People Services AI Solutions Specialist & Test Lead

Manulife Financial · Waterloo · CA$70,500–CA$117,500 (stated in the posting)

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Empowering People Through Technology: Join Manulife’s Global HR Transformation 

At Manulife, we are transforming how our people experience work. Our PeopleComms Technology team enables simple, personalized, and compliant People Services solutions for colleagues worldwide. We value innovation, collaboration, and human-centered design, helping every employee thrive.

The Opportunity

At Manulife, we are reimagining how colleagues and leaders access People Services through AI-enabled experiences. As our People Services AI capabilities evolve, this role will help shape how HR processes and services are delivered in the flow of work.

As People Services, AI Solutions Specialist, Business Analysis & Test Lead, you will support the delivery of People Services AI capabilities by gathering and documenting business requirements, translating stakeholder needs into user stories and acceptance criteria, and leading testing activities that validate solutions before deployment. This role bridges business analysis and testing, helping ensure solutions are well-defined, practical, compliant, and ready for colleagues and HR teams.

Working closely with the People Services AI Product Lead, HR stakeholders, product owners, technology teams, and business testers, you will help clarify requirements, map current and future state workflows, support backlog refinement, develop testing strategies, coordinate testing activities, consolidate results, identify trends, and provide recommendations that improve product quality and colleague experience.

This is an individual contributor role requiring strong analytical capability, stakeholder management, testing leadership, and decision-making skills.

Key Responsibilities 

• Gather, document, and clarify business requirements for new features, enhancements, content updates, process changes, and AI-enabled People Services capabilities.

• Support stakeholder discussions, working sessions, and workshops to understand business needs, pain points, risks, desired outcomes, and operational impacts.

• Develop user stories, acceptance criteria, process documentation, and business rules in partnership with the Product Lead, HR SMEs, and delivery teams.

• Map current and future state workflows to support solution design, testing scope, training needs, change readiness, and release planning.

• Develop and maintain test plans, approaches, and release validation plans for AI-enabled features, enhancements, content updates, and production releases.

• Create test scenarios, scripts, validation criteria, and documentation aligned to business requirements, acceptance criteria, user stories, and expected colleague outcomes.

• Identify and coordinate appropriate testers for each release, including diverse groups across regions, roles, personas, HR stakeholder groups, employee populations, and use cases.

• Coordinate User Acceptance Testing, pilot testing, regression testing, validation sessions, feedback collection, and release readiness activities. 

• Gather, review, and consolidate test results, defects, feedback, open questions, observations, enhancement requests, and stakeholder recommendations.

• Analyze outcomes to identify trends, recurring issues, root causes, usability concerns, content gaps, answer quality issues, and improvement opportunities.

• Distinguish showstoppers, high-priority defects, content updates, configuration issues, usability concerns, training or communication needs, and future enhancements.

• Assess and communicate release readiness recommendations to stakeholders.

• Support defect triage and release readiness discussions with business stakeholders, the People Services AI Product Lead, and technology delivery teams.

• Support backlog refinement from both business and testing perspectives by translating requirements, testing insights, defects, enhancement requests, and stakeholder feedback into clear Jira tickets, acceptance criteria updates, and delivery recommendations.

• Maintain requirements documentation, testing documentation, decision logs, issue logs, release readiness evidence, lessons learned, and traceability between business needs, user stories, acceptance criteria, scenarios, defects, and outcomes.

• Support continuous improvement of testing templates, standards, UAT practices, tester communications, and release validation processes.

• Provide concise stakeholder updates on testing progress, release risks, key findings, trends, readiness considerations, and recommendations.

• Partner with knowledge management and HR SMEs to validate that AI solutions are accurate, relevant, grounded, and aligned to approved HR policy and process content.

• Build trusted relationships with testers and stakeholders to encourage constructive feedback, practical validation, and early identification of product issues.

What You Bring

• 3+ years of progressive experience in technology testing, UAT, quality assurance, business analysis, HR technology delivery, product support, or a related discipline.

• Experience supporting business analysis activities, including requirements gathering, documentation, stakeholder discussions, process mapping, user stories, and acceptance criteria.

• Ability to translate business needs into clear delivery, testing, backlog, and release readiness artifacts.

• Strong facilitation and listening skills, with the ability to clarify ambiguity, document practical next steps, and bring structure to stakeholder input.

• Understanding of HR service delivery, employee lifecycle events, colleague support channels, HR policies, or HR technology platforms.

• Experience creating test plans, scenarios, scripts, validation criteria, testing documentation, and release readiness summaries.

• Experience coordinating User Acceptance Testing activities across multiple stakeholder groups, business testers, or regional participants.

• Strong analytical skills to review testing outcomes, identify patterns, assess severity, and translate findings into practical recommendations.

• Experience distinguishing between critical defects, release blockers, enhancement opportunities, content issues, configuration gaps, and future backlog items.

• Experience with Jira or similar Agile work management tools, including defect tracking, ticket creation, backlog refinement support, and status updates.

• Experience with Smartsheets or similar test management tools.

• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail, including managing timelines, tester communications, issue logs, and completion evidence.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to summarize testing results clearly for business, technology, and leadership audiences.

• Ability to coordinate cross-functional stakeholders, manage competing priorities, and escalate risks or showstoppers in a timely, balanced way.

• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced delivery environment where testing, feedback, prioritization, and release decisions happen continuously.

Assets / Nice to Have

• Experience supporting AI-enabled products, virtual assistants, chatbots, Microsoft Copilot agents, conversational AI experiences, or digital assistant technologies.

• Experience testing AI-enabled experiences, including answer quality, accuracy, grounding, relevance, usability, escalation pathways, and user experience.

• Experience with ServiceNow HR Service Delivery (HRSD), Workday, HR case management, employee service portals, knowledge management, or HR technology platforms. 

• Experience with Smartsheet, Power BI, Azure DevOps, Jira dashboards, test management tools, or reporting tools for testing outcomes and release quality.

• Experience facilitating tester briefings, feedback sessions, focus groups, office hours, pilots, or post-release lessons learned reviews.

• Experience working with diverse global or regional tester groups across time zones, languages, employee populations, or HR stakeholder groups.

• Human-Centered Design, Agile, Scrum, testing, business analysis, PMP, CBAP, ISTQB, CHRP/CHRL, or related certification. 

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, HR, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Success Measures

• Clear, well-documented requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria, process flows, and business rules that support delivery and testing.

• Strong traceability between business needs, solution design, test coverage, defects, decisions, and release outcomes.

• Stakeholders have confidence that requirements are understood, documented, validated, and reflected in delivery priorities.

• Well-structured test plans, scenarios, scripts, and validation documentation aligned to requirements and release objectives.

• Representative tester participation across relevant stakeholder groups, employee populations, regions, roles, and use cases.

• Timely identification and escalation of showstoppers, critical defects, release risks, and unresolved readiness concerns.

• Clear consolidation of testing results, feedback, defects, insights, trends, decisions, and next steps.

• Effective distinction between release blockers, defects, content or configuration fixes, communication needs, and future enhancements.

• Actionable testing insights that strengthen backlog quality, Jira tickets, acceptance criteria, and future release planning.

• Reduced production issues and improved confidence in release readiness over time.

• Positive stakeholder feedback on testing coordination, communication, documentation, and release readiness recommendations.

Why Join Us? 

• Help improve high-visibility AI-enabled HR products that support colleagues and leaders in the flow of work.

• Play a practical role in improving release quality, colleague experience, and confidence in continuous delivery. 

• Work across HR, Digital Solutions, technology delivery, knowledge management, and stakeholder groups to validate meaningful product improvements. 

• Contribute to responsible, practical, and human-centered AI adoption in HR. 

Ready to make an impact? Apply today and help shape the future of HR technology at Manulife. 

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 
 

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

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 hr@manulife.com.

Referenced Salary Location

Salary range is expected to be between

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

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

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.

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