Director, Global Design System
Top Benefits
About the role
Join our Digital Transformation team!
We are building a global digital ecosystem that connects millions of customers across regions and business lines.
As the Director, Global Design System, you will play a pivotal role in crafting the foundation of this ecosystem, ensuring that Manulife’s digital experiences are efficient, scalable, and human-centered.
If you’re ready to take on a global leadership challenge, driving the evolution of a design system at enterprise scale, we’d love to hear from you!
Position Responsibilities:
You will be responsible for establishing and maintaining frameworks that ensure the successful adoption and evolution of our system. You will work closely with design, engineering, and product teams across jurisdictions to ensure that the system meets diverse business and customer needs while maintaining compliance with regional and local regulations.
Stakeholder Engagement & Advocacy:
- Lead a cross-functional coalition of designers, engineers, product managers, and business leaders via office hours and workshops, to drive partnerships and adoption of the standards and guidelines.
- Manage community feedback and contribution requests as you partner with regional teams to understand their unique constraints and integrate their needs into the system.
- Secure consensus from executives and practitioners alike, navigating organizational complexity and influencing decision-making at all levels.
Process Optimization & Compliance:
- Ensure the system processes are optimized for efficiency and compliance with cross cultural language, and regulatory challenges.
- Develop and analyze critical metrics that measure effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and business impact.
Education & Enablement:
- Train, onboard and enable teams to fully harness the system, ensuring broad and sustained adoption.
- Advocate for design and build excellence, accessibility, and efficiency while ensuring the system remains flexible for innovation.
- Publish release notes, newsletters, adoption/usage guides to the community.
Framework Development & Governance:
- Contribute to the definition of design system governance frameworks with support from Marketing and IT partners to ensure the long-term sustainability, adoption and alignment to the guidelines of the design system.
- Establish standards, documentation, and workflows to integrate seamlessly with design and development processes.
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in digital product management, UX leadership, or design system strategy within a global enterprise or multi-jurisdictional organization.
- Proven success in implementing frameworks for global or common design systems at scale.
- Strong expertise in stakeholder management, influence, and communication skills—able to drive alignment across diverse teams and geographies.
- Experience working in complex matrixed organizations with multiple business units and partners.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Hands-on experience with enterprise design tools and frameworks (Figma, Storybook, React, Angular, JIRA, Confluence, etc.)
- IT lifecycle management.
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.
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
Toronto, Ontario
Working Arrangement
Hybrid
Salary range is expected to be between
$105,750.00 CAD - $190,350.00 CAD
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.
About Manulife
Manulife is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. We have more than 40,000 employees, over 116,000 agents serving ~34 million customers worldwide, and over $1.3 trillion in assets under management and administration. Visit www.Manulife.com to find out more.
For Manulife terms of use, please visit http://bit.ly/SM_Terms
Director, Global Design System
Top Benefits
About the role
Join our Digital Transformation team!
We are building a global digital ecosystem that connects millions of customers across regions and business lines.
As the Director, Global Design System, you will play a pivotal role in crafting the foundation of this ecosystem, ensuring that Manulife’s digital experiences are efficient, scalable, and human-centered.
If you’re ready to take on a global leadership challenge, driving the evolution of a design system at enterprise scale, we’d love to hear from you!
Position Responsibilities:
You will be responsible for establishing and maintaining frameworks that ensure the successful adoption and evolution of our system. You will work closely with design, engineering, and product teams across jurisdictions to ensure that the system meets diverse business and customer needs while maintaining compliance with regional and local regulations.
Stakeholder Engagement & Advocacy:
- Lead a cross-functional coalition of designers, engineers, product managers, and business leaders via office hours and workshops, to drive partnerships and adoption of the standards and guidelines.
- Manage community feedback and contribution requests as you partner with regional teams to understand their unique constraints and integrate their needs into the system.
- Secure consensus from executives and practitioners alike, navigating organizational complexity and influencing decision-making at all levels.
Process Optimization & Compliance:
- Ensure the system processes are optimized for efficiency and compliance with cross cultural language, and regulatory challenges.
- Develop and analyze critical metrics that measure effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and business impact.
Education & Enablement:
- Train, onboard and enable teams to fully harness the system, ensuring broad and sustained adoption.
- Advocate for design and build excellence, accessibility, and efficiency while ensuring the system remains flexible for innovation.
- Publish release notes, newsletters, adoption/usage guides to the community.
Framework Development & Governance:
- Contribute to the definition of design system governance frameworks with support from Marketing and IT partners to ensure the long-term sustainability, adoption and alignment to the guidelines of the design system.
- Establish standards, documentation, and workflows to integrate seamlessly with design and development processes.
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in digital product management, UX leadership, or design system strategy within a global enterprise or multi-jurisdictional organization.
- Proven success in implementing frameworks for global or common design systems at scale.
- Strong expertise in stakeholder management, influence, and communication skills—able to drive alignment across diverse teams and geographies.
- Experience working in complex matrixed organizations with multiple business units and partners.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Hands-on experience with enterprise design tools and frameworks (Figma, Storybook, React, Angular, JIRA, Confluence, etc.)
- IT lifecycle management.
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.
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
Toronto, Ontario
Working Arrangement
Hybrid
Salary range is expected to be between
$105,750.00 CAD - $190,350.00 CAD
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.
About Manulife
Manulife is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. We have more than 40,000 employees, over 116,000 agents serving ~34 million customers worldwide, and over $1.3 trillion in assets under management and administration. Visit www.Manulife.com to find out more.
For Manulife terms of use, please visit http://bit.ly/SM_Terms