurement strategies and lead post-launch reviews that connect outcomes to business case objectives, operational results, member and broker experience, and financial performance. Analyze trends across initiatives to identify optimization opportunities, emerging risks, and strategic recommendations.
• Vendor & Partner Leadership: Provide oversight of strategic vendor and partner relationships, including delivery performance, implementation milestones, contractual requirements, data and privacy considerations, and issue resolution. Manage matters that carry significant business, operational, financial, or reputational risk.
• Coaching & Practice Improvement: Serve as a senior subject matter expert and trusted advisor for Product Innovation delivery practices. Mentor Product Development Specialists, establish best practices and reusable methodologies, contribute to capability development and succession planning, and act as an escalation point for complex delivery, stakeholder, and governance matters.

Job description

The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company is seeking a Senior Product Development Specialist for Personal Lines to lead complex, high-impact product innovation from concept through delivery and optimization. The role requires broad collaboration across Canada with internal stakeholders and external partners in a hybrid work setting.

With 8+ years in product-related roles, you will influence strategic priorities, shape scalable delivery plans, and ensure governance, readiness, and post-launch