Senior Architect - Life

Wawanesa Insurance•Calgary, AB

7d•CA$130,000 - CA$165,000•Hybrid

About The Position

At Wawanesa, we offer a hybrid work environment that offers flexibility to our employees in balancing in-office (2 days per week OR 15 hours per week in a Wawanesa office) and remote work. You may work from any of the following locations: Winnipeg, MB; Calgary, AB; Toronto (North York), ON. The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company (“Wawanesa Mutual”), founded in 1896, is one of Canada’s largest mutual insurers, with over $3.5 billion in annual revenue and assets of $10 billion (CAD). Wawanesa Mutual, with its National Headquarters in Winnipeg, is the parent company of Wawanesa Life, which provides life insurance products and services throughout Canada, and Western Financial Group, which distributes personal and business insurance across Canada. Wawanesa proudly serves more than 1.7 million members in Canada, and we are home to more than 3,300 employees distributed across the Canadian regions and communities where we operate. We give back to organizations that strengthen communities, donating more than $3.5 million annually to charitable organizations, including over $2 million annually in support of people on the front lines of climate change. We are also proud to be recognized as one of Manitoba’s Top Employers. To learn more visit wawanesa.com. We are currently looking for dedicated, driven, and enthusiastic individuals who thrive in an environment that welcomes change and are looking for an opportunity for diverse experience and advancement on a growing team. As the lead architect for the Wawanesa Life Architecture Team, the Senior Solution Architect is the steward of the Digital ecosystem that underpins the Life Company. This role plays a pivotal part in shaping and executing the division’s technology strategy, ensuring solutions are intentional, sustainable, and aligned to business outcomes. Embedded within Wawanesa Life, the Senior Solution Architect partners closely with business and delivery teams while aligning to enterprise architecture standards to drive consistency, scalability, and strategic alignment across the organization.

Requirements

2 years experience in a senior architecture role.
5 years of IS architecture experience.
10+ years of experience in full life cycle solution design, preferably in a medium to large enterprise environment.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, an analytical discipline or equivalent experience.
Experience with enterprise application integration using a variety of techniques including enterprise service bus and/or message brokers, and web services.
Experience with modern application development practices such as composability, event-driven & APIs.
Strong experience with architecture in an agile delivery environment.
Experience in comprehensive modeling for applications, services, systems, and data with approaches in component-based, service-oriented, model-driven manner.
Expert knowledge and experience with designing and delivering solutions that factor in system performance, usability, quality, cross-system interdependencies, scalability and overall cost to develop and maintain.
Solid understanding of current Enterprise Architecture frameworks.
Must be able to balance the long-term ("big-picture") and short-term implications of individual decisions and drive actions that are consistent with long-term goals.
Strong business sense with the ability to translate complex business requirements into technology solutions.
Ability to communicate, both verbally and in writing, in a persuasive and eloquent manner.
Expert analytical and problem solving skills with the ability to manage and prioritize a busy workload and multiple large projects.
Ability to lead others to embrace, perform effectively, and adapt quickly to change.
Ability to make excellent and well justified decisions in complex and high pressure situations and coach others in decision making.
Strong interpersonal and contract negotiation skills, able to effectively deal with both internal and external clients.
Experience designing, developing, and implementing enterprise grade solutions and platforms (including modernization and migration initiatives) in a complex technology landscape using modern technologies.
Demonstrated experience delivering solutions across enterprise business applications (e.g., core business platforms and enabling capabilities such as CRM, ERP, case management, and workflow).
Proven experience contributing to large-scale enterprise transformations (e.g., platform modernization, core system replacement, operating model/process transformation, and multi-team delivery across business and technology).
Experience implementing, configuring and integrating enterprise commercial off the shelf software.

Nice To Haves

Knowledge of and experience in the insurance industry is considered an asset, particularly Life Insurance.

Responsibilities

Accountable for the development of Life company domain and application roadmaps with business and delivery stakeholders.
Mentor and lead other architects on the Life team to ensure application of consistent architecture practice.
Ensure that current state architecture models and artifacts are developed and meet architecture standards for the four key domains of architecture: Business, Application, Data, and Technology, and as required contribute to their development.
Evaluate alternate approaches and develop target state architecture models based on project objectives, architecture requirements, and non-functional requirements.
Provide leadership and direction guidance to solution delivery teams to ensure solution design and implementation aligns to the target state architecture, as well as to identify when it is necessary to modify the architecture to accommodate solution needs.
Ensure architectural compliance of solutions with enterprise architecture standards and principles.
Create and maintain system and architecture design standards and provide guidance to project teams regarding guiding principles, system and application design, coding and design standards.
Ensure that all aspects of the solution design follow best practices and meet the requirements of the business by participating in conceptual and physical design, participating in design reviews and approving/signing off on design deliverables.
Ensure that proper and effective reuse of application and technical services, patterns, frameworks and standard tools and templates in the proposed solution.
Collaborate with technical architects to design external system interface architecture, including appropriate application of techniques and standards such as service-oriented architecture, web services, etc.
Develop enterprise application and technology architecture roadmaps based on corporate business and IT objectives and strategies.
Review and provide recommendations for continuous improvements to architecture practice.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Evaluate vendor solutions and drive RFP evaluations.