Director, Enterprise Architect, Portfolio Lead

The opportunity

This role is accountable for shaping portfolio-level architecture direction in support of Teachers' enterprise strategy. As a key architecture leader aligned to our Technology departments (Investment Technology, Investment Risk and Performance Technology, Member Services Technology, Corporate Technology, Technology Infrastructure, Enterprise Security, and Platform Engineering), this role translates enterprise strategy, principles, and standards into actionable portfolio architectures, reference models, and multi-year capability roadmaps.

This is a unique opportunity to influence how technology enables our Business Technology (Investments, Member Services, Investment Risk and Reporting, Corporate) and Technology Services (Technology Infrastructure, Enterprise Security and Platform Engineering) functions. The role acts as a strategic partner to the Business Technology / Technology Services leadership team, ensuring that architecture decisions are coherent, modern, secure, and value driven.

The role also contributes to the development of enterprise architecture standards, roadmaps, and target-state models, translating enterprise strategy, principles, and guidelines into portfolio-specific architectures, capability roadmaps, and reference models.

Who they will work with 

• Reports to the Managing Director, Enterprise Architecture and Emerging Technology.

• Partners closely with either the Business Technology or Technology Services leadership team for its assigned portfolio (Investments, Investment Risk & Performance, Member Services, Corporate Technology, Technology Infrastructure, Enterprise Security or Platform Engineering).

• Collaborates frequently with other Enterprise Architecture peers and with senior business stakeholders through the Business Technology teams.

• Partners with Enterprise Data, Platform Engineering, Enterprise Security, Technology Infrastructure and the AI Centre of Excellence on shared platforms, services and controls.

• External engagement includes vendors, strategic technology partners, peer pension funds, and industry forums.

What you'll do

Portfolio architecture and strategy

• Translate enterprise architecture strategy, principles, and north-star vision into portfolio-specific architectures and reference models, establishing the target architecture with its capability model and design principles.

• Develop and maintain portfolio capability maps and multi-year roadmaps aligned to business priorities, enterprise objectives, and technology modernization goals.

• Ensure the portfolio architecture reflects strong architectural discipline across integration, data, application, infrastructure, cloud, security, and resilience.

Planning and investment

• Partner with Business Technology / Technology Services leaders to shape multi-year investment plans that align with architecture direction and enterprise outcomes, covering both build and run costs.

• Analyze strategic options and provide leadership recommendations, making the trade-offs, risks and cost of each option explicit.

• Identify and communicate systemic risks, modernization opportunities, and architectural debt with clear traceability to business risk and value levers.

• Provide strategic architecture advice during annual planning, quarterly business reviews, and major initiative intake.

Governance and Delivery Oversight

• Prepare and present architectural assessments and recommendations to the Architecture Review Board (ARB), ensuring clarity of rationale, risks, options, and alignment to enterprise standards.

• Accountable for the design review before the build and the operational readiness review before go-live, covering monitoring, recovery, rollback, runbooks and accepted risk.

• Support solution architecture teams in project initiation and delivery, ensuring designs remain aligned to approved patterns, principles, and reference architectures.

• Contribute to evolving enterprise standards, technology patterns, and governance processes

• Provide steer to the business and engineering teams on adopting AI native engineering practices, advancing the delivery model to achieve efficiency and speed

Patterns, reuse and AI

• Define and socialize reusable portfolio reference architectures, capability models, and solution patterns to ensure consistency and reduce time-to-value, publishing them in machine-readable form so that delivery tooling and coding agents can apply them.

• Define how AI is applied across the portfolio's systems and its delivery and identify the business processes and opportunities suited to AI-first technology delivery

• Sequence the technology services foundation ensuring platform, data, security and architecture capabilities are made agent-ready first for consumption by business and engineering teams

• Identify emerging technologies relevant to the portfolio and incorporate them into models and roadmaps, while ensuring security, compliance, and responsible adoption.

Estate, currency and technical debt

• Own the simplification and modernization agenda for the portfolio, reducing platform and tool proliferation, unnecessary customization, and end-of-life technology, with simplification sequenced ahead of automation.

• Establish and maintain the technology currency position for the portfolio, including lifecycle status, obsolescence exposure, vendor dependency and key-person risk, with remediation prioritized by business impact.

• Define how architectural debt is identified, prioritized, and systematically reduced over time, improving platform stability, maintainability, and total cost of ownership.

• Ensure each ratified standard carries a clear rationalization outcome, identifying the applications, tools and infrastructure it retires and the associated run-cost benefit.

People and influence

• Act as a trusted advisor to Business Technology / Technology Services leaders, simplifying complex architectural decisions into business-centric narratives.

• Support the Managing Director, Enterprise Architecture and Emerging Technology in driving architecture maturity, including metrics, stewardship forums, and continuous improvement initiatives.

• Mentor solution architects and engineering leaders to elevate architectural thinking across the portfolio.

Management accountability

• The role leads through expertise, influence and governance across the solution architects, engineering leads and delivery partners in the assigned portfolio.

• The role contributes to talent development by coaching portfolio architects, reviewing architectural work, and supporting capability uplift initiatives.

• The role has material influence on multi-year investment decisions, enterprise platforms, and cross-functional design choices affecting the portfolio's cost, resilience and business value.

Decision making

The role exercises significant autonomy within its assigned portfolio and decides:

• The portfolio's target architecture, capability model and roadmap sequence.

• Which patterns apply to a solution, and whether a design conforms to them.

• Architectural exceptions within the portfolio, each with a named owner and an expiry date.

• Technology selection within approved enterprise standards.

• The following are escalated to the Managing Director, Enterprise Architecture and Emerging Technology, and the accountable owner:

• Changes to enterprise standards, and new patterns that affect other portfolios.

• Decisions that carry enterprise-wide impact or material risk.

• Disputes between portfolios that the architects cannot settle.

• Vendor selection and material commercial commitments.

What you'll need

• University degree or equivalent in Computer Systems, Engineering, or a related field.

• Professional architecture certification (TOGAF, SAFe Architect, or equivalent) is an asset.

• 10+ years' experience in architecture or senior technology roles within complex enterprise environments.

• Demonstrated success creating target-state architectures, reference models, and multi-year capability roadmaps that secured funding and were delivered against.

• Experience supporting or leading architecture governance, solution architecture oversight, and strategic planning.

• Proven ownership of major platform decisions, including build-versus-buy, vendor selection and contract renewal positions, with options assessed and costed.

• Proven ability to influence senior stakeholders and simplify complex issues into business-aligned narratives.

• Experience in financial services, pension, or another regulated industry is preferred.

• Deep understanding of technology architecture domains, including application, data, integration, cloud, infrastructure, security and resilience.

• Strong business and technical acumen for the assigned portfolio (investments, risk and performance, member experience, corporate functions, technology infrastructure, enterprise security or platform engineering).

• Knowledge of architectural governance, capability modelling, target-state design, and roadmap development.

• Understanding how AI and agentic delivery change architecture practice, including patterns, guardrails, verification and cost.

• Awareness of regulatory, fiduciary, cybersecurity, and operational risk considerations affecting financial services, including resilience, recovery and data residency obligations.

• Strong oral, written, and interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical concepts into business outcome-focused narratives.

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What we’re offering

• Numerous opportunities for professional growth and development

• Comprehensive employer paid benefits coverage

• Retirement income through a defined benefit pension plan

• The opportunity to invest back into the fund through our Deferred Incentive Program

• A flexible work environment combining in office collaboration and remote working

• Competitive time off

• Our Flexible Travel Program gives you the option to work abroad in another region/country for up to a month each year

• Employee discount programs including Edvantage and Perkopolis

At Ontario Teachers', diversity is one of our core strengths. We take pride in ensuring that the people we hire and the culture we create, reflect and embrace diversity of thought, background and experience. Through our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion strategy and our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), we celebrate diversity and foster inclusion through events for colleagues to connect for professional development, networking & mentoring.  We are building an inclusive and equitable workplace where our talent is respected, accepted and empowered to be themselves.  To learn more about our commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, check out Life at Teachers'.

How to apply

Are you ready to pursue new challenges and take your career to the next level? Apply today! You may be invited to complete a pre-recorded digital interview as part of your application.

Accommodations are available upon request ([email protected]) for candidates with a disability taking part in the recruitment process and once hired.

Candidates must be legally entitled to work in the country where this role is located.

Ontario Teachers’ may use AI-based tools to assist in screening and assessing applicants for this position. These tools may help us identify candidates whose skills and experience align with Ontario Teachers’ objectives by analyzing information provided in resumes and applications. Our use of AI does not replace human decision-making.

To learn more about how Teachers’ uses AI with your personal information, please visit our Privacy Centre. 

Functional Areas:

Information Technology

Vacancy:

Current

7218

 

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