Join our Insurance Technology team!
This is a technical leadership role focused on the production support, operational stability, and reliability of business-critical technology platforms. You will lead a team responsible for keeping applications running effectively in production, strengthening operational readiness, resolving incidents, and reducing recurring service issues.
Working closely with engineering, product, business, and technology teams, you will bring together people leadership, technical expertise, production support, and ITIL-aligned service management practices to improve application reliability and customer experience. You will use operational data and service insights to identify risks, improve support practices, and ensure lessons from production incidents translate into sustainable improvements.
This role is ideal for a technology leader who understands what it takes to operate and support enterprise applications in production and enjoys building teams, processes, and practices that make critical services more reliable and resilient.
Position Responsibilities:
- Lead a team responsible for production and application support across business-critical technology platforms, with accountability for service reliability, operational stability, and customer experience.
- Lead major incident response and production support activities, ensuring timely resolution, effective escalation, stakeholder communication, and coordination across technical teams.
- Strengthen production readiness and supportability through operational playbooks, runbooks, monitoring and observability practices, knowledge management, and team development.
- Lead post-incident reviews and problem management activities, ensuring root causes are understood and lessons learned are translated into sustainable improvements that reduce recurring incidents.
- Apply and continuously improve ITIL-aligned practices across Incident, Problem, Change, Knowledge, and Service Request Management.
- Partner with engineering, product, and business teams to ensure production support, reliability, and operational readiness are considered throughout the technology delivery lifecycle.
- Define, monitor, and communicate service health and production support metrics, including incident volume, Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR), availability, change success rate, service-level attainment, backlog health, and recurring problem trends.
- Use operational data, dashboards, and trend analysis to identify risks, improve service performance, strengthen workload management, and continuously improve the effectiveness of production support.
- Coach and develop team members while creating clear accountability for service outcomes, collaboration, technical growth, continuous improvement, and customer focus.
Required Qualifications:
- Minimum 5+ years of related experience in technology, software engineering, production support, application support, or a related technical field.
- Demonstrated experience leading, managing, or mentoring teams responsible for production or application support, including operational stability, incident response, service performance, and continuous improvement.
- Hands-on technical experience supporting and troubleshooting enterprise applications in production environments, with experience in .NET and/or JavaScript technologies and relational databases such as SQL Server or PostgreSQL.
- Experience investigating production issues, identifying root causes, and partnering with engineering teams to implement sustainable solutions.
- Experience working with cloud-hosted applications and services, preferably Microsoft Azure, within Agile and DevOps delivery environments.
- Demonstrated experience applying ITIL or IT Service Management (ITSM) practices, including Incident, Problem, Change, Knowledge, and Service Level Management.
- Experience using production support metrics, dashboards, and trend analysis to identify service issues, communicate service health, and drive measurable improvements.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline, or equivalent education and practical experience.
- Experience leading production support and/or on-call operations for business-critical enterprise applications.
- Previous hands-on experience as a software developer/engineer or as a tech lead.
- Experience managing or coordinating major incidents and service disruptions involving multiple technical and business teams.
- Experience with ServiceNow or a comparable ITSM platform.
- Experience with monitoring and observability platforms and using service telemetry to identify production issues and performance trends.
- Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, release management, change management, and modern production support practices.
- Experience working in complex enterprise technology environments where application reliability, service availability, and operational risk are critical considerations.
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.
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
Waterloo, Ontario
Working Arrangement
Hybrid
Salary range is expected to be between
$113,000.00 CAD - $163,000.00 CAD
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 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 and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.
We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.
