Permanent Full Time

Role Overview

The Senior Technical Lead is accountable for end-to-end delivery, stability, and evolution of critical digital platforms supporting Canada Life's Insurance and Wealth businesses.

This role goes beyond traditional development leadership-owning platform health, operational excellence, and regulatory compliance while driving modernization, scalability, and customer experience improvements. The Lead partners across Technology, Product, Architecture, Risk, and Operations to ensure delivery of secure, resilient, and high-performing solutions aligned to enterprise strategy.

Success is measured by:

• Consistent delivery of business outcomes and customer value
• Strong platform reliability and incident reduction
• Compliance with audit, security, and regulatory standards
• Development of high-performing, accountable teams

What you will do

Platform Ownership & Delivery

• Own end-to-end delivery and support of applications, including build, release, operate, and continuous improvement.
• Ensure platforms meet availability, performance, resilience, and scalability targets.
• Lead delivery of strategic initiatives (e.g., digital experience, CIAM integration, platform modernization).
• Drive alignment between business priorities and technology execution, ensuring measurable outcomes.

Operational Excellence & Governance

• Accountable for production stability, including incident management, root cause analysis, and trend reduction.
• Ensure adherence to enterprise change management (ServiceNow), audit controls, and regulatory requirements.
• Establish and maintain clear ownership, accountability, and control effectiveness across applications.
• Drive continuous improvement in reliability, observability, and support models.

Architecture & Engineering Leadership

• Partner with Architecture to define and implement modern, scalable, and secure solutions.
• Promote API-first, event-driven, and modular architectures, aligned to enterprise standards.
• Ensure solutions are built with reusability, maintainability, and long-term sustainability.
• Evaluate and adopt technologies that accelerate time-to-market and platform resiliency.

Stakeholder & Strategic Alignment

• Act as a trusted partner to Product Owners, Business Leaders, and Senior Technology Leadership.
• Provide clear, concise executive-level updates on delivery, risks, incidents, and platform health.
• Influence strategic decisions through fact-based insights and technology expertise.
• Align cross-team dependencies across complex, federated platforms.

People Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing engineering team, fostering accountability and continuous learning.
• Drive a culture of ownership, quality, and operational discipline.
• Support workforce planning including hiring, onboarding, and resource optimization (onshore/offshore).
• Build strong collaboration across distributed and cross-functional teams.

What you will bring

Technical & Domain Expertise

• Strong experience with modern technologies:
• Frontend: React / Vue
• Backend: Java (Spring Boot), API development
• Data: MongoDB / cloud-native data platforms
• Exposure to Salesforce and integration patterns is an asset
• Experience with (Auth0/SSO), API ecosystems, and zero-trust digital platforms is highly desirable

Leadership & Delivery

• 6-9+ years delivering and operating enterprise-scale platforms in complex environments
• Proven ability to lead end-to-end delivery with accountability for outcomes
• Strong experience in Agile and DevOps practices, including continuous delivery and support models

Operational & Risk Management

• Demonstrated experience managing:
• Production incidents and problem management
• Audit and compliance requirements (e.g., change management, access controls)
• Platform health metrics and service reliability
• Ability to establish and enforce clear governance and control frameworks

Strategic & Analytical Thinking

• Ability to balance hands-on technical leadership with strategic decision-making
• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to navigate ambiguity and competing priorities
• Experience driving modernization and operational transformation initiatives

Stakeholder & Communication

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to:
  • Translate complex technical issues for executive audiences
  • Provide clear, concise, and fact-based updates
• Strong influencing skills across technology, business, and leadership stakeholders

Reliability Status Security Clearance - this can only be completed with candidates who receive an offer of employment. This is a personal security status that is required as a condition of employment before an employee can gain access to Protected B information, assets or work sites as outlined by the Government of Canada website. The cost of submitting these checks will be covered by Canada Life.

Given the size and scope of our organization, we have the flexibility for this position to be located in the following head office locations: London, Toronto and Winnipeg.

The base salary for this position is between $80,400 - $119,800 annually. This represents base salary only and does not represent other variable compensation components of our total compensation ( i.e. annual bonus, commission etc). If you are selected to move forward in our recruitment process, your recruiter will be able to discuss additional details of our total rewards program with you.

Career opportunities will be open a minimum of 5 business days from the date of posting, closing dates will vary depending on the search activity. All applications received will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

#LI-Hybrid

Requisition ID: 6506

Category: Digital Technology

Location: