Director Data, AI, and Specialized Business

RBC; Toronto; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

RBC is seeking a Director to lead the Data, AI, KYC and Specialized Business portfolio within RBC Caribbean Banking Technology. The role blends hands-on data and AI credibility with proven delivery, vendor management, and people leadership in a fast-paced banking tech environment.

The director will modernize the Caribbean data foundation, build AI capabilities, govern data and ensure regulatory compliance across Canada and the Caribbean, while guiding the KYC platform and vendor-driven

Qualifications

• Hands-on data engineering and AI capabilities with modern engineering practices.
• Experience in project delivery, vendor management and people leadership.
• Familiarity with data governance, regulatory requirements and risk controls.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end data engineering and data product initiatives for Caribbean region.
• Define and execute AI solutions roadmap for Caribbean applications; build AI engineering practice.
• Lead software development and delivery for KYC and Specialized Business Applications; manage vendor relationships.

Skills

Data engineering

AI engineering

Project delivery

Leadership

Vendor management

Agile delivery

Tools

CI/CD

Observability

Job description

What is the Opportunity?

This is an opportunity to lead the Data, AI, KYC and Specialized Business portfolio within RBC Caribbean Banking Technology, a team dedicated to delivering modern, resilient solutions for our Caribbean businesses and clients. We are all in on Agile delivery, DevOps, open source, cloud and modern engineering practices, and the work is highly visible: our applications are used daily by RBC staff and clients across the region.

Reporting to the Senior Director, the Director owns three connected mandates. First, the modernization of the Caribbean data foundation: evolving the data lake, data architecture and data products so that the business can trust and use its data. Second, AI engineering: building and operating production grade AI solutions for clients and colleagues, from generative and agentic AI to intelligent automation, with responsible AI and regulatory controls built in. Third, software development and delivery for KYC and Specialized Business Applications: leading the engineering team accountable for a portfolio of vendor applications and for active development of the KYC platform, and delivering the associated project portfolio on time and with quality.

The successful candidate combines hands on technical credibility in data and AI engineering with proven project delivery, vendor management and people leadership, and a clear understanding of the banking industry's data, processes and regulatory obligations. They are comfortable navigating ambiguity and leading in a fast paced, rapidly evolving technology environment.

What Will You Do?

Data modernization and data foundation

• Own end to end delivery of data engineering and data product initiatives for the Caribbean, working closely with business and technology stakeholders to define scope, priorities and expectations.
• Lead the data modernization roadmap and architecture, retire legacy data flows, and establish the platform as the standard foundation for analytics, reporting, consolidation of siloed data, removal of duplicated data profiles, and AI solutions.
• Establish and enforce data governance practices (data dictionary, lineage, quality and access controls) that meet regulatory and audit expectations across Caribbean jurisdictions.
• Mature CI/CD and orchestration for data pipelines, with automated testing, monitoring and service level objectives for production data.
• Partner with business lines to define data products and self service capabilities that create measurable value.

AI engineering and AI solutions

• Define, communicate and execute the AI solutions roadmap for Caribbean applications, aligned to the business vision and to emerging AI capabilities (generative AI, agentic AI, large language models, intelligent process automation).
• Build and grow an AI engineering practice: design, develop, deploy and operate production ready AI solutions for clients and colleagues, well integrated with existing Caribbean systems and data infrastructure.
• Establish the engineering foundations for AI at scale: reusable patterns for LLM integration, retrieval augmented generation (RAG), agent orchestration, evaluation and testing frameworks, prompt and context management, and an AI asset registry with versioning.
• Lead operational support for AI solutions in production: monitoring and observability, incident management, logging, performance tuning, drift and quality detection, and AIOps.
• Champion ethical and responsible AI: ensure all initiatives comply with RBC policies and regulatory requirements applicable to banking in Canada and the Caribbean (e.g., OSFI guidance, model risk management, privacy legislation), and partner with Risk, Compliance and Legal on approvals.
• Stay abreast of AI advancements, evaluate their applicability to the Caribbean banking context, and act as an internal thought leader on applied AI.

Software development and delivery: KYC and Specialized Business Applications

• Lead the software development team accountable for a portfolio of vendor applications supporting Specialized Business functions, including release management, configuration, integration, upgrades, incident response and production support.
• Lead active development of the KYC platform: own the backlog, architecture direction, engineering quality, security and delivery cadence, in close partnership with AML/Compliance and Operations stakeholders.
• Manage vendor relationships and service ownership: contracts and SLAs, roadmap alignment, escalations and performance reviews.
• Deliver the project portfolio through disciplined Agile delivery (planning, dependency and risk management, status reporting and executive communication) with accountability for scope, schedule, budget and quality.
• Embed modern engineering practices (DevOps, automation, CI/CD, automated testing) to improve resilience, reduce operational risk and cost, and strengthen security and availability.
• Ensure disaster recovery, uptime and resilience for all production systems in