Delivery Lead - Operations Transformation

This is your opportunity to join AXIS Capital – a trusted global provider of specialty lines insurance and reinsurance.  We stand apart for our outstanding client service, intelligent risk taking and superior risk adjusted returns for our shareholders. We also proudly maintain an entrepreneurial, disciplined and ethical corporate culture.  As a member of AXIS, you join a team that is among the best in the industry.

At AXIS, we believe that we are only as strong as our people. We strive to create an inclusive and welcoming culture where employees of all backgrounds and from all walks of life feel comfortable and empowered to be themselves. This means that we bring our whole selves to work. 

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic, including age, color, disability, ethnicity, gender identity, marital status, national origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any basis prohibited by the laws that govern its operations.

Job Description: Delivery Lead – Operations Transformation

How does this role contribute to our collective success?

The Delivery Lead – Operations Transformation is an outcome-oriented delivery leader accountable for ensuring the Global Operations Transformation delivers measurable business results. The program is a multi-year effort to modernize underwriting operations capabilities, simplify and standardize ways of working, embed AI and automation, and deliver sustainable operational efficiencies across AXIS's businesses and regions globally. This role owns the integrated transformation outcome, including the benefits case, operating model change, and adoption.

Reporting to the Strategic Delivery Lead – COO, this role works directly with the Operations leaders in North America (NA), Global Markets (GM), and Reinsurance (Re) to shape transformation priorities, make commercially sound trade-offs, and ensure that changes to process, organization, technology, data, and AI come together as one integrated business change. The Delivery Lead brings a business-first perspective, connecting investment decisions to operational and financial outcomes and holding the program to account for realized benefits.

What will you do in this role?

Shape the Transformation Agenda with Operations Leaders

• Partner directly with the Operations leaders in NA, GM, and Re to translate the Operations Transformation strategy into an outcome-based roadmap with clear business objectives, priorities, and success measures.

• Support Operations leaders with business priorities and decisions, process ownership and operational performance, and leading their teams through change to achieve the desired business outcomes.

• Act as the integrator across businesses and functions, ensuring changes to process, people, controls, and technology are coordinated as one coherent transformation.

• Work with stakeholders to appropriately prioritize, sequence, and make investment decisions, focusing effort where it creates the greatest operational and financial value.

• Balance global standardization with the distinct regulatory, market, and operational needs of each business, sequencing change to manage risk and accelerate value.

• Build alignment among senior stakeholders on priorities and trade-offs, and ensure decisions are made, documented, and acted on.

Own the Benefits Case and Value Realization

• Establish operational baselines and a clear benefits case covering productivity, capacity, cost, quality, and turnaround time.

• Agree benefit targets and ownership with business owners, and maintain a benefits register that links initiatives to measurable results.

• Track and evidence benefits realization, intervening early when value is at risk and ensuring benefits are reflected in business plans and budgets.

• Oversee transformation investment in partnership with Finance, ensuring spend is directed toward the highest-value outcomes.

Lead Operating Model Change and Adoption

• Lead the design and implementation of target operating model changes across process, organization, roles, controls, and ways of working.

• Ensure AI and automation are embedded into how work is done, so that new capabilities improve operational performance rather than simply being deployed.

• Partner with business owners and change management teams on change impact, readiness, communication, training, and adoption across regions.

• Measure adoption and sustainment, and remove barriers until new ways of working are fully embedded.

Integrate Business and Technology Change

• Work with the Value Stream and Technology delivery organization to align technology, data, and AI delivery with transformation priorities and outcomes.

• Partner with the Value Stream and Technology delivery organization on solution design, build, test, and release; backlog, sprint, and release management; engineering quality; technology delivery resources and vendors; and application and platform health.

• Clearly articulate business outcomes, requirements, acceptance criteria, and value expectations, and ensure solutions include appropriate human oversight and controls.

• Inform build vs. buy decisions by assessing options against business value, cost, time to value, scalability, and risk.

• Prioritize AI and automation opportunities, such as submission intake, workflow orchestration, knowledge access, and decision support, based on business value and readiness for adoption.

• Serve as the business-facing point of accountability for transformation partners, partnering with Procurement on vendor selection and performance against outcomes.

Provide Outcome-Focused Governance and Transparency

• Provide concise, outcome-focused reporting to the Strategic Delivery Lead – COO, sponsors, and senior leadership, centered on benefits, adoption, and key decisions.

• Surface material risks, dependencies, and trade-offs early, and escalate to the appropriate decision-makers.

• Partner with Risk, Compliance, Legal, and Internal Audit to ensure changes maintain effective operational controls, including underwriting authority and regulatory requirements across jurisdictions.

Success Measures

• Measurable, evidenced benefits realized against the benefits case, including improvements in productivity, capacity, cost, quality, and turnaround time across NA, GM, and Re.

• Sustained adoption of operating model, process, AI, and automation changes, with new ways of working embedded in day-to-day operations.

• Strong confidence and engagement from Operations leaders, sponsors, and senior stakeholders, with timely, well-informed decisions on priorities and trade-offs.

• Clear accountabilities between business owners, the Value Stream and Technology delivery organization, and the transformation team, with no duplication of delivery effort or governance.

• Transformation investment directed to the highest-value priorities, with spend tracked transparently against benefits.

• No material control issues or audit findings arising from transformation changes.

About you:

What you need to have:

Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree required.

• 10+ years of experience leading business transformation, operational change, or benefits-driven programs, with substantial experience in insurance or reinsurance.

• Knowledge of insurance operations, ideally including underwriting operations, policy administration, and the operating realities of specialty insurance and reinsurance businesses.

• Proven track record delivering measurable business outcomes and benefits from complex, cross-functional transformations spanning operating model, process, and technology change.

• Strong commercial and financial acumen, including building and tracking benefits cases and linking investment to operational and financial results.

• Demonstrated ability to influence and align senior business leaders, including working directly with Operations and business heads across multiple regions and regulatory environments.

• Experience embedding process improvement, automation, data, or AI-enabled solutions into operations, including the related control and change implications.

• Experience working effectively with technology and delivery organizations while maintaining clear role boundaries.

• Excellent executive communication skills, with the ability to frame complex trade-offs clearly and concisely.

Key Capabilities

• Outcome orientation: Focuses on business results and benefits realization rather than activity, and measures success by sustained operational and financial impact.

• Insurance and commercial judgment: Understands how insurance and reinsurance operations create value and makes sound, commercially grounded trade-offs.

• Senior stakeholder influence: Builds trust with senior Operations and business leaders, drives decisions, and aligns stakeholders across businesses, functions, and geographies without relying on direct authority.

• Operating model and change leadership: Designs and embeds sustainable change across process, people, controls, and technology, and drives adoption.

• Ownership and accountability: Takes end-to-end ownership of transformation outcomes, holds partners to commitments, and escalates early and constructively.

• AI and digital acumen: Understands how AI, automation, and data can improve operations and what it takes to deliver and adopt them responsibly.

• Clear communication: Provides concise, transparent reporting and tailors messages for executive, business, and technical audiences.

What we prefer you to have:

Role Factors: In the office three days per week. Flexibility to work across time zones and travel internationally as required.

What we offer:

For this position, we currently expect to offer a base salary in the range of $80,000 - $100,000; $100,000 - $135,000 CAD. Your salary offer will be based on an assessment of a variety of factors including your specific experience and work location. 

In addition, you will be offered competitive target incentive compensation, with awards based on overall corporate and individual performance. On top of this, you will be eligible for a comprehensive and competitive benefits package which includes medical plans for you and your family, health and wellness programs, retirement plans, tuition reimbursement, paid vacation, and much more.  

This posting is for an existing vacancy.