Senior Director, Global Design System

As Director, Global Design System at Manulife, you will be responsible for delivering and scaling an extraordinary design system that serves multiple business units across Canada, Asia, and the US. This system will drive consistency, efficiency, and innovation across Manulife’s public, secure, and mobile digital experiences. You will partner with design, engineering, and product teams across jurisdictions to establish governance, ensure adoption, and evolve the system to meet diverse business and customer needs.
This role is for a leader who has been there before—someone who understands the technical, organizational, and cultural complexities of embedding a design system into the fabric of a global enterprise. You will define strategy, influence partners, and lead all aspects of execution, ensuring that the design system delivers measurable business value while meeting regional and local needs. 

Position Responsibilities:

Global Design System Strategy & Leadership

• Define and implement the strategy for a scalable, enterprise-grade design system that supports Manulife’s digital transformation across all regions
• Ensure the right balance of global consistency and local flexibility, recognizing differences in customer expectations, regulatory constraints, and market dynamics
• Lead interoperability and operational strategy between Global and Segment design systems
• Partner with executive leaders, product, engineering, and design teams to ensure alignment with Manulife’s business and technology strategies
• Establish governance models and contribution frameworks to ensure long-term sustainability and adoption of the system

Implementation, Governance & Adoption

• Drive adoption of the design system across all digital products and teams, embedding it into Manulife’s digital delivery model.
• Define standards, documentation, and workflows to ensure perfect integration with design and development processes.
• Lead all aspects of the development of reusable UI components, templates, patterns, and tokens that address the needs of all business units.
• Ensure the system is built for accessibility (WCAG compliance), performance, and scalability.
• Optimize for multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and multi-regulatory challenges, ensuring designs can be localized and adapted without breaking system integrity.
• Develop and track KPIs that measure adoption, efficiency gains, and business impact.

Cross-Functional Leadership & Stakeholder Influence

• Lead a cross-functional coalition of designers, engineers, product managers, and business leaders to drive system adoption and evolution.
• Partner with regional teams to understand their outstanding constraints and integrate their needs into the system.
• Advocate for design excellence, accessibility, and efficiency while ensuring the system remains flexible for innovation.
• Educate, mentor, and enable teams to fully demonstrate the system, ensuring broad and sustained adoption.
• Navigate organizational complexity, influence decision-making at all levels, and secure agreement from executives and practitioners alike.

Technical & Operational Oversight

• Own and evolve the tooling, workflows, and documentation supporting the design system, ensuring it integrates with enterprise design and development stacks (Figma, Storybook, React, Angular, etc.).
• Work closely with engineering to ensure high-quality implementation, technical feasibility, and long-term maintainability of components and frameworks.
• Define and maintain a structured backlog of enhancements, optimizations, and new features.
• Lead vendor relationships and external partnerships where necessary to support design system growth.

 Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in digital product management, UX leadership, or design system strategy within a global enterprise or multi-jurisdictional organization.
• Shown success in implementing a global or common design system at scale, balancing standardization with regional/local adaptation.
• Deep understanding of UX/UI design, front-end development, and accessibility standards (WCAG).
• Experience working in complex matrixed organizations with multiple business units and partners.
• Strong expertise in Agile, Lean UX, and enterprise digital delivery models.
• Exceptional partner management, influence, and communication skills—able to drive alignment across diverse teams and geographies.
• Hands-on experience with enterprise design tools and frameworks (Figma, Storybook, React, Angular, JIRA, Confluence, etc.).
• Experience navigating multi-lingual, multi-cultural, and regulatory complexities in global design and content.
• Background in IT lifecycle management and governance is a plus.

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

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 [email protected].

Toronto, Ontario

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.