Director, Product Management - Simplii Financial

We’re building a relationship-oriented bank for the modern world. We need talented, passionate professionals who are dedicated to doing what’s right for our clients. At CIBC, we embrace your strengths and your ambitions, so you are empowered at work. Our team members have what they need to make a meaningful impact and are truly valued for who they are and what they contribute. To learn more about CIBC, please visit CIBC.com What you'll be doing Simplii Financial is a modern, customer-first organization, and our Product Managers are at the forefront of shaping vision and strategy for their pillars, executing compelling roadmaps, and keeping the customer at the heart of every decision. As Director, Product Management, you ensure the quality, capability, and consistency of the Product Management craft across the organization. You are responsible for hiring, developing, coaching, and retaining Product Managers at all levels, setting the bar for excellence and ensuring they have the skills and judgment to succeed in a complex banking environment. This is a player-coach role, where you set standards, frameworks, and expectations, while also providing hands-on coaching and support when needed. You’ll collaborate closely with leaders across CX, Digital Expansion, UX/UI, Growth, and Business Analysis to ensure the operating model functions seamlessly. At Simplii Financial, we enable the work environment most optimal for you to thrive in your role. You'll have the flexibility to manage your work activities within a hybrid work arrangement where you'll spend 2-3 days per week on-site, while other days will be remote. How you'll succeed Team Health and Craft Standards – You establish and evolve Product Management frameworks, operating principles, and decision-making guidelines. You define what good and great look like across product strategy, discovery, delivery, and outcomes, driving consistency in how Product Managers think, communicate, and operate without enforcing rigid processes. You act as a steward of product quality, judgment, and discipline, actively closing the gap between where the team is and where it needs to be. People Leadership and Development – You own hiring for Product Management roles, including role design, leveling, interviewing, and bar-setting. You define and maintain the Product Management career ladder, role expectations, and promotion criteria. You coach Product Managers on product sense, strategy, discovery, execution, and decision-making, and you identify skill gaps and design targeted development plans, training, and learning paths to strengthen every practitioner on the team. Enabling Better Decisions – You help product owners make better, faster, and more confident decisions. Your practitioners know how to draw insights from analytics, data science, user experience research (UXR), and customer experience (CX), synthesize findings into actionable points of view, and bring those perspectives into squad conversations to drive progress. Customer-First Product Thinking – You build a team where customer centricity is a practice, not just a value statement. Your practitioners start from customer behaviour, validate their assumptions, and keep the customer’s experience visible throughout the product lifecycle. You model and reinforce this orientation in everything the team produces. Delivery Fluency – Your team members are not just strategists; they are practitioners who can write well-formed user stories, manage backlogs with clarity and intent, and operate comfortably within agile delivery processes without losing sight of the customer problem they are solving. You ensure delivery skill is valued alongside strategic thinking. Scope and Accountability – You deploy practitioners into squads and shape how they operate within them, establishing ways of working, decision-making norms, and standards for good practice. Your accountability is for people, craft, standards, and capability. You are a coach, a standard-setter, and a trusted partner to the squads your team serves. Who you are You bring deep experience in product management and leadership. You have 8 or more years of experience in product management, including meaningful experience leading and developing people in an agile or cross-functional environment, ideally within financial services, fintech, or another regulated industry. You put the customer first, always. You build a team where this is a practice, not just a value stated in kickoff decks. It shows in how practitioners frame problems, what questions they ask in discovery, and what they push back on when customer experience is at stake. You hold the bar, and your team holds it because they have watched you hold it. You lead through craft. You have been a product manager at a senior level and know what excellent looks like. You can coach practitioners on discovery methods one day and review a backlog for clarity the next. Your credibility comes from having done the work, and your team knows it. You build people, not just roadmaps. Your measure of success is how much better your teamis because of your leadership. You invest in the growth of every person on your team, give feedback with honesty and care, and foster an environment where practitioners develop faster than they expected. You are fluent across disciplines. You are comfortable discussing API design constraints, usability research, design logic, engineering, analytics, and research. This fluency makes you a better leader, coach, and partner. You obsess over the details. You know that great products are made in the details. You carefully read user stories, question edge cases, and notice when acceptance criteria drift from customer intent. You bring this precision to how you coach your team. You operate well in complexity. Your team members sit across multiple squads with different contexts, stakeholders, and pressures. You stay connected, keep perspective, and support your people through organizational complexity, without losing sight of the craft. Values matter to you. You bring your real self to work, and you live our values - trust, teamwork, and accountability. #LI-TA What CIBC Offers At CIBC, your goals are a priority. We start with your strengths and ambitions as an employee and strive to create opportunities to tap into your potential. We aspire to give you a career, rather than just a paycheck. We work to recognize you in meaningful, personalized ways including a competitive salary, incentive pay, banking benefits, a benefits program*, defined benefit pension plan*, an employee share purchase plan, a vacation offering, wellbeing support, and MomentMakers, our social, points-based recognition program. Our spaces and technological toolkit will make it simple to bring together great minds to create innovative solutions that make a difference for our clients. We cultivate a culture where you can express your ambition through initiatives like Purpose Day; a paid day off dedicated for you to use to invest in your growth and development. *Subject to plan and program terms and conditions What you need to know CIBC is committed to creating an inclusive environment where all team members and clients feel like they belong. We seek applicants with a wide range of abilities and we provide an accessible candidate experience. If you need accommodation, please contact [email protected] CIBC is committed to clarity in our hiring process. All roles posted are opportunities we’re actively recruiting for, unless stated otherwise. You need to be legally eligible to work at the location(s) specified above and, where applicable, must have a valid work or study permit. We may ask you to complete an attribute-based assessment and other skills test (such as simulation, coding, French proficiency). We use artificial intelligence tools during the recruitment process. Our goal for the application process is to get to know more about you, all that you have to offer, and give you the opportunity to learn more about us. Job Location Toronto-161 Bay St., 4th Employment Type Regular Weekly Hours 37.5 Skills Agile Methodology, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Continuous Improvement, Domain Knowledge, Employee Experience, Influencing Skills, Leadership, People Leadership, Performance Management (PM), Prioritization, Product Management, Product Strategies, Results-Oriented, SOP Implementation, Stakeholder Management, Team-Building