Strategic Enterprise Solutions Architect

Manulife; Waterloo; Hybrid; CAD 113,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Manulife and John Hancock invite applications for a Lead Solution Architect in Waterloo, Ontario. The role drives technology architecture strategy across Group Benefits and partners with executives to set standards, roadmaps, and modernization initiatives.

You will lead architecture governance, review boards, and large-scale transformation across portfolios, ensuring security, resilience and enterprise alignment.

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.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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 functional and non-functional qualities including availability, resiliency, security, privacy.
• Assisting the business in scoping and planning initiatives and roadmap items.
• Participating in producing conceptual, solution, and component-level architectures and artifacts.
• Reviewing architectures produced within and outside the team.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Skills

Executive communication

Influencing

Governance

Tools

TOGAF

Job description

Manulife and John Hancock invite applications for a Lead Solution Architect in Waterloo, Ontario. The role drives technology architecture strategy across Group Benefits and partners with executives to set standards, roadmaps, and modernization initiatives.

You will lead architecture governance, review boards, and large-scale transformation across portfolios, ensuring security, resilience and enterprise alignment.