Product Manager

Who are we?

Sanlam Group Technology is responsible for the provision of a digitally enabled technology service as a group COE, drive business and transformation and provide group-wide digital and data architecture. We operate the various technology platforms and shared services, ensure Cyber and Information Security resilience, and act as technology governance and risk orchestrator for technology across Sanlam.

What will you do?

Responsible for leading, partnering, transforming and delivering digital workplace services. A trusted advisor/partner to Information Technology colleagues and lines of business, helping them make informed strategic choices in how they deliver their programmes of work to enable the digital workspace. Builds stakeholder relationships and creates a wide-ranging network of relationships across organisational boundaries that support collaborative working across teams or organisations to achieve highly effective outcomes.

Ensures alignment with the organisation's strategic objectives. Drives the effective management of the team financials (where applicable) to ensure efficient employee experience costs against operational budgets as well as value for money services. Provides operations management and manages service availability of the various technologies that enable the digital workspace. Supports all audit, risks and compliance requirements to ensure adherence to regulations.

What will make you successful in this role?

What you'll achieve in the next 12 months

1. Achieve a free flow of information between operational workloads and the Group Data & ML Platform team(s): Identify and conduct internal user research to understand their use cases, workflows, pain points and needs alongside their willingness to pay. Improving satisfaction and adoption metrics. Success measured by the % of workloads who agree their needs and challenges (not how to solve them) are understood and documented for everyone in the tribe to understand.
2. Ensure the reliability and service is maintained or improved throughout their journey from on-prem to the cloud: Work with squad Product Managers to write detailed PRDs 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 maintaining or improving performance against our SLAs.
3. Establish a compelling long-term product vision for operational workloads: Ensure you and your team are always able to articulate how the world for your users will be different, because of the platform's 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 long term product vision by users and the data platform operating board.
4. Establish, gain funding for and deliver an ambitious transformative roadmap: Establish a comprehensive roadmap for your products and gain the buy in of operational workload 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.
5. 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 as 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 team metric performance as well as unanimous approval of their definitions.

Qualification

1. Matric
2. 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

1. 5+ years' experience in leading data platform teams with at least 1 in a modern context with cloud technologies and autonomous high performing team organisational patterns
2. Experience owning and managing a budget, including resource planning from storage and compute costs to cost of team development and retention
3. A track record of high impact and investing in your own development

Skills & Thinking Preferences

1. Excellent leadership and communication skills
2. Ability to collaborate effectively with various stakeholders across the organization
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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 license to fail, because you're moving fast enough to correct course.
6. 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.
7. 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

Balances stakeholders - Contributing through others Tech savvy - Contributing through others Plans and aligns - Contributing through others Collaborates - Contributing strategically Cultivates innovation - Contributing independently Nimble learning - Contributing independently

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

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

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.

The closing date is 28 February 2025.

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.

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