We're looking for our next Director of Engineering, Banking. Could It Be You?

The Director of Engineering, Banking provides cross-functional management focused on the delivery of world-class engineering solutions in full-service digital banking services. This is a seasoned leader who enables the establishment of high-performing technical teams in the organization.

As one of the key executors of the technology strategy, this role oversees the engineering teams responsible for delivering technology products, particularly in the area of Digital & Core Banking. This leader will implement innovative approaches to ensure their teams are unblocked and performing well towards their goals, in collaboration with product and other teams to fulfill Questrade's mission: help Canadians become more financially successful and secure.

As the Director of Engineering for a bank, you'll contribute to the technology strategy and execution that powers the bank's operations and customer experiences. You'll oversee the development and maintenance of the banking platforms that enable certain business outcomes, from core systems (e.g. Temenos, HPS, Thales, Equifax etc) to customer-facing mobile apps. This role requires a blend of technical expertise, strategic leadership, and a deep understanding of the financial services industry.

• Platform Leadership: Direct the architecture and development of critical banking platforms, including core banking systems, digital banking channels, data platforms, and APIs. Drive the strategic roadmap for platform modernization, including cloud adoption and the integration of new technologies like Generative AI.
• Team Management: Build, mentor, and lead high-performing engineering teams. Foster a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Strategic Execution: Translate business goals and regulatory requirements into a clear and executable engineering strategy. Ensure the end-to-end delivery of technical projects, from concept to deployment.
• Security & Compliance: Uphold the highest standards of security, resilience, and regulatory compliance across all technology platforms. Collaborate with cybersecurity, risk, and fraud teams to protect the bank's assets and customers.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with product, business, operations and other technology teams to align solutions with business needs and deliver a seamless experience for customers.

This role is for a visionary leader who can navigate the complexities of a regulated industry while driving technological innovation to create a competitive advantage.

Need more details? Keep reading...

Delivery Responsibilities

1. Platform Strategy and Architecture

This is the most critical area. The Director of Engineering is not just building software; they are building the technological foundation of the bank.

• Core Banking Platforms: This involves contributing to key strategic decisions about the bank's core system-the central nervous system that manages accounts, transactions, and customer data. This could mean leading the teams through a multi-year continuous improvement lifecycle on cloud-native platforms like Temenos or HPS. This requires a deep understanding of the pros and cons of these platforms, as well as the technical and operational risks associated with these changes.
• Digital Banking Platforms: This includes the public-facing applications (web and mobile apps) that customers interact with daily. The Director of Engineering is responsible for ensuring these platforms provide a seamless, secure, and intuitive user experience for everything from checking balances to applying for a loan. They must stay current with technologies that enable features like contactless payments, digital wallets, and biometric authentication.
• Data and Analytics Platforms: Retail banks generate massive amounts of data.The Director of Engineering must architect the systems that collect, store, and analyze this data to provide a 360-degree view of the customer. This includes implementing data warehouses, data lakes, and analytics tools that power personalized insights, fraud detection, and risk management.
• API and Integration Platforms: The rise of open banking means that banks must be able to securely and efficiently share data and services with third-party fintech partners. The Director of Engineering is responsible for building the API gateways and integration layers that enable these partnerships while maintaining strict security protocols.

2. Platform Modernization and Innovation

The Director of Engineering is a key driver of the bank's digital transformation.

• Cloud Adoption: A major part of the role is leading the move to the cloud (e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure). This isn't just a technical task; it's a strategic shift that affects everything from scalability and security to cost management and time-to-market.
• Emerging Technology Integration: They must evaluate and champion the adoption of new technologies that can improve the bank's platforms. This includes Generative AI for creating more personalized customer experiences and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for streamlining back-office operations like loan processing and compliance checks.
• Composable Banking: The trend is to move away from monolithic platforms and towards a "composable" architecture where different services (e.g., lending, payments, KYC) can be swapped in and out. The Director of Engineering must design and build the systems that make this modularity possible, increasing the bank's agility and ability to innovate.

3. Platform Security and Resilience

In a regulated industry like banking, platform security is non-negotiable.

• Risk and Compliance: They are ultimately responsible for ensuring all platforms and their components adhere to stringent regulatory requirements. This includes managing operational risk, credit risk, and financial crime prevention (e.g., Anti-Money Laundering).
• Cybersecurity: This involves working closely with cybersecurity teams to implement robust security measures, including encryption, threat detection, and incident response plans.They must ensure the bank's platforms are protected from cyber threats and data breaches.
• Operational Resilience: The Director of Engineering must ensure that the bank's platforms are highly available and can recover quickly from any disruptions. This involves building fault-tolerant systems, implementing disaster recovery plans, and conducting regular resilience testing.

By focusing on these core responsibilities, the Director of Engineering ensures that the technology organization is not just a support function but a strategic business partner, driving growth and creating a competitive advantage.

Engineering Responsibilities

• Be a forward-thinking technologist who is continuously researching new approaches to problems and discussing them with others in a productive manner, in a community of practice setting.
• Maintain a view and provide visibility into the engineering roadmaps and milestones to executive stakeholders, handling questions, concerns and making adjustments as needed.
• Provide leadership support to teams that are implementing, and testing customer-facing and internal web and mobile applications, with a focus on digital investing.
• Support teams in continuously improving their applications' functionality, scalability, and maintainability, including the proper management of technical debt.
• Provide support and expertise for a complex and hybrid (cloud and on-premises) infrastructure environment; evaluation (with recommendations) to enable proper operability of applications on both infrastructure and software levels.
• Meet regularly and interact productively with a diverse team of business stakeholders, user interface and experience designers, architects, engineers as needed to elicit, define, analyze and document requirements and principles for new applications.
• Support technical leaders in defining technical requirements to facilitate development, testing, implementation, and ongoing support of applications within scoped teams.
• Lead the support efforts of the applications built-in production, addressing issues in a timely fashion, respecting agreed-upon service level objectives.
• Be an active voice in defining and implementing best practices, standards, and procedures including quality and delivery methodologies.
• Ensure compliance with the documented software processes and procedures throughout the life cycle of software products.
• Make sure that code written within scoped teams is reviewed and tested appropriately.
• Conducts research and proof of concepts, ensuring the value is documented and socialized.
• Assist teams with sharing knowledge and lessons learned with others in the organization.
• Apply significant knowledge of the technology industry trends to help Questrade to improve and build innovative products.
• Provide support and expertise for a multi-tier environment; evaluation (with recommendations) for any additional infrastructure or software required to support the scoped application.

Engineering Team Governance Responsibilities

• Lead design and engineering team leads to continually improve adoption of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) best practices and methodologies
• Streamline and enhance the software development life-cycle (SDLC) to ensure the design and implementation planning, execution, and reporting is effective, efficient, standardized, coordinated, and integrated
• Govern the production of all required project artifacts produced by the team
• Manage multiple development teams across all locations and ensure alignment with departmental processes and standards
• Determine requirements for the team budget including all required resources (staff, hardware, tools, etc.)
• Measure the effectiveness of the engineering team capabilities with consideration of quality and timeliness of deliverables
• Govern the selection & configuration of engineering tools. Organize tool-training, usage, and deployment
• Align all efforts according to Questrade Strategy and Enterprise Alignment

IT Operational Responsibilities

• Ensure the timely investigation and troubleshooting of technical production incidents and provide support enhancements/resolution to scoped applications in a timely and accurate manner.
• Contribute to the setup and maintenance of a framework of application solutions to proactively monitor production systems and report any inconsistencies or potential problems
• Manage access permissions for direct reports on all relevant systems and environments
• Ensure identified security vulnerabilities are resolved in a timely fashion
• Contribute to the integrity, availability, and confidentiality of Questrade electronic data, client information, and systems
• Govern staff to ensure compliance with security and regulatory operating policies for computing and information technology
• Participate in the composition of scheduled releases and collaborate with production control on the tools and methodologies for effective and efficient code releases to production.
• Approve all production Change Requests (CRs) and Emergency Change Requests (ECRs) relating to scoped applications
• Identify any production risks pertaining to the scoped applications developed by the team

Leadership & People Development Responsibilities

• Manage the team of people who comprise the Digital Banking Engineering group.
• Align engineering teams and individual goals to the organization's strategic goals.
• Forecast resourcing needs based on strategic goals, to ensure those are met.
• Be resourceful and elaborate alternative plans to address hiring needs if there are challenges fulfilling them.
• Be an advocate for the teams, removing efficiency blockers, and helping them get the tools and processes they need to be high performing, especially when this requires presenting a case to obtain support from the organization. Ensure this is done in a timely fashion, as this role is ultimately accountable for the team's results.
• Provide mentoring to team members to assist them in reaching their career goals.
• Address team member performance issues in a timely manner, before it impacts deliverables significantly.
• Maintains a robust workforce of well-qualified IT professionals and develop a performance-oriented culture
• Fuel a passion within the team for designing and building innovative products
• Facilitate a work environment that fosters and supports ethical decision-making and actions by motivating, promoting, and modeling ethical behavior, as well as executing