Senior Architect - Data & AI

Wawanesa; Winnipeg; On-site; CAD 115,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company is seeking a Senior Architect - Data & AI to lead high-level architecture design for Advanced Analytics and long-term technology roadmaps. You will align solutions with established standards, govern reusable patterns, and enable spoke teams while ensuring compliance and governance across Canada.

In this head-office role, you will collaborate with business and IT stakeholders, drive architecture leadership, and guide prototype and POC efforts, including

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of overall architecture experience preferred.
• 2–5 years Information Services/IT architecture experience.
• Experience with designing and delivering scalable enterprise solutions.
• Knowledge of MLOps tools and enterprise cloud architectures.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain current state architecture models across Business, Application, Data, and Technology domains.
• Design AWS-native data lakes, ML pipelines, automation, and CI/CD.
• Define and maintain hub standards, guardrails, and governance for analytics capabilities.
• Support spoke teams with onboarding, architecture reviews, and reusable templates.
• Ensure Responsible AI practices and regulatory compliance for data/AI solutions.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Cloud architecture

Data & AI

MLOps

Communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

AWS

MLflow

SageMaker Pipelines

Feature stores

Job description

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Employment Type: Existing Role

Work Environment: We offer a hybrid work environment that offers flexibility to our employees in balancing in-office (2 days per week OR 15 hours per week in a Wawanesa office) and remote work.You may work from any of the following locations: Winnipeg, MB; Wawanesa, MB; Vancouver, BC; Calgary, AB; Edmonton, AB; Lethbridge, AB; Toronto (North York), ON; Kitchener, ON; Ottawa, ON; Montreal, QC; Quebec City, QC, Moncton, NB; Dartmouth; NS.

Working Business Language: English. This role is considered a head-office role and will be required to communicate with internal stakeholders across Canada where the primary business language utilized is English.

Salary: At Wawanesa, salary is only one component of a holistic, comprehensive and competitive offering that we provide to our employees. In addition to salary, full-time and part-time permanent employees are eligible for an annual bonus plan, leave of absence top-up programs and provided with generous vacation time, personal days, premium free benefits and pension plan.

The salary offered for this role is determined with consideration to various factors, including but not limited to: your work location, local labour market conditions, external market salary data, internal pay equity and the knowledge, skills, experience and anticipated proficiency in the role. The salary offered is estimated to be within the following range: $115,000 - $160,000. Candidates with salary expectations outside of the range are still encouraged to apply.

About The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company
Founded in 1896, The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company is one of Canada’s largest mutual insurers, 100% owned by its members, with more than $4.1 billion in annual revenue and $12.5 billion in assets. Headquartered in Winnipeg, Wawanesa is the parent company of Wawanesa Life, which provides life insurance solutions throughout Canada, and Western Financial Group, a leading national distributor of personal and business insurance. In March of 2026, Wawanesa entered into an agreement to acquire Everest Insurance Company of Canada to strengthen its commercial insurance capabilities and advance its long‑term growth strategy.

Wawanesa proudly serves more than 1.8 million members and we are home to more than 3,000 employees across Canada. The company actively gives back to organizations that strengthen communities, donating more than $4 million annually to charitable organizations, including more than $2 million each year in support of people on the front lines of climate change. Learn more at wawanesa.com.

We are currently looking for dedicated, driven, and enthusiastic individuals who thrive in an environment that welcomes change and are looking for an opportunity for diverse experience and advancement on a growing team.

Job Overview

Under moderate supervision, the Senior Architect - Data & AI, will contribute to Wawanesa’s success by providing high-level architecture design of Advanced Analytics solutions and long-term technology roadmaps to meet business objectives, taking into account the existing architectural landscape including established standards and principles. The Architect drives standards, governance, and reusable patterns to enable spoke teams while ensuring solutions are implemented in alignment with solution architecture design.

Job Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain current state architecture models and artifacts including the four key domains of architecture: Business, Application, Data, and Technology.
• Design and optimize AWS-native solutions including data lakes, MLOps pipelines, automation, and CI/CD.
• Define and maintain hub standards, guardrails, and governance for analytics capabilities.
• Support spoke teams with onboarding, architecture reviews, and reusable templates.
• Enable Responsible AI practices (explainability, fairness, compliance) and regulatory compliance for data and AI solutions (privacy, security, auditability).
• Partner with business and technical teams to embed analytics services into products and workflows.
• Gather solution architecture requirements from various sources including interviewing business and IT stakeholders, established architecture standards and principles, and reference architecture.
• Provide architectural leadership and guidance throughout solution design and implementation, ensuring best practices, reuse of components, and alignment with target architecture.
• Ensure architectural compliance of solutions to enterprise architecture standards and principles.
• Participate and provide architectural guidance in the construction, modeling, and design of prototypes, proofs of concepts and working models of complex or new design elements.
• Design external system interface architecture, including appropriate application of techniques and standards such as service-oriented architecture, web services, etc.
• Create and maintain system and architecture design standards and provide guidance to project teams regarding guiding principles, system and application design, coding and design standards.
• Develop solution architecture roadmaps based on organizational business units objectives and strategies.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, in an analytical discipline or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 2 to 5 years of Information Services / Information Technology architecture experience.
• 10 years of experience in full life cycle solution design using object-oriented analysis and design techniques, preferably in a medium-to-large enterprise environment.
• Ability to influence across and lead changes in a complex enterprise.
• Experience in comprehensive modeling for applications, services, systems, and data with approaches in component-based, service-oriented, model-driven manner.
• Expert knowledge and experience with designing and delivering solutions that factor in system performance, usability, quality, cross-system interdependence, scalability and overall cost to develop and maintain.
• Solid understanding of current Enterprise Architecture frameworks.
• Sound knowledge and experience with design patterns, service-oriented architecture, solution frameworks, technical patterns and technical services.
• Ability to balance the long-term ("big picture") and short-term implications of individual decisions and drive actions that are consistent with long-term goals.
• Strong business sense with the ability to translate complex business requirements into technology solutions.
• Excellent communication, analytical, and problem-solving skills with ability to manage multiple priorities. Ability to lead others to embrace, perform effectively, and adapt quickly to change.
• Ability to make excellent and well justified decisions in complex and high-pressure situations and coach others in decision making.
• Experience implementing, configuring and integrating enterprise commercial off-the-shelf software.
• Knowledge of MLOps tools (MLflow, SageMaker Pipelines, feature stores) is an asset.
• Knowledge and experience in the insurance industry is considered an asset.

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Diversity Equity, Inclusion& Belonging

At Wawanesa, we are committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) and believe that our strength lies in the diversity of our people – this is supported by having a representative workforce.

We welcome applications from all qualified candidates, including racialized persons, women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, gender-diverse and neurodiverse individuals, and anyone who can contribute to the further diversification of thought and ideas.

We aim to ensure our recruitment process is accessible to all candidates. If you require accommodations during any stage of the recruitment process, please reach out in confidence to [e-mail] .

Please note that the recruitment process for this position may involve the use of AI tools to screen, assess, or select applicants. All final decisions are taken or reviewed by human recruiters and human hiring leaders in compliance with all applicable legislation.