Product Manager - Cape Town, Western Cape at Sanlam Group

Position Overview

• 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 enabling Sanlam to accelerate autonomous value creation through Insights and ML across Sanlam Group. As a head of product management for the group data & ML platform tribe, and the product manager for the platform overall, you’ll build and lead the product capability for 3+ cross functional engineering squads. With your mastery of Product Management, your expertise in data 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 you do?

Achieve a free flow of information between internal users and your team(s):

• Initiate internal user research to understand internal data teams needs and willingness to pay, improving our ability empower and accelerate the value they create with data. Success will be measured by value created by our users on the platform.

Raise the bar for how Product Managers give engineers the context and clarity they need to deliver the roadmap:

• Build our ability to clarify ‘the what’ for development teams effectively, ensuring timely and accurate product & feature delivery based on group needs. Find ways to empower teams with the additional context engineers so they’re also clear about ‘the why’. Success will measured by on-time in full delivery and alignment with product artefacts along with team engagement surveys.

Define and measure team success openly:

• Define or refine success metrics and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for 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 is measured by continuous improvement in performance of 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 champions their development. Success will be measured by the retention and development of your direct reports in terms of excellence and outcomes.

Qualification and Experience

• 10+ years' experience in leading data platform teams with at least 2 in a modern context with cloud technologies and autonomous high performing team organisational 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
• Excellent leadership and communication skills. Ability to collaborate effectively with various stakeholders across the organization

What will make you successful in this role?

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.

Knowledge and Skills

• Product Strategy
• Product concept design, evaluation and prototyping
• Product Development
• Knowledge Management
• Management of employees

Personal Attributes

• Business insight - Contributing through others
• Financial acumen - Contributing through others
• Organisational savvy - Contributing through others
• Decision quality - 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.

Core Competencies

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