Product Owner, Modelops

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you'll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

About the Role

Digital, Data and Analytics is one of the key pillars of Sun Life's Client for Life Strategy. Leveraging innovative digital capabilities powered by data, insights, and intelligence, we aim to inspire and energize our clients and sales professionals to believe "Life's brighter under the Sun".

The Enterprise Data & Analytics Enablement (EDAE) team at Sun Life is seeking a motivated thought leader to serve as the Product Owner for the ModelOps Product within their Analytics Platform. This platform is crucial for enhancing Sun Life's analytical capabilities, supporting improved operations, decision-making, and business understanding through various modes of analytics.

The ModelOps Product team is specifically responsible for developing and maintaining frameworks that support Sun Life's data science teams in their model development and deployment processes. Their primary goal is to enable these teams to adopt standardized tools and frameworks, ultimately accelerating the time-to-market for their models. This role requires a candidate who can drive innovation and efficiency in the company's data science and analytics operations, contributing to Sun Life's overall analytical capabilities and business performance. As a data-driven organization, we value individuals who can leverage data to make decisions, drive continuous improvement, and help foster a culture where data informs all aspects of our work. The ideal candidate will have a passion for analytics and the ability to synthesize complex information into clear, actionable insights.

What will you do?

The Product Owner role within an Agile team, is responsible for implementing Product Team goals through a dynamic and fast-paced development process. This individual will work closely with the Agile team to transform business concepts into digital solutions, focusing on achieving desired business outcomes while maintaining efficiency, quality, and client focus. The Product Owner will collaborate with designers, business partners, and IT project teams to improve and innovate Model Ops Products for internal customers. They are expected to have a comprehensive understanding of clients, competitors, and digital innovators to develop optimal model operations frameworks. The role involves managing timelines and priorities to balance client needs, business goals, budget constraints, and technology choices effectively.

Responsibilities:

• Set and communicate a clear product vision to all stakeholders and the organization.
• Develop and maintain the product roadmap, defining the overall strategy from inception to production.
• Own and manage the product backlog, ensuring it's prioritized and maintained 3-4 sprints ahead.
• Collaborate closely with clients to establish product business value and align with their needs.
• Integrate market research, usability studies, and user feedback into product requirements.
• Own the 'why' and 'what' for product features and epics, translating user needs into user stories and acceptance criteria.
• Manage stakeholder expectations, including communication, conflict resolution, and risk mitigation.
• Facilitate release planning and provide weekly demos to ensure delivery of business outcomes.
• Manage product scope, releases, and deliverables while maintaining oversight of the product budget.
• Partner with technical leads to identify technical priorities and ensure non-functional requirements are met.

What do you need to succeed?

Education:

• Bachelor of Computer Engineering / Computer Science / Data Science / Machine Learning
• Cloud Engineering /Machine Learning or relevant certification an asset

Domain Expertise​:

• Proven industry knowledge, ideally 5+ years in industry with experience designing finance and insurance data products and channels​
• Demonstrates knowledge of technology or ability to learn about technology and digital products, experience working on technical products is a plus​
• Familiar with Machine Learning techniques and toolsets.
• Strong understanding of how a machine learning model is created, tested, and deployed in a production environment.
• Familiar with GenAI toolsets and Large Language Model capabilities.
• Technical understanding of Cloud services to deploy services in production environments.
• Technical understanding of SDLC methodologies and CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiar with automation frameworks (i.e. Jenkins) and deployment toolsets.

Agile Experience​:

• Experienced in facilitating Agile ceremonies, managing a backlog/release plan, tracking team level metrics, removing blockers, and working on cross functional teams. ​
• Experience in agile development methodologies.

Individual Skills​:

• Ability to manage and lead the team to push the solution forwards​
• Strong communication and collaboration skills with comfort speaking with business stakeholders and influencing others​
• Stakeholder management and negotiation skills
• Strong problem solving to analyze options and arrive at the best solution while building strong relationships and influencing other stakeholders
• Ability to navigate the organization at a senior level and make decisions for their team (AVP/VP level)​

Mindset & Behaviors​:

• Passion to challenge the status quo, find new solutions and drive out-of-the-box ideas​
• Believes in and fosters a non-hierarchical culture of collaboration, transparency, safety, and trust ​
• Empowers others to fail, learn, and grow​, encourages an experimental mindset to drive innovation

Assets: 'nice to have':

• Any experience with building and deploying LLMs in production

• Hands on data-science (model building, testing and deployment) experience
• AWS Cloud development experience

What's in it for you:

• We're honoured to be recognized as a 2024 Best Workplaces in Ontario by Great Place to Work® Canada.
• We are thrilled to be recognized by Excellence Canada with their top-level certification, the Canada Order of Excellence for Mental Health at Work®, for prioritizing employee well-being, fostering a positive work culture, and achieving excellence in mental health.
• We're proud to be recognized as a company with a 2023 Most Trusted Executive team by Great Place to Work® Canada.
• Wellness programs that support the three pillars of your health - mental, physical, and financial
• The opportunity to move along a variety of career paths with amazing networking potential.
• As a hybrid organization, you and your leader use business and Client needs to choose where you work, at home or in the office

As a condition of the role, the successful candidate must obtain a Government of Canada Reliability Status security clearance through Sun Life in advance of the start date

#LI-SJ

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process or those needing job postings in an alternative format may e-mail a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.

At Sun Life we strive to create a flexible work environment where our employees are empowered to do their best work. Several flexible work options are available and can be discussed throughout the selection process depending on the role requirements and individual needs.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

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