Product Area Lead : Group Data & ML Platform Tribe

What will you do?

We’re on a transformation journey to be an innovative company at the forefront of the financial services industry's digital transformation. By harnessing advanced technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), we aim to redefine the financial landscape with intelligent, advice-led solutions. To do this, we aim to be a net producer of technology, rather than a net consumer and Product Area Leads are a critical part of this mission.
 
This is an internal product leadership role focusing on enabling Sanlam to quickly and reliably ingest, transform, share and process data, whilst adhering to the highest standards of privacy and security. As a Product Area Lead, you’ll lead 2 or more full stack engineering teams doing their critical part to accelerate autonomous value creation through Insights and ML across Sanlam Group. With your mastery of Product Management, your expertise in data ingestion, sharing and processing technologies and your experience leading high performing, autonomous technology teams, you’ll ensure business teams across the group make data a source of competitive for them in their markets.

What will make you successful in this role?

What you'll achieve in the next 12 months.

• Achieve a free flow of information between internal users and your team(s): Identify and Conduct internal user research to understand data consumers’ needs and willingness to pay, improving satisfaction and adoption metrics. Success measured by increased user satisfaction scores and adoption rates. 
• Establish a compelling product vision: Ensure you and your team are always able to articulate how the world for you users will be different, because of your products. Be clear about how they and Sanlam will benefit as a group, relating it to your user research. Success will be measured through internal surveys and formal approvals of the team’s OKRs by users and senior leadership.
• Establish, gain funding for and deliver an ambitious transformative roadmap: Establish a comprehensive roadmap for your products and gain the buy in of commercial and data science & analytics leaders across the business. Lead budgeting approval discussion to release investment in data to meet business needs, ensuring effective allocation of all approved engineering and financial resources. Success measured by roadmap approval and budget accuracy.
• Give your team the context and clarity they need to deliver the roadmap: Write detailed PRD's that clarify ‘the what’ for development teams effectively, ensuring timely and accurate product & feature delivery based on group needs. Provide any additional context the team needs around user stories, commercial objectives, and so on, so they’re also clear about ‘the why’. Success measured by on-time delivery and alignment with PRD specifications along with team engagement surveys.
• Define and measure team success openly: Define or refine success metrics and Service Level Objectives (SLO's) for the your part of the platform to cover adoption, satisfaction, cost as well and reliability Service Level Indicators (SLIs) such as accuracy, recency, latency and so on. Inspire your entire team to take full ownership of their performance as measured through these metrics. Success measured by continuous improvement in performance the metrics as well as unanimous approval of their definitions.
• Develop and retain world class product management talent: Hire, coach and collaborate with product managers who report to you. Create an environment that supports their high performance and champion their development. Success will be measured by the retention and development of your direct reports in terms of excellence and outcomes.

Qualification

• Matric
• National Diploma in an Information Technology related discipline or a bachelor's degree in computer science, Statistics, Informatics, Information Systems, or a quantitative field will be recommended.
   

Experience

• 7+ years' experience in leading data platform teams with at least 2 in a modern context with cloud technologies and autonomous high performing team organizational patterns
• Experience owning and managing a budget, including resource planning from storage and compute costs to cost of team development and retention
• A track record of high impact and investing in your own development

Skills & Thinking Preference

• Ability to collaborate effectively with various stakeholders across the organization
• Excellent leadership and communication skills
• You look for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. You are high agency, high ownership in everything you do. You know we own our future, only we can make it happen.  If you find something that keeps us from our mission, you own it or work collaboratively with others until you find the right owner of it.
• Where some see impossible, you see a way. You have the strong conviction in our ability to innovate and bring financial services, and financial confidence to everyone across the continent. You turn obstacles into opportunity, chance into change.
• You move fast and fix things. You publish early and often, when you fail you learn and go again. You know that speed gives you the licence to fail, because you’re moving fast enough to correct course.
• You love creating more with less. Knowing that the biggest impact is born of the smallest acts, scale is built into your thinking from day 1. This is not about meeting the needs of thousands; it’s about exceeding the needs of millions. And working through small and mighty teams is way we’ll do it. 
• You seek out and value different perspectives. Believing that when we change how we look at things, how things look for us also changes. Making tomorrow not just different, but better.

Personal Attributes

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.

Core Competencies

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