Senior Director, Head, SRE and Production Operations

RBC•Toronto, ON

3d•Onsite

About The Position

As Head of SRE and Production Operations, you will lead the vision, design, development, implementation, and support of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) solutions for all applications supported by Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT) within Technology & Operations (T&O). This strategic role is instrumental in establishing world-class operational excellence, enabling automated end-to-end observability, and driving continuous reliability improvements across critical enterprise applications. You will work collaboratively with teams across multiple lines of business and organizational partners to establish SRE as a key enabler of business success. As a strategic leader with deep technical expertise, you will drive execution excellence while building and developing high-performing teams capable of managing complex reliability and production support challenges at enterprise scale.

Requirements

Minimum 8–12 years of experience leading SRE, production operations, or infrastructure engineering teams at scale
Deep technical expertise in observability, monitoring, and incident management platforms
Demonstrated experience with cloud platforms, containerization, and automation technologies
Strong understanding of reliability engineering principles, SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets
Proven track record managing vendor relationships and complex third-party technology partnerships
Experience leading cross-functional teams and working across multiple business units
Strong communication and relationship management abilities
Demonstrated success implementing industry best practices and driving technical transformation
Experience with AI and emerging technologies in operations and reliability engineering

Nice To Haves

Payments industry experience

Responsibilities

Set the vision for SRE product offerings including monitoring, alerting, machine learning anomaly detection, self-healing capabilities, and reliability testing
Drive best-in-class technical solutions by tracking industry-leading practices and applying them to the RBC environment
Lead thought leadership and out-of-the-box thinking to ensure SRE tools and processes align with strategic objectives
Run engineering practice forums to facilitate the review of SRE solutions and maintain alignment with team and enterprise vision
Enable automated end-to-end observability across all critical applications within Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT)
Leverage unit, department, and enterprise-wide teams to develop better solutions and achieve a cross-enterprise mindset
Perform production support role, including off-hours support responsibilities
Assist in incident management and problem management for applications in scope
Continuously evaluate what went well, what went wrong, and what can be done to improve and prevent issues in the future
Maintain technology currency through server patching, certificate renewal, and other maintenance activities with a keen eye on automating opportunities
Ensure availability and uptime of applications in scope according to defined service level objectives
Ensure compliance of all systems and applications in scope, including maintaining segregation of duties
Leverage AI and other key technologies to drive efficiencies and meet Commercial & Payments Technology (CPT), Technology & Operations (T&O) and respective business goals and KPIs
Drive the overall SRE strategy within Innovation, Intelligent Operations, and partner groups, owning roadmap development
Lead the team through execution of the SRE roadmap for Innovation and partner groups
Drive participation in strategic steering groups
Lead the adoption of new technologies within SRE
Enable teams to meet objectives by implementing changes to processes, tools, and methods that result in increased agility and effective cost management
Develop governance of the unit in collaboration with executive leadership to provide structure and definition for effectively managing the Innovation SRE Organization
Drive industry best standards and practices for the most effective and efficient SRE and production support services
Provide expertise, direction, coaching, and development to build team capability and succession planning
Select and build a high-performing, diverse team that leverages individual capabilities and strengths
Promote a mindset for sustained success, growth, diversity, and an overall engineering mindset
Ensure that employees understand RBC’s vision and support and reinforce targeted behaviours that contribute to RBC goals
Provide focus and clarity in establishing individual goals, driving performance enablement, supporting career development, and rewarding strong performance
Attract, hire, and retain top talent
Manage key vendor relationships, contractors, and respective performance management to enable successful execution of SRE and production support services

Benefits

bonuses
flexible benefits
competitive compensation
commissions
stock where applicable
Leaders who support your development through coaching and managing opportunities
Ability to make a difference and lasting impact
Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team
A world-class training program in financial services
Opportunities to do challenging work
Opportunities to take on progressively greater accountabilities
Opportunities to build close relationships with clients and stakeholders