AI Engineer

Sun Life Financial; Southwestern Ontario; Hybrid; CAD 65,000 - 105,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Best Workplace in Canada 2026

Canada Order of Excellence for Mental 

Mental Health at Work certification

Wellness programs

Hybrid work model

Networking opportunities

Job summary

Sun Life Financial in Canada is seeking an AI Engineer (2+ years) to build GenAI-powered applications, RAG solutions, and scalable cloud services. You will collaborate with architects, data engineers, security and governance teams, and business stakeholders to deliver innovative AI platform capabilities.

You will work in an Agile environment, extend DevOps practices to improve automation and speed, and mentor teammates while contributing to a culture of continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in computer science, software engineering, data science, or related field.
• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 1+ years building/operating solutions on AWS.
• Hands-on with Python, AWS Lambda and APIs; experience in AI bots/agents.
• Familiarity with chatbot concepts, RAG techniques, vector databases; DevOps culture and tools.
• Strong problem-solving, collaboration, and communication; growth mindset in Agile environments.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement solutions aligning with platform roadmap.
• Research and pilot GenAI technologies and best practices.
• Promote continuous improvement and innovation within the team.
• Create design artifacts: functionality, data models, interfaces, integrations.
• Extend DevOps to automate, guardrails, and faster, lower-risk delivery.
• Stay current with cloud tech, AWS services, and AI/ML.
• Provide post-production support including troubleshooting and optimization.
• Mentor junior engineers and collaborate in an Agile setting.

Skills

Python

AWS Lambda

APIs

AI bots/agents

DevOps

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or a related field

Tools

Amazon Bedrock

Amazon OpenSearch Service

PostgreSQL with pgvector

AWS Glue

PySpark

Amazon QuickSight

Job description

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do.

At Sun Life, we're driven by our Purpose: helping our Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Our values shape how we work: caring, authentic, bold, inspiring, and impactful.

When you join Sun Life, you'll work with passionate colleagues and empowering leaders who support your growth and celebrate your contributions, so you can make a meaningful difference in our Clients' lives.

Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

At Sun Life, we're driven by our Purpose: helping our Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Our values shape how we work: caring, authentic, bold, inspiring, and impactful.

Corporate IT is looking for AI Engineer with at least 2 years of development experience. This role will be instrumental in driving innovation, implementing cloud capabilities, and building GenAI solutions. The ideal candidate has a passion for cutting-edge technologies and a proven track record of building large-scale, complex software systems.

This role will collaborate with architects, product owners, data engineers, security and governance partners, and business stakeholders to deliver AI-powered applications, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solutions, intelligent agents, automation workflows, and reusable AI platform capabilities.

What will you do?

• Work closely with the Enterprise Architect to design and implement solutions that align with the platform capabilities roadmap
• Research and pilot the latest GenAI technologies and practices
• Champion a culture of continuous improvement, motivating change and fostering innovation within the team
• Create and maintain technical design artifacts that describe application functionality, solution designs, data models, interfaces, and integrations
• Use and enhance our DevOps practices and tools to enforce software guardrails, increase automation, and help engineers build code faster, at a lower cost, and lower risk
• Stay current with industry advancements in cloud technologies, AWS services, and AI/ML
• Provide post-production support for deployed applications, including troubleshooting, performance optimization, and continuous improvement
• Collaborate effectively in an Agile environment, communicate technical trade-offs clearly, and mentor junior team members.

What do you need to succeed?

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Software Engineering, Data Science, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 2+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 1+ years of building and operating solutions on AWS.
• Hands-on expertise with Python, AWS Lambda, and APIs
• Experience with developing AI bots/agents
• Familiarity with chatbot development concepts, RAG techniques and vector databases
• Experience with DevOps culture, tools, and best practices
• Strong problem-solving abilities and analytical skills with a keen eye for detail and the ability to assess alternatives, risks, and benefits
• Commitment to fostering a collaborative, transparent, and trust-based team culture

Nice to have

• Experience with Amazon Bedrock Knowledge Bases, Amazon Bedrock Guardrails, Agents for Amazon Bedrock, or Amazon Bedrock AgentCore.
• Experience with Amazon OpenSearch Service, PostgreSQL with pgvector, or other enterprise vector-search technologies.
• Experience with AWS Glue, data pipelines, PySpark, or analytics workloads.
• A relevant AWS certification.
• Experience with Amazon QuickSight when analytics dashboard development is part of the solution.

What’s in it for you

• We’re honoured to be recognized as a 2026 Best Workplaces in Canada by Great Place to Work® Canada.
• We are thrilled to be recognized by Excellence Canada with their top-level certification, the Canada Order of Excellence for Mental Health at Work®, for prioritizing employee well-being, fostering a positive work culture, and achieving excellence in mental health.
• Wellness programs that support the three pillars of your health – mental, physical, and financial
• The opportunity to move along a variety of career paths with amazing networking potential.
• As a hybrid organization, you and your leader use business and Client needs to choose where you work, at home or in the office

Unique Requirements:

• This role requires Reliability Status Clearance. In addition to a law enforcement inquiry and a credit check, as part of your application, the Government of Canada will ask if you lived or travelled outside of Canada for 6-consecutive months during the last 5 years, and you must account for all activities during this time. Important: Obtaining Reliability Status Clearance within a reasonable amount of time is a condition required to start employment for this role at Sun Life.
• Must be able to satisfactorily complete applicable background checks prior to the start date and during employment, in accordance with Sun Life’s policies and practices.

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to [e-mail].

We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you.

We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

Salary Range: 65,000/65 000 - 105,000/105 000

Job Category: IT - Application Development

Posting End Date: 29/09/2026