Product Manager - Group Data Platform

What will you do?

We’re on a transformation journey to be an innovative company at 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 Managers are a critical part of this mission.

This is an internal product leadership role focusing on empowering and accelerating autonomous value creation across the 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 Conductinternal user research to understand data consumers’ needs and willingness to pay, improving satisfactionand 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 theworld for your users will be different, because of your products. Be clear about how they and Sanlam willbenefit as a group, relating it to your user research. Success will be measured through internal surveys andformal approvals of the team’s OKRs by users and senior leadership.
• Establish, gain funding for and deliver an ambitious transformative roadmap:Establish acomprehensive roadmap for your products and gain the buy in of commercial and data science & analyticsleaders across the business. Lead budgeting approval discussion to release investment in data to meetbusiness needs, ensuring effective allocation of all approved engineering and financial resources. Successmeasured by roadmap approval and budget accuracy.
• Give your team the context and clarity they need to deliver the roadmap: Write detailed PRDs thatclarify ‘the what’ for development teams effectively, ensuring timely and accurate product & feature deliverybased on group needs. Provide any additional context the team needs around user stories, commercialobjectives, and so on, so they’re also clear about ‘the why’. Success measured by on-time delivery andalignment with PRD specifications along with team engagement surveys.
• Define and measure team success openly: Define or refine success metrics and Service Level Objectives(SLOs) for your part of the platform to cover adoption, satisfaction, cost as well and reliability Service LevelIndicators (SLIs) such as accuracy, recency, latency and so on. Inspire your entire team to take full ownershipof their performance as measured through these metrics. Success is measured by continuous improvement inperformance of the metrics as well as unanimous approval of their definitions.

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 cloudtechnologies and autonomous high performing team organisational patterns
• Experience owning and managing a budget, including resource planning from storage and compute costs tocost of team development and retention
• A track record of high impact and investing in your own development

Skills & Thinking Preference

• Excellent leadership and communication skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with various stakeholders across the organization
• You look for ways to do, instead of reasons not to. You are high agency, high ownership in everything youdo. You know we own our future, only we can make it happen. If you find something that keeps us from ourmission, 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 andbring financial services, and financial confidence to everyone across the continent. You turn obstacles intoopportunity, chance into change.
• You move fast and fix things. You publish early and often, when you fail you learn and go again. You knowthat 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 builtinto your thinking from day 1. This is not about meeting the needs of thousands; it’s about exceeding theneeds 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, howthings 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