Job Description:
The Product Director is accountable for leading the Canadian Product Management team and portfolio at Global Excel. This role provides the strategic and operational leadership required to translate operational and corporate priorities into a coherent product direction, disciplined execution, and measurable results. The role is responsible for the direct leadership, performance, and development of a high-impact team of Product Managers and Product Owners.
The Product Director is responsible for defining Global Excel products, organizing team resources around value delivery, defining and executing the strategic vision, roadmap, and continuous evolution of the operational product portfolio, establishing clear priorities, decision frameworks, and delivery expectations across the product lifecycle, and ensuring alignment from team-level backlog execution through program-level planning and portfolio objectives.
Operating within a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) environment, the Product Director oversees a team of professionals who begin with exploring various solutions, in partnership with the Global Technology Services team, to opportunities presented by the business units and subsequently drive delivery excellence by enabling readiness for planning and execution, strengthening governance and accountability, and ensuring that product investments are delivered with quality, predictability, and business relevance.
In partnership with Business Owners and Delivery Leadership within Global Technology Services, Architecture, Continuous Improvement, Operations, Strategic Initiatives, Compliance, and Account Management, the role ensures that initiatives are effectively formulated, prioritized, brought to market successfully, and translated into tangible customer value, operational efficiency, regulatory adherence, while driving operational efficiency and innovation for Global Excel.
What does your typical day look like?
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Product Strategy & Roadmap: Establish and continuously communicate the strategic vision, strategic themes, roadmap and decision guardrails for the Canadian Portfolio, ensuring alignment to corporate priorities and market trends, and in collaboration with VP – Canadian Strategic Initiatives.
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Governance, Prioritization & Outcomes: Define the operating model for product governance (portfolio-level intake, exploration of solutions, prioritization, escalation paths, and decision rights) and ensure consistent economic and outcome-based prioritization across product visions, roadmaps, program backlogs, and team backlogs.
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Ensure that success measures (OKRs/KPIs) are established prior to features moving into planning and ensure performance reporting focuses on benefits and outcomes, with key KPIs, post-deployment monitoring, and high quality expectations.
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Oversee ART Readiness & Flow: Oversees Product Managers to ensure product and PI planning readiness, predictable value delivery with clear expectations and cadence for Feature creation, refinement and socialization, Definition of Ready discipline, dependency management, and alignment between Program Backlogs (PM) and Team Backlogs (PO I/II).
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Apply Core SAFe Principles Across Delivery: Ensure the delivery model reflects the most relevant SAFe principles by organizing around value, maintaining flow, using cadence and cross-functional planning to improve alignment, making economic trade-offs, and decentralizing decisions within clear guardrails so teams can deliver with speed, predictability, quality, and customer relevance.
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Cross-Functional Delivery Leadership: Partner with Technology, Delivery leadership, Continuous Improvement and Operations to make timely scope/value trade-offs, manage risks, and support release decisions that protect customer experience, operational stability, and compliance obligations.
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Drive Customer & Operational Outcomes: Sponsor initiatives that improve customer experience and drive operational efficiency (e.g., digitization, automation, AI Agents, self-service), ensuring product hypotheses are validated, outcomes are measured, and learnings are directed back into roadmap and backlog decisions.
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Stakeholder & Customer Engagement Model: Ensure a consistent engagement approach (voice of customer, business owner reviews, system demo feedback loops) to provide certainty that strategic intent remains connected to day-to-day delivery and that stakeholder expectations are managed through transparent trade-offs and outcome discussions.
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Partner with Account Management, Operations, Strategic Initiatives, Continuous Improvement and Customer Experience teams to ensure successful product launches and ongoing support.
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Directly Lead, Develop & Align the Product Management Team: Lead cross-functional teams to design, build, and launch new products and enhancements that differentiate the company in the market. Directly managing Product Managers and Product Owners by setting clear expectations, conducting performance management, supporting hiring and onboarding, coaching for growth, and building succession depth.
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Ensure mandate alignment across Product Owner I, Product Owner II, and Product Manager roles while improving backlog quality, SAFe maturity, decision-making, collaboration, and accountability for outcomes.
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Enterprise Partnership & Representation: Represent Product Management with key partners (Account Management, Operations, Customer Experience, Continuous Improvement, Strategic Initiatives, Technology, and Compliance) to align priorities, coordinate change impacts, and ensure successful launches, adoption, and sustained value realization.
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Risk, Compliance & Controls: Ensure product delivery and operational changes meet regulatory and legal requirements, internal controls, and risk tolerance. Establish governance for non-functional requirements (security, performance, reliability, operability) and ensure accountability for mitigation plans and approvals where required.
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Performance Management & Continuous Improvement: Define and monitor a balanced set of measures for value delivery (customer outcomes, operational efficiency, quality, predictability, and adoption) as well as team effectiveness and capability growth. Conduct direct people management activities including performance reviews, development planning, coaching, and recognition, and use system demos, Inspect & Adapt, and outcome reviews to drive continuous improvement in ways of working, backlog quality, and delivery reliability across the team.
Major Challenges
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Leading product strategy amid fast paced organizational transformation
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Strategic Alignment at Scale: Maintaining clear alignment from team-level delivery (PO I/II) through program-level priorities (PM) and business owner outcomes across a large, multi-stakeholder environment.
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Competing Priorities & Economic Trade-offs: Balancing customer needs, operational constraints, regulatory requirements, and investment choices while sustaining predictable flow of value.
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Ensuring Quality, Risk Controls & Operational Readiness: Delivering change at speed while ensuring operational stability, controls, and readiness activities are executed consistently.
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Stakeholder Alignment & Adoption: Securing buy-in, managing change resistance and sustaining engagement across business leaders, operations, technology, and external partners while driving adoption and benefits realization.
Success Measures
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Strategic Execution: Strategic vision, strategic themes, and roadmaps are understood and consistently translated into program and team priorities (PM to PO I/II) with clear decision rights and escalation paths.
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Value Delivery & Benefits Realization: Provides oversight for roadmap outcomes and prioritized Features to deliver measurable customer and business value (e.g., improved customer experience, efficiency gains, reduced operational friction), with outcome reporting in place to monitor benefits realization and inform course correction.
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Predictability & Flow: Establishes the planning and delivery expectations that improve predictability across PIs and iterations, including strong refinement, clear Definitions of Ready and Done, and proactive dependency management.
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Quality, Risk & Compliance: Maintains clear governance and accountability for delivery quality, operational readiness, compliance obligations, and active identification, management, and escalation of risk.
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Operational Efficiency: Drives product investment and adoption priorities that contribute to sustained improvements in operational performance, including cycle times, cost to serve, rework, defects, and other efficiency metrics.
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Customer & Stakeholder Satisfaction: Creates the conditions for clear product direction, transparent trade-offs, and meaningful increments that strengthen stakeholder confidence, customer satisfaction, and adoption.
What skills and training do you need?
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University degree or equivalent experience (Business, Technology, or a related field); MBA considered an asset.
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10+ years of leadership experience in product management, with at least 3 years in the travel insurance, insurance, or financial services industry.
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Significant experience leading product management and/or operational transformation in complex environments, including direct management of product professionals, experience with scaled Agile delivery models (SAFe preferred), and leadership of cross-functional stakeholders.
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Product Management experience with a strong understanding of product management and product ownership responsibilities in a SAFe environment, including clear decision boundaries across Product Owner I/II and Product Manager roles and within an ART.
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Demonstrated ability to lead and coach teams through strategic planning, prioritization, and outcome measurement, with strong executive stakeholder management and influence.
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Proven direct people leadership experience, including hiring, performance management, coaching, talent development, and building high-performing teams in complex, fast-paced environments.
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Strong understanding of insurance products, operations, distribution channels, and regulatory considerations.
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Very Good verbal and written communication skills (Bilingualism English, and French an asset) English will be used in particular to implement various projects or training courses across our various offices, including those outside Quebec.
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Strong communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align and influence leaders across business, operations, technology, and external partners.
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Experience operating and leading within a scaled Agile (SAFe) environment.
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Exceptional analytical and strategic thinking with the ability to translate complex needs into clear priorities, trade-offs, and decision recommendations.
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Strong continuous improvement mindset with the ability to establish operating rhythms and drive measurable improvements in ways of working and delivery outcomes.
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Knowledge of Change Management Principles.
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Solid understanding of the travel insurance, claims and healthcare concepts.
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Strong analytical and strategic thinking skills with a customer- and outcome-oriented mindset.
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Knowledge of GEM systems, operating model, and organizational context an asset.
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Available for occasional travel.
English required (French considered an asset).
When you apply:
If you require assistance or accommodation during our recruitment process, please notify Human Resources so that we can review and consider how we may be able to assist you based on your individual needs.
We offer you:
Global Excel offers more than a position
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Competitive compensation package that includes a base salary, annual salary review and annual performance bonus;
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Extensive benefit package including, health, dental, travel and health care spending account;
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3 weeks vacation;
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RRSP matching program;
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A professional future with opportunities for development, growth, and advancement;
- Financial assistance to employees who wish to continue their education;
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Work/life balance, health and wellness initiatives including an excellent Employee Assistance program;
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On site Gym;
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Employee engagement programs that focus on fitness, food, and fun;
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Windsor, Ontario Candidates: annual salary scale ($115,000 - $130,000). *Other locations, salary to be discussed based on geographic differential.
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