Lead Data Scientist - Underwriting AI

About the role

Manulife is hiring a Lead Data Scientist for Underwriting AI, a senior leadership role that drives regional and business-unit AI, machine learning and generative AI solutions to transform underwriting decision-making across Asia. You will lead and grow a team of data scientists focused on underwriting AI while also acting as a hands-on technical leader, partnering with underwriting, risk, technology and regional stakeholders and supporting the Chief AI Officer in delivering the Asia AI Value agenda.

Key responsibilities

• Design, develop and deploy AI, ML and GenAI solutions for underwriting summarization and document intelligence, risk assessment, straight-through processing and workflow automation, and data-driven underwriting rules optimization.
• Embed AI into end-to-end underwriting workflows, ensuring usability, governance and regulatory compliance, and partner with reinsurers, vendors and technology providers.
• Lead and coach a team of data scientists, and apply LLMs, prompt engineering, RAG and model orchestration to underwriting data such as medical reports and financial statements.
• Ensure AI solutions are responsible, explainable and auditable, and set standards for model lifecycle management, performance monitoring and value tracking.
• Contribute to AI and data strategy, help define common modeling standards and governance, maintain a regional/global model repository, and advise underwriting and business leaders on prioritization and investment.

Required profile

• 10+ years of experience in AI, machine learning or advanced analytics, preferably in financial services.
• Strong underwriting, insurance or reinsurance domain knowledge (highly preferred).
• Proven experience leading complex analytics initiatives in highly regulated environments.
• Leadership and communication skills, able to mentor data scientists and influence senior leaders across regions.

Required skills

• Hands-on ML and statistical modeling, segmentation and underwriting or claims analytics.
• Advanced Python and SQL; R and SAS are a plus.
• Generative AI: LLMs, prompt engineering, RAG, model evaluation, bias mitigation and explainability.
• Cloud and big data platforms such as Azure, Spark, Databricks or Hadoop.
• Production deployment of models, including monitoring and lifecycle management.

The working arrangement is hybrid. Manulife describes itself as an equal opportunity employer and offers a flexible environment that supports learning, growth and well-being.