Are you ready to elevate digital experiences and lead a service design and research squad in shaping exceptional user experiences? Reporting to the VP CX Transformation and Service Design, this role combines strong CX/design leadership with hands-on enablement, ensuring quality research and service design work moves beyond artifacts and workshops and into roadmaps and delivery priorities.

At Manulife, we are committed to becoming a digital-first organization and to lead in our industry in those digital customer experiences. Alongside the Director Experience Strategy and Research, the Director Research and Insights you will co-create the vision and strategy for the service design craft maturity and partner to drive positive and customer focused change in our Canada businesses. And, as design and research evolve at pace with emerging technologies, you will support and champion the team’s evolution and adoption of AI.

You will co-lead the Service Design craft across Canada businesses, co-creating with your Director level colleagues a Journey Management practice and a service design to solutions and research methodology that converts insights into tangible customer and business outcomes. You’ll guide a squad of service designers and researchers; partner closely with Product Design to concept and validate meaningful solutions; and collaborate with peer directors in Design Strategy and Quant/Qual Research to link vision, evidence, and execution—bringing insights to action swiftly.

This is a highly collaborative role which requires excellence in both what and how you deliver work. The successful candidate will be confident in their strong craft and a fair and flexible parter in a complex business environment. The role demands not only resilience when tackling hard challenges with others, but also enthusiasm and joy in getting things done together.

Position Responsibilities:

• Build The Practice

  • Establish and scale a Journey Management practice that continuously researches, measures, optimizes, and orchestrates end-to‑end customer journeys across channels and front/back operations. 

  • Define and operationalize a service design-to-solutions methodology—from discovery and framing to blueprinting, concepting, piloting, and scaled adoption—grounded in measurable outcomes.

  • Co-create a playbook for working effectively with Product Design and the Canada businesses.

  • Champion, support and drive adoption of AI to streamline processes and elevate what the team can accomplish.

• Lead Craft Leadership & Standards

  • Lead the Service Design craft: codify standards for journey mapping, service blueprinting, systems mapping, experience principles, and measurement frameworks; steward craft excellence alongside peer Directors in Design Strategy and Quant/Qual Research.

  • Coach and grow designers and researchers; institute critique rituals, mentoring, and learning pathways.

• Drive insights to action

  • Translate research (quant and qual) into actionable strategies, opportunity backlogs, and solution concepts; ensure hypotheses are validated via experiments and pilots; anchor decisions in customer desirability and business viability.

  • Champion data-informed service design and business case storytelling to help secure alignment and funding. 

• Partner & Deliver

  • Partner with Product Design to collaboratively develop low-fidelity and high-fidelity testable prototypes that make desirable future state journeys/ blueprints tangible and inspiring for business stakeholders.

  • Work with cross-functional leaders in operations, marketing, the group benefits business, and AI to remove friction and enable journey orchestration at scale.

• Governance & Ways of Working

  • Co-create with your director colleagues, a framework for governance for journey ownership, backlog intake, prioritization, and outcome tracking.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Service Design, Human-Centred Design, Business, or a related field.

• 10+ years experience in Service Design roles within financial services, complex organizations, or regulated businesses.

• 5+ years leading teams and practices in complex environments (financial services preferred).

• Demonstrated expertise in service design, service blueprinting, systems mapping, and evidence-based‑ decision making‑ (quant + qual).

• Proven track record translating insights into implemented solutions—from pilots to scaled adoption—across digital and operational channels.

• Strong stakeholder leadership and the ability to influence senior leaders and align diverse teams around outcomes and metrics.

• Proven experience in or exposure to primary quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building business cases and DVF (desirability, viability, feasibility) analyses for and with business colleagues.

• Knowledge of and/or experience working in an insurance and/or group benefits business.

• UX or Product Design Experience or proven experience working alongside product designers is an asset.

• Experience in Futures and Foresight practice is an asset.

• Comfort using research platforms and survey/analytics tools for mixed methods‑ insight generation.

• Experience using AI in your own practice and curiosity/ enthusiasm for learning and growing in this area of your own practice.

Leadership Attributes:

• An enthusiastic collaborator who loves building partnerships and helping organizations care and act in the customer’s best interest.

• Builder’s mindset; bias to action with disciplined measurement and a commitment to document and share.

• Systems thinker who can zoom out and in between macro strategy and micro-operations.

• Empathetic coach who elevates craft and creates psychological safety and engagement on the team.

• Clear communicator who can tell the story of change with data and human insight.

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.

#LI-Hybrid 

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 recruitment@manulife.com.

Referenced Salary Location

Salary range is expected to be between

If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact recruitment@manulife.com for the salary range for your location. 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. Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance.

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 recruitment@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.