Senior Manager - Unified Communications

BMO•Toronto, ON

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

Lead the strategy, evolution, and delivery of enterprise‑scale Unified Communications at BMO. This Sr. Manager role offers the opportunity to shape a secure, resilient, and future‑ready communications ecosystem—spanning cloud and legacy voice, collaboration platforms, and meeting room technologies—while directly influencing how tens of thousands of employees connect and collaborate every day. You will operate at a strategic, enterprise level, guiding the roadmap and investment decisions across Microsoft Teams, M365, SIP‑based voice, cloud telephony, and modern meeting room solutions. You will balance innovation with operational excellence—ensuring high availability, security, performance, and cost efficiency—while piloting emerging technologies that enhance the end‑user experience. Come lead, and develop a high‑performing team of engineers, translating complex technical architectures into clear business outcomes and acting as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders. This is a hands‑on leadership role for an experienced Unified Communications professional who understands the full lifecycle—from infrastructure and network design to service delivery, capacity planning, and long‑term platform evolution. What Sets This Role Apart: Enterprise Impact: Own the Unified Communications strategy for a large, complex financial services environment. Technology Leadership: Drive the evolution of cloud voice, SIP, Direct Routing, Teams Rooms, and collaboration platforms. People Leadership: Lead, coach, and grow experienced engineering teams while building strong communities of practice. Future‑Focused: Evaluate and pilot emerging technologies to continuously improve how BMO teams connect and collaborate. This is a HYBRID role that currently requires 2 days in the office.

Requirements

10+ yrs of experience in Unified Communications overall incl. IT Infrastructure, networking, and MS 365
10 + years experience with technology/solution design and configuration, capacity management, hardware fault diagnosis, impact of design decisions to infrastructure components, functional / technical behaviour of middleware and data layers, virtualization, service design, Dev Ops and deployment environments and packaging and distribution of the application.
Expertise in Voice Over IP and Products that use VOIP (voice traffic): MS Teams, Webex, Zoom
Understand SIP ( session initiation protocol)
Experience with Direct routing ( Taking SIP trunks from service provides like Bell/Rogers and linking to our network ) to enable Voice on things like MS Teams
Experience with Meeting Room Technologies: Experience with deploying MS Teams rooms, and/or CISCO Webex endpoints
5 + yrs in previous people leadership roles
Deep technical knowledge of the Unified Communications Portfolio, including legacy voice systems, cloud telephony and meeting room technology.
Working knowledge of M365, Microsoft Teams and traditional voice platforms.
Ability to translate technical details in to language understood by our business partners.
Experience in implementing a unified strategy with meeting room technology.
Ability to create a holistic roadmap around all technologies and how they fit into the unified communications umbrella. Ie. Headsets, meeting room equipment, laptop/Teams etc...
Strong team management skills.
Ability to create roadmaps and budgets.
Typically 7+ years of relevant experience and post-secondary degree in related field of study or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
Relevant IT infrastructure & platform knowledge in one or more of the following Engineering domains: networking, distributed/server, storage, mainframe, workplace technology and unified communications.
Possesses a deep understanding and problem solving ability.
Knowledgeable and experienced with technology/solution design and configuration, capacity management, hardware fault diagnosis, impact of design decisions to infrastructure components, functional / technical behaviour of middleware and data layers, virtualization, service design, Dev Ops and deployment environments and packaging and distribution of the application.
Seasoned professional with a combination of education, experience and industry knowledge.
Verbal & written communication skills - In-depth / Expert.
Analytical and problem solving skills - In-depth / Expert.
Influence skills - In-depth / Expert.
Collaboration & team skills; with a focus on cross-group collaboration - In-depth / Expert.
Able to manage ambiguity.
Data driven decision making - In-depth / Expert.

Nice To Haves

Good time management skills.
Ability to manage projects.
Excellent team management skills.
Excellent communication skills.

Responsibilities

Develops and implements IT infrastructure & platform strategies for BMO.
Develops strategic technology based on technical and business needs to support anticipated business strategies and organizational growth.
Designs, builds / installs, tests, maintains, monitors and upgrades infrastructure such as computing platforms, servers and networks.
Understands current and future technical platform hardware, operating system, security, and system services layers.
Ensures reliable and secure computing and communications capabilities to run the business software while enabling the lowest operational cost/highest availability options.
Performs capacity workload modeling and availability analysis for a variety of platforms and environments.
Implements disaster recovery procedures and troubleshoots any network and connectivity issues in a timely manner, with minimal disruption to normal functioning.
Works with stakeholders and recommends infrastructure solutions based on engineering requirements.
Ensures that systems and infrastructure align with business value and are technically sound and well-integrated.
Responds immediately to critical connectivity and access issues by evaluating solutions, coordinating recovery and ensuring resolution.
Designs/engineers system-operating capacity (such as bandwidth, disk space, storage, and CPU utilization) to ensure high availability and performance of end-user applications and systems.
Ensures that infrastructure solutions are scalable, flexible, and supportable, are fully monitored and are as standardized and automated as possible.
Works across teams to ensure IT system, network upgrades and service pack deployments are implemented with minimal impact to production operation.
Accountable for overall system/technology performance; monitors production, outputs, and services to ensure that SLAs and other quality metrics are being met.
Identifies and defines new process and/or system improvement opportunities.
Evaluates and recommends emerging technologies to influence the design process.
Identifies opportunities to strengthen the capability of the technology organization at BMO, such as: sharing expertise to promote technical development, mentoring employees, building communities of practice and networks across technology.
Stays abreast of industry technical and business trends through participation in professional associations, practice communities & individual learning.
Operates at a group/enterprise-wide level and serves as a specialist resource to senior leaders and stakeholders.
Applies expertise and thinks creatively to address unique or ambiguous situations and to find solutions to problems that can be complex and non-routine.
Implements changes in response to shifting trends.
Broader work or accountabilities may be assigned as needed.
Fosters a culture aligned to BMO purpose, values and strategy and role models BMO values and behaviours in all that they do.
Ensures alignment between values and behaviour that fosters diversity and inclusion.
Regularly connects work to BMO’s purpose, sets inspirational goals, defines clear expected outcomes, and ensures clear accountability for follow through.
Builds interdependent teams that collaborate across functional and operating groups to create the highest value for all stakeholders.
Attracts, retains, and enables the career development of top talent.
Improves team performance, recognizes and rewards performance, coaches employees, supports their development, and manages poor performance.
Provides strategic input into business decisions as a trusted advisor.
May network with industry contacts to gain competitive insights and best practices.
Conducts independent analysis and assessment to resolve strategic issues.
Acts as the prime subject matter expert for internal/external stakeholders.
Breaks down strategic problems, and analyses data and information to provide insights and recommendations.
Forecasts utilization patterns and identifies enterprise wide infrastructure modifications or upgrades to drive performance and reliability goals and continuously improve customer experience.
Actively monitors and publishes the availability plan relative to business requirements; proactively identifying any uptime issues and making recommendations for eliminating those issues.
Designs, develops, tests, implements and maintains environments developed internally and/and/or in conjunction with outside vendor.