AVP, AI Domain Enterprise Architecture

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do.

At Sun Life, we're driven by our Purpose: helping our Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Our values shape how we work: caring, authentic, bold, inspiring, and impactful.

When you join Sun Life, you'll work with passionate colleagues and empowering leaders who support your growth and celebrate your contributions, so you can make a meaningful difference in our Clients' lives.

Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

Role Summary

We seek a visionary leader with deep expertise to spearhead architectural design and acceleration of cutting-edge AI solutions across Sun Life globally.  The Assistant Vice President, Distinguished AI Domain Enterprise Architect will report into the AVP, AI Domain Enterprise Architecture and will mentor a distributed team of AI experts; partnering with Business Groups across Canada, U.S., Asia, Corporate, SLC Management, and IT offices. 

The AVP will play a critical role in aligning AI initiatives with enterprise goals, ensuring scalable and compliant architectures, and driving innovation through collaboration with cross-functional teams. The ideal candidate will bridge the gap between strategic vision and technical execution to deliver business outcomes using enterprise architecture patterns which delivery Responsible AI.

What will you do

Strategy and innovation

• Stay abreast of emerging AI technologies, trends, and innovations, recommending and integrating them where appropriate.

• Lead advanced R&D efforts around AI, Agentic Systems, Domain Models, Digital Twins, and Knowledge / Symbolic Representation.

• Ability to orchestrate business and strategic knowledge and technology knowledge to understand how to generate business value from the use of AI

• Contribute to the inclusion of AI solutions in business and IT strategies to achieve business outcomes, including quantifiable business value

• Evolving and maturing a culture that trusts and uses AI in the right places at the right time in the right amounts of human versus machine talent mix

• Contribute to the growth of a AI and Data-literate employee population at Sun Life

• Collaborate with senior leadership to identify opportunities for AI driven innovation and define a roadmap for implementation.

• Be a thought leader in the responsible and ethical use of AI at Sun Life to achieve our purpose

Team and Stakeholder Collaboration

• Build strong partnership with Enterprise Data & Analytics Enablement team and the Data & Analytics Enterprise architecture team in defining and delivering the target state capabilities associated with the AI strategy.

• Partner with business leaders, application architects, solution engineers and platform owners in the adoption of GenAI services, patterns and best practices to achieve business outcomes

• Advocate for Responsible AI adoption and educate the Enterprise Architecture & Engineering community as well as stakeholders on its value and implications.  

• Mentor and guide architects and engineers with respect to AI capabilities and patterns, fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.  

• Scale the use of AI capabilities by training team members, supporting skill development and maintaining focus on change management and adoption.

• Build strong relationships with external vendors, research organizations, and technology partners.

• Act as a liaison between technical teams and business stakeholders, translating business needs into technical requirements.

• Partner with IT, governance, and security teams to ensure robust and compliant solutions.

• Provided technical leadership to help deliver advanced R&D POCs.

AI Architecture Design and Development

• Work to continually improve the Sun Life architecture framework and governance processes to drive the consistent and responsible use of AI.

• Own/Advise and maintain key deliverables to direct the evolution of AI capabilities, services, tools, and platforms to support and inform build vs. buy decisions.  Key deliverables including but not limited to:

  • Enterprise Capability Model aspects for AI.

  • Personas and Journeys to support aligning AI development and use across Sun Life.

  • Roadmap of foundational AI services, tools, and platforms.

  • Taxonomy of AI functional uses.

  • Data & Analytics supported reference architectures for AI systems (buy and build).

• Oversee the design of AI frameworks and solutions, including foundation model training / tuning, deployment pipelines, and integration with existing systems.

• Ensure seamless integration of foundation models / LLMs with data platforms, cloud infrastructure, and enterprise applications.

• Guide the selection of Foundation Models (LLMs, SLMs), AI services, tools, and frameworks to meet enterprise needs.

• Drive the adoption of best practices in the use of AI, foundation models and LLMs in application development

Operational Excellence

• Develop and communicate architectural blueprints, standards, and guidelines to support enterprise-wide AI adoption.  

• Establish metrics and KPIs to evaluate the success and performance of AI solutions and value realization.

• Optimize costs and resource utilization while ensuring high performance and scalability of AI services.

• Monitor emerging AI and trends, ensuring the organization stays ahead of the curve.

• Promote the use of rapid prototyping using AI services to safely test new uses of AI in the enterprise.

Key Deliverables

• Build AI architecture frameworks for scalable and safe application development using Responsible AI Principles

• Advise on /Identify on strategic AI initiatives aligned with enterprise goals.

• Enhanced collaboration between business units, delivery teams and governance teams for optimized outcomes.

• Scalable data pipelines and governance systems for AI solutions.

Required Experience and Skills:

• At least 5 years in a strategic technology leadership role

• 10+ years of experience in application architecture or data architecture at an enterprise level.

• 3 to 5 years or more specializing in AI (AI)

• Proven track record of delivering enterprise AI, ML and GenAI solutions at scale.

• Strong expertise in data ecosystems, including data lakes, data warehouses, and cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).

• Management and development of enterprise architects

• As this position is posted in several locations, we specify that bilingualism (French, English, both oral and written) is required for Quebec only as the position includes managing both French and English-speaking staff (Quebec and outside Quebec) and providing daily support to the team.

Technical Expertise

• Proficiency in enterprise architecture frameworks and application development processes

• In-depth knowledge of AI / ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch, Scikit-learn) and data processing tools (Spark, Kafka etc).

• Proficiency in programming languages like Python, R, Java, or Scala.

• Expertise in designing AI pipelines, MLOps practices, and model deployment strategies.

• Expertise in the use of ML, Generative, and Agentic AI in application development

• Thought leader in the use of prototyping and experimentation to test new ideas including rapid deployment and rapid UI development

Soft Skills

• Exceptional leadership and team-building capabilities.

• Excellent communication skills to articulate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

• Strategic thinking and problem-solving abilities.

• A passion for innovation and leveraging technology to create business value.  

Educational Background

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field. Ph.D degree is preferred).

Preferred Certifications:

• TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework)

• AWS Certified Machine Learning Specialty, Azure AI Engineer Associate, or Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer

• Agile / Scrum certifications

What’s in it for you?

• A competitive salary and bonus program, based on market scale

• A flexible group insurance program starting on your first day of work to meet your needs and those of your family.

• Time off that allows you to focus on the moments that matter most. 20 vacation days per year.

• Our Share Ownership Program gives you the opportunity to invest in Sun Life while benefiting from employer matching contributions.

• We are proud to be included in Great Place to Work's 2026 list of Canada's Best Workplaces.

• A warm, supportive, and inclusive culture

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to [email protected].

We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you.

We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary Range:

145,000/145 000 - 235,000/235 000

Job Category:

IT - Application Development

Posting End Date:

07/09/2026