AVP, AI – Group Functions AI Transformation

About the role

The AVP, AI – Group Functions AI Transformation Delivery is a senior AI leadership position at Manulife in Toronto. It leads end-to-end delivery of AI-enabled transformation across Group Functions, with a primary focus on Risk, Legal, Procurement and Compliance, including AI-enabled fraud detection for financial crimes. The role combines hands-on technical depth with delivery leadership, working with senior functional leaders to shape roadmaps and lead teams building Classical AI, Generative AI and Agentic AI solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end delivery of AI solutions for Risk, Legal, Procurement, Compliance and other Group Functions, from opportunity shaping and design through deployment, adoption and value realization.
• Own delivery roadmaps and execution across concurrent initiatives, ensuring measurable business outcomes against defined success metrics.
• Direct multidisciplinary delivery teams (AI/ML engineers, data scientists, product and functional SMEs), removing blockers and ensuring quality, velocity and accountability.
• Conduct full-stack AI engineering, including hands-on development, prototyping and architecture decisions where needed.
• Partner with Risk, Legal and Procurement leaders to surface high-impact AI opportunities, translate needs into structured initiatives and provide thought leadership on Agentic AI, Generative AI and machine learning.
• Coach stakeholders to adopt AI and embed it in functional workflows, and ensure solutions meet enterprise standards for security, data governance, model risk and responsible AI.
• Coordinate with Enterprise Architecture, Risk, Legal and the Global Data Office, promote reuse of enterprise components and represent the function in enterprise governance and portfolio forums.

Required profile

• 8+ years in data science, AI/ML engineering or applied machine learning, including leading complex AI programs at scale.
• Prior experience with financial crime prevention, including graph-based solutions.
• Experience partnering with corporate functions, preferably Risk, Legal, Procurement, Compliance, Audit or Treasury, ideally in financial services.
• Proven people-leadership experience building, coaching and leading multidisciplinary teams.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering or a related field; Master's or PhD desirable.

Required skills

• Hands-on engineering in Python, cloud ML environments, MLOps, vector databases, LLM-Ops and modern evaluation frameworks.
• Experience with Agentic AI architectures, orchestration frameworks and multi-model pipelines strongly preferred.

What we offer

• Expected salary range of $129,800 to $241,200 CAD, with incentive programs available; the role is hybrid.
• Benefits include health, dental, mental health, vision, life and disability insurance, retirement savings plans and paid time off.