Job Description

Who are we?

Sanlam Corporate forms part of the Sanlam Group which offers retail and corporate life insurance, health and investment products in South Africa. Our vision is to be the preferred partner to Corporate and Public Sector by providing an awesome client experience and comprehensive solutions that enable the financial resilience and prosperity of those entities and their employees. We tap into over 100 years of expertise to provide cost-effective Employee Benefits and Healthcare Solutions that enable financial confidence for our members. We enable our clients to make better retirement and risk decisions today through determined and passionate thought leadership and best-in-class people, innovative products and proven processes all designed to help people live a better life tomorrow.
We believe in creating and cultivating a positive, energised working environment that gives every individual the opportunity to achieve success by embracing diversity and growing our talent.

Build a successful career with us

We're all about building strong, lasting relationships with our employees. We know that you have hopes for your future - your career, your personal development and of achieving great things. We pride ourselves in helping our employees to realise their worth. Through its five business clusters - Sanlam Fintech, Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam Investment Group, Sanlam Allianz, Santam, as well as MiWay and the Group Office - the group provides many opportunities for growth and development.

What will you do?

The Scaled Agile Product Owner (SAFe PO) is responsible for defining and prioritising the Team Backlog, ensuring alignment with business objectives, and maximizing value delivery within an Agile Release Train (ART). The PO works closely with Business Owners, Business Stakeholders, and Agile Teams including Information Technology (IT) stakeholders, to ensure successful execution of Program Increments (PIs) and sprint deliverables.

As a key liaison between business and IT, the PO plays a crucial role in translating business and technology requirements into actionable deliverables. This requires close engagement with leadership teams to contribute to Sanlam Corporate and Sanlam Group Risk's overarching goal of sustainable and profitable growth.

The role operates within an Agile delivery environment, where varying levels of maturity exist across the organization. Given the complexity of the Sanlam Group's technology landscape--including legacy systems, existing solutions, and emerging technologies such as AI and Process Automation--the PO must navigate a diverse stakeholder ecosystem, ensuring seamless integration and alignment of initiatives.

Key Responsibilities

Not limited to but includes:

Ownership & Accountability

Owns and maintains the Team Backlog by defining, refining, and prioritising Stories to align with business priorities. Acts as the primary liaison between the Business Owners, and Agile Teams. Owns and defines business level acceptance criteria for backlog items to ensure high-quality deliverables. Ensures the Team Backlog is visible, transparent, and clear to all stakeholders. Collaborates with the multiple stakeholders to ensure technical enablement of features. Ensure the Agile Team delivers in alignment with the business strategy, maintaining strategic cohesion between the team and business objectives. Develops the PI objectives based on key milestones and deliverables, articulating the benefits, the business value and assigns business value indicator to each PI objective. Responsible for ensuring alignment between business-led goals and Agile Team delivery focus. Enables consistent feedback loops to the teams. Demonstrates independent decision-making that aligns with business priorities, ensuring optimal outcomes for the organization. Effectively influences stakeholders, fostering collaboration and driving consensus to support the team's objectives and strategic goals.

Execution and Delivery

Ensures the Agile team understands the priorities within backlog items Ownership of the Product Backlog creation and refinement. Supports Agile Teams in Sprint Planning, Daily Syncs, Iteration Reviews, and Retrospectives. Engages in PI Planning by defining PI objectives, features and prioritising team commitments and delivering this to the ART. Provides the product owner briefing in the ART PI planning. Assigns business value and articulates the business benefits and clear expectations. Participates in System Demos and Inspect & Adapt Workshops to review team performance and identify areas for improvement.

Stakeholder Engagement and Collaboration

Works closely with Business Owners and key stakeholders to translate business objectives into PI objectives. Collaborates with Scrum Masters to facilitate Agile best practices within the team. Engages with Customers and End-Users to validate backlog priorities and feature expectations. Coordinates dependencies across teams and ARTs to align deliverables.

Change Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement

Act as a key change leader, facilitating business product ownership and cross-functional collaboration.

Qualification and Experience

Required

A relevant Agile and/or Business Analyst Certification is a requirement 5+ years of relevant experience in Financial Services and/or Information Technology execution 3+ years hands-on lead business analysis experience across the financial services industry (preferably within Insurance or Employee Benefits) 3+ years of experience in Agile within a SAFe environment is a requirement

Advantageous

Bachelor's degree in business, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field will be advantageous SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM) certification will be advantageous

Knowledge and Skills

Strong understanding of Agile, SAFe, and Lean-Agile Principles. Experience with Agile tools such as Jira, Miro Confluence, MS Teams. Excellent stakeholder management and prioritization skills. Ability to translate business requirements into well-defined Agile product backlog items. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Experience working with cross-functional teams in complex, scaled environments.

Behavioural Competencies

Flexible and Adaptable

- Rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.

Courage

- Stepping up to address difficult issues, saying what needs to be said.

Manages Complexity

- Demonstrated ability and proven record to make complex decisions.

Ensures Accountability

- Holding self and others accountable to meet commitments.

Plans and Aligns

- Planning and prioritising work to meet commitments aligned to organisational goals

Outstanding communication

- presentation and leadership skills.

Core Competencies

Cultivates Innovation -

by creating new and better ways for the organisation to be successful.

Client Focus

- Building strong customer relationships and delivering customer-centric solutions.

Drives Results

- Consistently achieving results and meets deadlines, even under tough circumstances.

Collaborates

- Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.

Resilience

- Rebounding from setbacks and adversity when facing difficult situations.

Turnaround time

The shortlisting process will only start once the application due date has been reached. The time taken to complete this process will depend on how far you progress and the availability of managers.

Our commitment to transformation

The Sanlam Group is committed to achieving transformation and embraces diversity. This commitment is what drives us to achieve a diverse, inclusive and equitable workplace as we believe that these are key components to ensuring a thriving and sustainable business in South Africa. The Group's Employment Equity plan and targets will be considered as part of the selection process.