Senior Product Manager

Sanlam; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,200,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading financial services firm in Cape Town is looking for a Senior Product Manager to own and drive the product vision for the Glue Platform. The candidate should have over 7 years of experience in product management, especially in platforms and cloud-native services. The role involves managing product roadmaps, driving platform adoption, and ensuring compliance and resilience. This position offers an opportunity to innovate and impact financial confidence across Africa.

Benefits

Career development opportunities

Inclusive workplace culture

Qualifications

• Experience in platforms, cloud-native services, or large-scale integration environments.
• Background in financial services, fintech, or enterprise-scale data systems.
• Proven track record of driving adoption of shared platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set product vision & roadmap for Glue platform.
• Manage the platform backlog and prioritize features.
• Drive adoption and develop frameworks for onboarding.

Skills

Strong grasp of integration patterns

Analytical skills

Communication skills

Education

7+ years of product management experience

Tools

JIRA

Confluence

Job description

Overview

Sanlam Fintech is a newly established digital first business within the Sanlam Group on a mission to democratize financial advice and solutions for everyone across the African continent. We exist to pioneer inclusive financial confidence helping people build strong foundations to bridge the gap in generational wealth. Our culture is that of agility and constant deployment, we believe in learning fast, learning cheap and learning forward. Our aim is to provide a work environment where knowledge workers can accelerate the development of their ideas and bring innovation to market, at the same time provide compelling career and development proposition that will enable them to realize their dreams.

Position Overview

We are looking for a Senior Product Manager (or Head of Product) for the Glue Platform. This role reports into the Chief Product Manager for SFT and will:

• Own and drive the product vision and strategy for Glue – our core integration and data platform.
• Define and evolve platform adoption models (self-service, away-team, Glue-led initiatives).
• Ensure Glue’s components (Command Gateways, Global Customer Identity, Source-Aligned Data Products, Quality of Service layers, ML product standards, etc.) meet the needs of digital product teams.
• Translate business objectives into platform roadmaps, balancing immediate digital product needs (e.g., Blue App, Digisure) with long-term Glue evolution.
• Your main partner will be the Glue Tech Lead, but you are expected to partner with teams from data, to security, and business stakeholders to deliver resilient, compliant, and scalable platform services.
• Drive platform adoption across Sanlam and partners, evangelizing Glue’s value proposition (faster time to market, lower cost, higher reliability, unified customer identity, cross-sell opportunities).

What will you do?

As Glue’s Senior Product Manager, you will:

• Set product vision & roadmap: Shape the Glue roadmap, balancing immediate SFT digital product needs and long-term platform maturity.
• Manage the platform backlog: Prioritize features like schema registries, observability, retries, QoS layers, and identity federation.
• Drive adoption: Develop frameworks, documentation, and incentives to onboard teams onto Glue (self-service, away-team, Glue-led).
• Collaborate with technical leads: Work with Tech Leads on design of Command Handlers, Gateways, event streaming, data products, and ML standards.
• Ensure platform resilience & compliance: Oversee non-functional requirements such as security, privacy (POPIA, GDPR), five 9s availability, disaster recovery, monitoring, and observability.
• Evangelize Glue: Be the voice of Glue within Sanlam, explaining its value proposition to executives, product managers, and engineers.
• Measure what matters: Define success metrics such as adoption rate, reduction in duplicate integrations, time-to-market improvements, cost savings, and reliability targets.

Qualifications and Experience

• 7+ years of product management experience in platforms, cloud-native services, or large-scale integration environments.
• Experience building developer platforms, APIs, or integration frameworks.
• Background in financial services, fintech, or enterprise-scale data systems.
• Strong understanding of event-driven architectures, APIs, data products, and distributed systems.
• Experience engaging with senior stakeholders and balancing business and technical trade-offs.
• Proven track record of driving adoption of shared platforms across multiple business units.

Knowledge and Skills

• Strong grasp of integration patterns: event-driven architecture, command/query segregation, retries, DLQs, schema registries, QoS layers.
• Familiar with Data Mesh and data product principles.
• Knowledge of full product lifecycle and integration into platforms an advantage.
• Agile product management skills (JIRA, Confluence, backlog management).
• Strong analytical and communication skills; ability to translate complex technical concepts into business outcomes.

Personal Attributes

• Balances stakeholders - Contributing through others
• Tech savvy - Contributing through others
• Business insight - Contributing through others
• Plans and aligns - Contributing through others

Core Competencies

• Being resilient - Contributing through others
• Collaborates - Contributing through others
• Cultivates innovation - Contributing through others
• Customer focus - Contributing through others
• Drives results - Contributing through others

Build a successful career with us

We’re all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future – your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters – Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office – the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group\'s Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.