Data Architect & Analytics Team Lead — Hybrid, Toronto

Canadian Football League; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 65,000 - 75,000; Full time

Job summary

The Canadian Football League seeks an ambitious, technically strong data leader to build the next generation of its data and analytics capability in Toronto. This role partners with executives to design solutions and personally build data pipelines, models, and reporting structures.

You will establish data technologies, AI capabilities, and a culture that treats data as a strategic asset across the league and clubs, while growing the analytics team and setting standards for governance, quality,

Qualifications

• MBA, master’s degree, or equivalent combination of education and experience; candidates with technical work experience prior to an MBA are strongly preferred.
• Advanced SQL skills and experience designing or developing reporting, analytics, data engineering, or business intelligence solutions.
• Strong business acumen and the ability to connect technical solutions to organizational outcomes in sports, entertainment, media, or consumer business context.
• Demonstrated leadership experience through professional work, project leadership, entrepreneurship, athletics, student leadership, community involvement, or similar experience.
• Exposure to Snowflake, dbt, Python, Power BI, cloud platforms, SQL Server, ETL/ELT tools, or similar technologies is an asset.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, analytical, problem-solving, and organizational skills.
• A passion for sports, entertainment, media, or fan engagement businesses.
• Curiosity about AI and enthusiasm for helping organizations adopt emerging technologies responsibly.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement the CFL’s analytics architecture, data models, semantic layers, data marts, and reporting ecosystem.
• Build and maintain SQL-based ETL/ELT pipelines, data transformation workflows, and trusted datasets for business reporting.
• Establish data governance, documentation, quality standards, KPI definitions, and reporting best practices.
• Partner with executives and department leaders to translate business goals into measurable KPIs, dashboards, and analytical solutions.
• Identify opportunities to improve decision-making across fan engagement, commercial, digital, club support, media, and league operations.
• Help establish and grow the CFL’s new analytics team.
• Create development standards, operating practices, and a culture of accountability, curiosity, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Write and optimize complex SQL queries and build reporting datasets, analytical models, and dashboards.
• Work with modern cloud and data technologies, including Snowflake, dbt, Python, SQL Server, Power BI, cloud data services, and ETL/ELT platforms.
• Troubleshoot data quality, integration, and performance issues while remaining directly involved in hands‑on implementation.
• Identify where AI can enhance analytics, reporting, forecasting, data quality, and decision support.
• Evaluate and implement AI capabilities within the data ecosystem, with an emphasis on responsible, practical business value.

Skills

Advanced SQL

Snowflake

dbt

Python

Power BI

Leadership

Education

MBA or master’s degree

Tools

SQL Server

Job description

The Canadian Football League seeks an ambitious, technically strong data leader to build the next generation of its data and analytics capability in Toronto. This role partners with executives to design solutions and personally build data pipelines, models, and reporting structures.

You will establish data technologies, AI capabilities, and a culture that treats data as a strategic asset across the league and clubs, while growing the analytics team and setting standards for governance, quality,