Director, Public & Alternative Investments, Data Platforms

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board

Toronto

On-site

CAD 180,000 - 240,000

Full time

4 days ago

Be an early applicant

A complete application in a minute

Tailored resume and cover letter, ready to send.

Get past ATS filters

Job summary

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is seeking a Director, Data Engineering for the PMAA team to build and publish enterprise market data products that power investment decisions. You will lead a skilled group of data engineers and analysts, setting the technical direction for a modern AWS data platform and ensuring timely, high-quality data delivery.

You will guide data product design, governance, and delivery practices, collaborating with investment, analytics, and governance partners while

Qualifications

10+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platforms or software engineering.
5+ years leading engineering teams, with successful delivery of enterprise-scale, cloud-native data platforms.
Strong understanding of capital markets, investment management and market data licensing and entitlements.
Hands-on depth with Spark, AWS services (Glue/EMR/DMS), Airflow, CI/CD, and data governance frameworks.

Responsibilities

Define and execute the multi-year data engineering strategy and roadmap for PMAA market data products.
Own the target-state AWS data platform architecture across ingestion, storage, processing, and governance.
Develop enterprise data products including pricing, reference data, corporate actions and benchmarks with explicit ownership and SLAs.
Establish semantic data capabilities including RDF knowledge graphs and Neptune integration; enable AI-ready data access.

Skills

Data engineering

Leadership

Cloud architecture

AWS

CI/CD

Data governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Engineering/Math

Graduate degree (asset)

Tools

Apache Spark

Airflow

AWS Glue

Amazon EMR

DMS

Amazon RDS/Aurora

Amazon Neptune

Job description

Purpose. Performance. People. Joining CPP Investments means joining one of the world’s most admired and respected institutional investors to drive a single mandate: to deliver strong, sustainable returns for generations of Canadians. With a long-term horizon and global reach, we deploy capital at scale across public and private markets. Our size, stability, and disciplined investment philosophy allow us to pursue complex opportunities and build enduring partnerships worldwide. For our people, this means meaningful work with tangible impact, real opportunity, and collaboration with exceptional colleagues who value partnership and performance. Here, you’ll contribute to outcomes that matter alongside team members committed to excellence and shared success.

The Role

As Director, Data Engineering for the Public Markets and Alternate Assets (PMAA) team, you will build and publish the enterprise market data products that power investment strategies across our public markets and alternate assets businesses. Partnering closely with your business-aligned product owner, you will lead a talented team of data engineers and analysts and own the end-to-end lifecycle of PMAA data, from vendor and internal feeds through to trusted, well-documented data products used by investment teams, analytics platforms and AI agents. You will set the technical direction for a modern AWS data platform, establish the semantic and knowledge graph foundations that connect data across asset classes, and ensure every data product meets the standards of timeliness, quality, licensing compliance and control that investment decisions demand. The Team CPP Investments invests across public and private markets, supported by technology and data capabilities that enable informed investment decisions and long-term value creation. Within PMAA, this role leads market data engineering and the development of enterprise data products that support investment professionals, quantitative and research teams. The team works with investment, product, architecture, technology and governance partners to deliver reliable, accessible and AI-ready market data.

Accountabilities

Define and execute the multi-year data engineering strategy and roadmap for PMAA market data products, partnering with the product owner to align priorities with investment needs and enterprise architecture standards. Own the target‑state AWS data platform architecture across ingestion, storage, processing, orchestration, governance and consumption, making design and build‑versus‑buy decisions that balance scalability, resilience, security and cost. Lead the development and adoption of enterprise data products across public and private markets, including pricing, reference data, corporate actions and benchmarks, with clear ownership, data contracts, service levels and documentation. Establish semantic data capabilities, including RDF knowledge graphs on Amazon Neptune, and enable governed access to AI‑ready data through Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, agent skills and Amazon Quick. Ensure reliable, timely and secure data delivery through observability, automated quality controls, incident management, AWS Lake Formation, data lineage and market data licensing and entitlement controls. Lead agile roadmap delivery and engineering excellence, embedding CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing and reusable frameworks while engaging senior stakeholders, investment teams and strategic technology and data partners. Build, coach and develop an inclusive, high‑performing engineering team, fostering accountability, collaboration, continuous learning and career growth.

What You Bring

Undergraduate degree or college diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or a related field; a graduate degree is an asset. 10+ years of progressive experience in data engineering, data platforms or software engineering, including 5+ years leading engineering teams, with demonstrated success delivering enterprise‑scale, cloud‑native data platforms and leading complex agile programs. Strong understanding of capital markets, investment management and market and reference data, including experience with major data vendors, licensing, entitlements and usage controls; private markets experience is an asset. Advanced AWS architecture expertise equivalent to Solutions Architect – Professional, including security, IAM, networking, resilience and cost optimization, together with hands‑on technical depth in Apache Spark (PySpark or Scala), AWS Glue or EMR, Airflow/MWAA, AWS DMS and Amazon RDS/Aurora. Expertise in enterprise data product design, AWS Lake Formation governance, data contracts, service levels and consumption patterns, along with RDF, SPARQL, ontology design, Amazon Neptune, MCP servers, agent skills and AI‑assisted analytics using Amazon Quick. Ability to guide engineering teams across cloud‑native development, data quality, observability and delivery practices. Experience with lakehouse technologies, Python, SQL, CI/CD, infrastructure as code, data cataloguing, financial ontologies, Amazon Bedrock or GraphRAG is an asset; relevant AWS certifications are also assets. Inclusive people leadership, sound judgment and strong communication and relationship‑building skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to investment professionals and executives, influence stakeholders and manage strategic vendor partnerships. You are motivated to contribute to something larger than yourself, approach complex challenges with rigor, and hold yourself to high standards in a collaborative, performance‑driven environment. We provide colleagues with cutting‑edge AI tools, dedicated learning time, and practical support to help them deliver with greater impact.

Inclusion & Accessibility

CPP Investments is committed to equitable access to employment and building a workforce that reflects diverse talent and perspectives. If you require accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.

About Us

For 25 years, we’ve proudly invested the Canada Pension Plan Fund, helping to secure retirement for more than 22 million Canadians. We invest for the long term — and that includes our people. Here, you’ll work alongside high‑calibre colleagues on meaningful challenges that have real‑world impact. Our purpose drives us, our performance sets us apart, and our people make it possible.

Our Guiding Principles

Our guiding principles shape our culture. They define how we work and represent the values that guide our behaviours. They are Integrity, Partnership and High Performance.

Our Impact

We invest globally across public and private markets, managing capital on behalf of millions of contributors and beneficiaries. We focus on long‑term value creation and responsible investing, with offices in major financial centres across the world.

What You Can Expect