Manager, Data Operations

CI Financial•Toronto, ON

97d•Onsite

About The Position

At CI, we see a great place to work as one that is a safe place for everyone to have a voice, where people are empowered to take ownership over meaningful work, where there is an opportunity to grow through stretching themselves, where they can work on innovative products and projects, and where employees are supported and engaged in doing so. CI Financial is seeking a Manager, Data Operations to join our Data, AI & Analytics (DNA) team. In this role, you will be accountable for the reliability, scalability, and operational excellence of enterprise data platforms and pipelines, ensuring that data products are delivered consistently, securely, and at scale. You will lead a team of Data Operations engineers and developers, establish operational standards, and partner closely with Data Engineering, Analytics, Governance, and Technology teams to embed production-grade data operations, CI/CD practices, and monitoring across the enterprise data ecosystem.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
7+ years of experience in data engineering, Data Operations, or platform operations, with at least 2+ years in a leadership or management role.
Strong hands-on experience with Snowflake as an enterprise data platform, including performance optimization and cost management.
Proven experience implementing CI/CD pipelines and operational best practices for data workflows.
Experience with orchestration tools (e.g., AWS Managed Service for Apache Airflow or similar).
Proficiency in SQL and Python, with the ability to guide technical design and review solutions.
Strong understanding of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and cloud-native data operations.
Experience with monitoring, alerting, and observability tools for data platforms.
Solid understanding of data security, privacy, and regulatory requirements.
Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience in asset management, wealth management, or financial services environments.
Experience operating data platforms at enterprise scale with multiple downstream consumers.
Familiarity with modern data tooling (e.g., Snowflake, DBT, Openflow, AWS Services, Airflow).
Experience partnering with Data Governance and risk teams.
Snowflake or cloud platform certifications.

Responsibilities

Data Platform Operations & Reliability Own the day-to-day operational health of enterprise data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, orchestration tools, CI/CD pipelines, BI platforms). Enforce change management and release controls for production data systems. Ensure high availability, performance, and reliability of data pipelines and analytical workloads. Establish and track SLAs, SLOs, and operational KPIs for data services.
Data Operations & CI/CD Leadership Lead the implementation and continuous improvement of Data Operations and CI/CD practices for data pipelines, transformations, and platform changes. Enforce change management and release controls for production data systems. Standardize deployment, rollback, and release management processes for data assets. Ensure automation-first approaches across testing, deployment, and monitoring.
Monitoring, Incident & Problem Management Implement proactive monitoring, alerting, and observability for data pipelines and platforms. Lead incident response, root-cause analysis, and post-incident reviews for data-related outages or quality issues. Drive continuous improvement to reduce operational risk and manual intervention.
Team Leadership & Capability Building Lead, coach, and develop a team of Data Operations engineers and developers. Set clear priorities, performance expectations, and development plans. Foster a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and continuous learning.
Data Quality, Testing & Controls Enforce change management and release controls for production data systems. Partner with Data Engineering and Analytics teams to embed data quality checks, validation, and automated testing into pipelines. Ensure operational controls align with data governance, security, and compliance requirements. Support audit, risk, and regulatory inquiries related to data operations.
Architecture & Platform Optimization Collaborate with data engineering and architecture team to design scalable, cost-efficient, and resilient data platform architectures. Coordinate data refreshes and environment management for non-production environments (e.g., TST/UAT). Drive performance tuning, cost optimization, and capacity planning for Snowflake and related platforms. Evaluate and onboard new tooling to enhance Data Operations maturity.
Documentation & Operational Standards Establish and maintain operational runbooks, standards, and documentation for platforms, pipelines, and processes. Ensure transparency and knowledge sharing across teams.
Stakeholder Collaboration Partner with Data Engineering, Analytics, Governance, Security, and Technology teams to align on priorities and delivery. Act as the primary operational point of contact for data platform reliability and service health.