Innovation and AI Technical Lead
INVEST OTTAWA - OPERATIONS
The Innovation and AI Technical Lead (reports to the Director, IT, Systems and Security, and serves as the technical authority for innovation initiatives at Invest Ottawa. In this senior individual contributor role, the ITL is responsible for the design, integrity, and long-term sustainability of modern, scalable, and trustworthy systems, data, and AI-enabled solutions - ensuring all initiatives align with enterprise architecture, data governance, and security standards. Working in close partnership with the Innovation & AI Project Lead, the ITL collaborates directly with IT, data, and systems teams across the organization to ensure new capabilities are built to last, understood beyond a single individual, and free of hidden operational risk.
- Corporate Pay Band E: $91,200-$136,800
- Hiring Salary Range: $91,200-$125,400
- Reason for opening: New Position
- This position will be required to work onsite at Bayview Yards, minimum 10 days a month.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING:
Technical Design and Delivery
- Lead design and build of critical or high-risk components, acting as a player-coach: contributing directly to delivery while guiding other technical staff on tools, patterns, and standards.
- Translate business requirements into scalable solutions across core enterprise platforms, stepping in to directly execute critical work when needed.
- Validate technical feasibility and scalability during early project shaping; establish and enforce architectural guardrails and reusable design patterns.
- Continuously evaluate emerging platforms, tools, and architectural patterns relevant to AI, automation, and enterprise systems, advising on fit, risk, and readiness prior to adoption.
Business Systems & Solution Design
- Translate business needs into end-to-end system designs across CRM, operational platforms, and enterprise integration layers.
- Design and optimize workflows, data models, and system integrations to support program delivery and reporting, ensuring solutions are practical and aligned with real operational workflows - not just architecturally sound.
Risk Identification and Mitigation
- Identify and mitigate technical risks prior to build, including duplication of existing capabilities, unintended breakage of stable systems, and solutions only one person understands.
- Assess long-term operational burden, technical debt, and lifecycle maintenance requirements before solution approval.
- Identify AI-specific risks including model drift, bias exposure, and inappropriate automation of critical decision processes.
Integration, Documentation & Systems Stewardship
- Act as the primary technical conduit between innovation work and systems of record, data platforms, and reporting environments, maintaining deep understanding of core business systems.
- Enable new capabilities via APIs, AI agents, or automation without compromising core systems, user processes, or enterprise security, privacy, and data governance standards.
- Produce and maintain architecture designs, integration maps, data lineage documentation, and post-mortems; ensure documentation is complete before new work proceeds.
Operational Readiness and Support
- Collaborate with IT and systems teams to define maintenance procedures, ownership boundaries, and support escalation paths post-launch.
- Ensure monitoring, logging, and performance baselines are established prior to production release; design solutions that scale without generating disproportionate support burden.
WHAT YOU HAVE ACCOMPLISHED / GAINED THROUGHOUT YOUR CAREER:
Required
- 7-10 years of progressive experience in software development, systems architecture, data engineering, or enterprise integration.
- Strong experience with enterprise CRM and operational platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, ServiceNow) with emphasis on configuration, data modeling, process design, and integration.
- Proven ability to evaluate technical trade-offs and communicate architectural decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Experience designing and managing governance documentation including architecture diagrams, integration maps, and data lineage documentation.
- Strong analytical and systems-thinking capability with a hands-on delivery orientation.
Preferred / Strong Assets
- Hands-on experience with APIs, automation platforms, or orchestration tools.
- Experience with AI-enabled systems, intelligent automation, or ML tooling in an enterprise context, including evaluating risks such as model bias, explainability, and lifecycle monitoring.
- Familiarity with Microsoft Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps) or similar low-code/workflow automation environments.
- Experience with data platforms, reporting environments, or data governance frameworks.
- Breadth of platform experience across CRM, ERP, or ITSM environments is valued alongside depth.
Do you have some of these skills but maybe not all? We still encourage you to apply as we would love to review your unique application and learn more about you!
