Principal Architect - AI and Data Platforms

Canadian Tire Corporation; Toronto; On-site; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Store discounts

Profit Sharing

Triangle Learning Academy

Job summary

Canadian Tire Corporation seeks a Principal Architect – AI & Data Platforms to lead the Enterprise AI and Emerging Technology team. Shape strategy across AI, Data Platforms, and Data Governance, and drive end-to-end architecture vision with enterprise alignment.

You will lead scalable AI/ML implementations, establish governance, and mentor teams while partnering with business and technology stakeholders.

Qualifications

• 5–10+ years in enterprise architecture, data platforms, or AI/ML solutions.
• Proven delivery of large-scale AI/data solutions across ecosystems.
• Experience with GenAI tooling, LLMs, and governance frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the AI and Data Platform architecture strategy and roadmap.
• Lead enterprise-wide solution blueprints for data platforms, AI pipelines, BI, and governance.
• Design scalable AI/ML systems on Azure cloud and data engineering pipelines.
• Enforce governance standards and ensure security/compliance alignment.
• Mentor architecture teams and promote engineering excellence.

Skills

Enterprise architecture

AI/ML platforms

Data governance

Cloud platforms

Leadership

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

Databricks

Azure Data Lake / ADLS Gen2

Unity Catalog

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

What You'll Do

As a Principal Architect – AI & Data Platforms, you will play a pivotal leadership role within the Enterprise AI and Emerging Technology team, responsible for shaping and executing the organization's strategy across AI, Data Platforms, and Data Governance (DG).

As a Principal Architect – AI & Data Platforms, you will play a pivotal leadership role within the Enterprise AI and Emerging Technology team, responsible for shaping and executing the organization's strategy across AI, Data Platforms, and Data Governance (DG). You will define and drive the end-to-end architecture vision, ensuring alignment between business strategy, enterprise architecture standards, and modern platform capabilities. This includes leading the design and implementation of scalable AI and data solutions, establishing governance and standards, and guiding large-scale transformation initiatives. You will work closely with stakeholders across business and technology teams to build future-ready AI and data ecosystems, while leading architectural practices and mentoring teams.

Strategy & Architecture Leadership

• Define and evolve the AI and Data Platform architecture strategy and roadmap, aligned with enterprise business priorities
• Establish future-state architecture vision across AI, data, analytics, and governance domains
• Develop and maintain architecture models, standards, and roadmaps that guide technology investments and delivery
• Lead enterprise-wide solution blueprints covering data platforms, AI pipelines, BI, and governance capabilities

Platform & Technology Leadership

• Design and evolve modern data platforms (e.g., Lakehouse architectures, data engineering pipelines, BI/reporting ecosystems)
• Architect scalable AI/ML systems leveraging cloud platforms such as Azure (preferred), or GCP
• Lead adoption of event-driven, streaming, and integration architectures across enterprise systems
• Evaluate emerging technologies and guide build vs. buy and innovation decisions

Governance, Standards & Compliance

• Enforce AI, data, and architecture governance standards in collaboration with enterprise governance functions
• Ensure solutions align with architecture principles, security standards, and compliance requirements
• Contribute to the evolution of enterprise architecture frameworks, practices, and processes
• Lead architecture reviews and govern solution design through project lifecycle gates

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Partner with business and technology stakeholders to translate requirements into architecture solutions
• Drive cross-functional alignment across data engineers, data scientists, BI teams, and platform teams
• Present architectural strategies and solutions to senior leadership and executive stakeholders
• Advocate for enterprise architecture practices and promote technology standardization and reuse

Leadership & Practice Development

• Lead and mentor architecture team members and contribute to capability growth (including direct reports where applicable)
• Drive continuous improvement in engineering practices, performance optimization, and solution quality
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence across AI and data domains

What You Bring

• 5–10+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, data platforms, or AI/ML solutions
• Proven experience delivering large-scale, complex solutions across AI and data ecosystems
• Agentic AI experience (Tool Usage, Agentic Orchestration Frameworks, LLMs, Testing and Evaluation, AgentOps)
• GenAI (LLMs, Monitoring, Testing and Evaluation, LLMOps, Observability, RAG)
• Data platforms & lakehouse architectures (e.g., ADLS Gen2, Databricks, Synapse, ETL/ELT, Unity Catalog)
• MLOps technologies (ML, NLP)
• Cloud platforms (Azure preferred; AWS/GCP knowledge beneficial)
• Big data technologies (e.g., Spark, Hadoop)
• DevOps & CI/CD practices, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, etc.)
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)

Leadership Skills

• Strong strategic thinking and enterprise architecture leadership capabilities
• Excellent communication and storytelling skills, with ability to engage executive audiences
• Ability to operate effectively in complex, evolving environments
• Collaborative mindset with a focus on value delivery, standardization, and scalability

Education

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (PhD considered an asset)

This posting represents an existing vacancy within our organization.

We may use artificial intelligence tools as part of our recruitment process to assist in the initial screening of resumes. All hiring decisions, including candidate evaluation, selection, and disposition, are made by human recruiters.

About Us

Canadian Tire Corporation, Limited ("CTC") is one of Canada's most admired and trusted companies. With more than 90 Owned Brands, over 1,600 retail locations, financial services, exemplary e-commerce capabilities, and exciting market-leading merchandising strategies. We dream big and work as one to innovate with purpose for our customers at every level of our business, investing in new technologies and products, and doubling down on top talent to drive the company forward. We offer competitive salaries and wages to CTC employees, as well as store discounts, supported learning through our Triangle Learning Academy, Canadian Tire Profit Sharing, and retirement and savings programs for eligible employees. As part of our enhanced flex benefits program, we offer mental health benefits in the amount of $5,000 per year for benefits-eligible employees and their families, including total well-being, and mental health tools and resources for all employees. Join us in helping to make life in Canada better through living and working our Core Values: we are innovators and entrepreneurs at our core, outcomes drive us, inclusion is a must, we are stronger together and we take personal responsibility. It is an especially exciting time to join CTC and its family of companies where career opportunities are wide-ranging! Join us, where there's a place for you here.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging

We are committed to fostering an environment where belonging thrives, and diversity, inclusion and equity are infused into everything we do. We believe in building an organizational culture where people are consistently treated with dignity while respecting individual religion, nationality, gender, race, age, perceived ability, spoken language, sexual orientation, and identification. We are united in our purpose of being here to help make life in Canada better.

Accommodations

We stand firm in our Core Value that inclusion is a must. We welcome and encourage candidates from equity-seeking groups such as people who identify as racialized, Indigenous, 2SLGBTQIA+, women, people with disabilities, and beyond. Should you require any accommodation in applying for this role, or throughout the interview process, please make them known when contacted and we will work with you to help meet your needs.