Lead Solution Architect

Manulife Financial; Southwestern Ontario; Hybrid; CAD 113,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Manulife Financial in Waterloo, Ontario, is hiring a Lead Solution Architect to drive technology architecture across Group Benefits. You will lead architecture strategy, governance, and large-scale modernization efforts while aligning technology with business outcomes and resilience objectives.

You will partner with executives, engineering, product, risk, and security teams, mentoring architects and promoting engineering excellence in a hybrid work environment.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of tech experience.
• 3+ years in enterprise or principal architecture leadership.
• Deep expertise in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, and distributed systems.
• Experience leading enterprise-scale modernization programs.
• Strong executive communication, influencing, and governance.
• Proven ability to drive alignment across large organizations.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve architecture vision, roadmaps, and target-state capabilities.
• Govern architecture standards, patterns, and reference architectures; chair design reviews.
• Lead modernization, cloud adoption, and platform engineering initiatives.
• Partner with executives and teams to present architectural recommendations.
• Mentor architects and foster innovation across the organization.

Skills

Leadership

Enterprise architecture

Cloud platforms

Distributed systems

Executive communication

Modern engineering practices

Job description

The Lead Solution Architect is responsible for defining and driving technology architecture strategy across Group Benefits a major business segment within the Canadian business segment. This role provides strategic leadership to architecture teams, establishes technology standards, influences executive decision-making, and ensures technology investments align with business outcomes, resilience objectives, and enterprise architecture principles.

Position Responsibilities:

Architecture Strategy & Leadership

• Define and evolve architecture vision, roadmaps, and target-state capabilities.
• Drive alignment between business strategy and technology investments.
• Provide thought leadership on emerging technologies, modernization, cloud, AI, data, and platform strategies.
• Act as the senior architecture advisor to business and technology executives.

Business Unit Architecture Governance

• Establish and govern architecture standards, patterns, and reference architectures.
• Lead architecture review boards and major design decisions.
• Ensure technology solutions adhere to enterprise principles and security requirements.
• Drive consistency across domains, platforms, and delivery teams.
• Designing for both functional and non-functional qualities, including availability, resiliency, security, privacy, etc.
• Assisting the business in the scoping and planning of upcoming initiatives and roadmap items
• Participating in or leading in producing conceptual, solution, and component-level architectures and associated artifacts
• Reviewing, advising, and providing feedback on architectures produced within and outside the team

Technology Transformation

• Lead large-scale transformation initiatives spanning multiple portfolios.
• Guide application modernization, cloud adoption, platform engineering, and resilience programs.
• Identify opportunities for simplification, standardization, and cost optimization.
• Influence investment prioritization and technology roadmaps.

Stakeholder Management

• Partner with executive leaders, engineering teams, product leaders, risk, security, and operations.
• Build consensus across complex stakeholder groups.
• Present architectural recommendations and business cases to senior leadership.

Talent & Community Leadership

• Leading a team of solution architects (3-5), business architects (3-5), data architects (1-2) and platform architects (1-2).
• Mentor solution, business, data and platform architects.
• Foster a culture of innovation, engineering excellence, and knowledge sharing.
• Champion architecture best practices across the organization.

Required Qualifications:

• 15+ years of progressive technology experience.
• 3+ years in enterprise, or principal architecture leadership roles.
• Deep expertise in enterprise architecture, cloud platforms, distributed systems, and modern engineering practices.
• Experience leading enterprise-scale modernization programs.
• Strong executive communication, influencing, and governance skills.
• Proven ability to drive alignment across large organizations.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Financial services or highly regulated industry experience.
• Experience with AI, digital platforms, data architecture, and technology resilience.
• Architecture certifications (TOGAF, cloud certifications, etc.).

When you join our team:

• We'll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We'll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our distributed team, we'll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact [e-mail].

Referenced Salary Location

Waterloo, Ontario

Working Arrangement

Hybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$113,260.00 CAD - $210,340.00 CAD

Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact [e-mail] for the salary range for your location.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact [e-mail] for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement.