AVP, Asia Technology Strategy and Engineering

Manulife Financial · Hong Kong

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General Description:

GWAM Asia Technology develops and supports technology solutions for the Global Wealth & Asset Management (GWAM) business in Asia across asset management, wealth, retirement, operations, and shared technology services. The team works closely with Global WAM, Asia Segment, Enterprise Technology, Data, Risk, Security, Operations, and market technology teams to support business growth, operational resilience, technology modernisation, and effective day-to-day technology support across the region.

The AVP, Asia Technology Strategy, AI Transformation and Engineering is responsible for translating business priorities and global technology direction into an actionable Asia technology strategy, transformation roadmap, and set of shared regional capabilities. The role serves as the primary Asia partner to Global GWAM Technology Strategy and Architecture leadership, with particular focus on AI-enabled transformation, technology productivity, engineering effectiveness, strategic investment choices, and adoption of global technology capabilities in Asia. 

The position leads a small regional team and has direct accountability for designated Asia common technology services, shared engineering capabilities, reusable components, developer enablement, and selected regional technology platforms. The role will progressively consolidate appropriate common services and engineering capabilities that can be managed more effectively at an Asia level, while maintaining clear accountability between regional, market, global, and operations teams. 

The incumbent also provides pragmatic architecture and engineering leadership across GWAM Asia. This includes chairing the Local Architecture Review Board, strengthening engineering practices, promoting secure and responsible adoption of AI, and helping major initiatives make balanced decisions across value, cost, speed, resilience, risk, and long-term maintainability. 

Success requires a hands-on technology leader who can move between strategy and execution, build and lead a high-impact team, influence senior stakeholders without relying solely on formal authority, and convert emerging technology into measurable improvements in business and technology productivity.

Key Accountabilities:

1. Technology Strategy and Global Partnership 

• Own and maintain the integrated Asia technology strategy, connecting business priorities, global direction, market requirements, architecture evolution, engineering capabilities and common services. 

• Serve as the primary Asia partner to Global GWAM Technology Strategy and Architecture leadership, representing Asia requirements and jointly advancing global and regional transformation priorities. 

• Translate global strategies and capabilities into executable Asia adoption plans, with defined ownership, sequencing, dependencies, funding requirements, and measurable outcomes. 

• Establish a regular strategy-management cadence covering strategic themes, investment options, roadmap progress, dependencies, risks, and changing business conditions. 

2. AI Transformation and Technology Productivity 

• Lead the Asia technology AI-transformation agenda, including AI-assisted engineering, workflow transformation, agent-based solutions, and responsible adoption of enterprise AI capabilities. 

• Define measurable productivity outcomes covering delivery speed, automation, engineering quality, reuse, platform simplification, operational efficiency, developer experience, and technology cost. 

• Identify and prioritize AI and automation opportunities with clear business cases, accountable owners, production-readiness criteria, and value-realization measures. 

• Partner with data, risk, security, legal, compliance, and global AI teams to ensure responsible AI controls are embedded without creating unnecessary delivery friction. 

3. Common Services and Engineering 

• Lead designated Asia common technology services and shared engineering capabilities, with clear service ownership, roadmaps, operating measures, support models, and continuous-improvement plans. 

• Identify capabilities that should be provided once for Asia rather than duplicated across markets, while preserving appropriate local accountability for regulatory or market-specific needs. 

• Develop reusable components, engineering patterns, APIs, automation, and developer-enablement capabilities that improve consistency, resilience, and delivery speed across Asia. 

• Strengthen engineering practices in DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure coding, production readiness, and technical-debt management. 

• Work with market and operations technology leaders to define clear boundaries between regional common services, market delivery, and day-to-day production support. 

4. Architecture and Governance 

• Provide pragmatic regional architecture leadership and chair the Local Architecture Review Board, ensuring reviews are timely, proportionate, risk-aware, and focused on enabling delivery. 

• Maintain the Asia target architecture and architecture roadmap as an integral part of the Asia technology strategy. 

• Encourage reuse of enterprise and global capabilities, reduce unnecessary duplication, and manage material architecture risks and exceptions. 

• Advise major programs on technology choices, sequencing, integration, scalability, resilience, security, and maintainability.

5. Team and Stakeholder Leadership 

• Lead, develop, and retain a small, high-impact regional team covering strategy, AI transformation, architecture and engineering enablement, and designated common services. 

• Set clear objectives, decision rights, service expectations, and outcome measures for the team. 

• Act as a trusted adviser to Asia business and technology leaders on strategy, AI transformation, engineering investment, platform choices, delivery feasibility, and technology trade-offs. 

• Build communities of practice and federated working relationships across market engineers, architects, operations teams, and global technology functions. 

Shared Accountabilities:

• Collaborate with Global GWAM Technology Strategy and Architecture, enterprise technology, data, security, infrastructure, and architecture teams to shape direction and align Asia initiatives. 
• Work with business leaders, product owners, portfolio teams, and market technology leaders to convert strategic priorities into sequenced initiatives, credible plans, capacity and funding choices, and measurable outcomes. 
• Partner with engineering and delivery leaders to improve engineering discipline, developer experience, production readiness, and delivery flow. 
• Partner with operations and market technology teams to maintain reliable and supportable services while modernizing and simplifying the technology estate. 
• Work with the data organization to align data architecture, governance, analytics, and AI-ready data capabilities with the Asia roadmap. 
• Partner with Risk, Security, Compliance, Legal, and Audit to meet control expectations through proportionate and efficient delivery practices. 

Measures of Success:

• An agreed and actively managed Asia technology strategy and multi-year roadmap, with visible priorities, dependencies, investment choices, and outcomes. 

• Measurable adoption and value from AI-assisted engineering and AI-enabled workflow transformation. 

• Improved engineering productivity, such as shorter lead times, greater automation, stronger production readiness, and reduced manual effort. 

• Increased reuse of common services, platforms, patterns, and components, with reduced duplication across Asia markets. 

• Clear service ownership, roadmaps, operating measures, and support models for designated Asia common technology services. 

• Timely, pragmatic architecture decisions that improve delivery speed, resilience, security, and long-term maintainability. 

• A capable, engaged regional team with clear accountabilities and strong partnerships across markets and global functions. 

Knowledge/Skills/Competencies/Education:

• University degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Substantial technology leadership experience spanning technology strategy, software engineering, solution delivery, architecture, and production operations in a complex, multi-market organisation.
• Proven ability to develop and manage a technology strategy: synthesising business and market inputs, setting strategic themes, building roadmaps, evaluating investment options, managing dependencies, and tracking outcomes.
• Demonstrated success as an engineering or development leader with accountability for building, integrating, modernising, and operating enterprise applications or digital platforms.
• Strong working knowledge of modern software engineering, including API and integration design, cloud-native patterns, DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure coding, reliability, performance, and technical-debt management.
• Ability to engage at sufficient technical depth with engineers and delivery teams, challenge designs and plans constructively, assess delivery and production risks, and guide issues through to resolution.
• Strong architecture experience across application, integration, data, cloud, security, and platform domains, with a pragmatic approach that uses architecture to improve delivery, reuse, resilience, and business outcomes.
• Experience leading architecture governance forums and making balanced decisions across business value, strategic fit, delivery speed, risk, cost, scalability, and operational resilience.
• Strong passion for AI and emerging technology, with a track record of applying AI in business or technology contexts, such as AI-assisted engineering, AI-enabled applications, agent deployment, or workflow transformation.
• Strong knowledge of SDLC in the AI development era, including responsible AI controls, model and agent lifecycle considerations, testing, monitoring, change management, and production readiness.
• Understanding of shared technology services, reusable platforms, engineering enablement, and operating models across multiple markets or business lines.
• Excellent executive communication, stakeholder management, facilitation, negotiation, and influencing skills, with the ability to represent Asia effectively in regional and global forums.
• Strategic, pragmatic, and outcome-focused, with the judgement to move between long-term direction and near-term execution, challenge the status quo constructively, and build alignment across teams with different priorities.

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.

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