Senior Director, Cloud, Network & Platform Services

Being part of Air Canada is to become part of an iconic Canadian symbol, recently ranked the best Airline in North America. Let your career take flight by joining our diverse and vibrant team at the leading edge of passenger aviation.

Air Canada relies on IT systems for almost every function that is performed at the airline. The Sr Dir, Cloud, Network and Platform Services is a strategic leadership role within IT. This leader is responsible for shaping and executing the vision, strategy, and delivery of the company’s foundational IT services, ensuring that all infrastructure and cloud platforms, networks, and digital workplace solutions are secure, reliable, scalable, and aligned with organizational objectives. The role leads a diverse and multidisciplinary team, including employees, product and services partners to meet the dynamic needs of a very competitive environment, providing safe, secure and reliable technologies and capabilities. This leader also serves as the subject matter expert in driving operational excellence, innovation, and transformation across Air Canada’s technology backbone.

Responsibilities:

Strategic Leadership & Vision:

• Develop, articulate, and execute the strategic roadmap for cloud, infrastructure, networks, platform services, ITSM, and digital workplace capabilities, in alignment with business goals and industry best practices.
• Champion modernization initiatives, cloud adoption, automation, and continuous improvement to create a resilient and future-ready IT environment.
• Serve as a primary advisor to executive leadership, providing insights on current trends, emerging technologies, and best-in-class solutions.

The role develops and oversees a budget of approximately $200 million. About half of this addresses transformative or evolutionary change to processes and systems, and the remainder to running steady state systems.

The role must foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and excellence within the team and across the organization. The role must stay abreast of the latest developments and best practices in the aviation and travel industry and leverage them to enhance Air Canada's competitive advantage.

In a little more detail, this role is accountable for the following areas:

• Cloud platforms and Data Center Infrastructure.
• Global IT Data Networks, Voice, and Network Security Infrastructure.
• IT Service Management (Change Management, Asset Management, CMDB etc).
• End User Services (Desktop, Service Desk, Airports, mobile devices, Mobility and Productivity Suite (MS O365), Video Conferencing, VIP support)

For the areas of Cloud platforms and Data Center Infrastructure, this role is responsible to:

• Plan, design and implement a robust set of data center and cloud solutions that provide the sound foundation for application hosting, digital development, data/analytics/AI and staff use.
• Manage service providers, including contracts, setting service levels and overseeing performance.
• Implement, operate and maintain Servers, Enterprise Storage, Virtual technologies, Hypervisors and associated infrastructure, ensuring the assets are performing effectively and securely, and ensure optimal value from investments.
• Remain flexible to the rapidly changing aviation environment and build flexibility into solutions to accommodate rapid changes when needed.
• Be the service owner and main contact for hyperscale partners such as Microsoft and Amazon Web Services
• Manage and maintain the Managed File transfer environment critical for partners and Joint Ventures

For the areas of Network and Network Security, this role is responsible to:

• Plan, design, implement and operate resilient access to AC locations worldwide, to partner services, and to cloud platforms in accordance with establish best practices and Cyber standards.
• Manage and maintain IP infrastructure including routing, switching, load balancers, WIFI, firewalls, IDS/IPS, VPN, Proxy, network observability platform and DNS/DHCP infrastructure.
• Manage service providers as required, including contracts, service level agreements and performance management.
• Manage the Corporate telephony platform consisting of 7400 endpoints and provide support to all airports for telephony.
• Ensure that Air Canada’s wide area network is adequately sized and continues to meet business needs for more than 180 Airports as well as all Cargo locations, corporate offices and contact centres.
• Act as the AC service owner and executive contact for Telecom carriers, including managed service providers such as Bell Canada.

For the areas of IT Service Management, this role is accountable to:

• Track and optimize IT assets, including all software assets, ensuring other functions within IT benefit from the information to plan and execute projects and changes.
• Ensure core IT management processes such as incident, change, problem management, and configuration management are efficient and effective.

For the areas of End User Services and Mobility solutions, this role is accountable to:

• Plan, design, and implement/maintain services and processes to ensure effective management of Air Canada Endpoints (e.g. laptops, desktops) in offices, contact centers, cargo locations, airports and work from home/remote environments.
• Manage the Service desk to ensure reliable, efficient and timely support is available for all Air Canada staff.
• Modernize to ensure appropriate cyber standards, asset management and license adherence/optimization are in place.
• Provide VIP support to the executive team and produce video webcasts for Corporate Communications and business teams as required.
• Enable the hybrid workforce with video enabled meeting rooms that perform reliably, with appropriate quality and a frictionless interface.
• Manage and maintain core systems such as email and our productivity suite as well as other cloud software solutions
• Ensure end user devices are suitable for the task and provide appropriate support and lifecycle management for 8500 iPads, 3800 PDA’s, 1400 Corporate smartphones, and 7500 BYOD devices and 11,500 PC’s.

As a key manager within IT and in Air Canada, this leader must manage their own area of accountability, but also contribute meaningfully to the management of IT and the company. This leader is responsible to:

• Guide, manage and coordinate the execution of approximately 15 projects and programs annually.
• Own the functional capability in the organization and act as the Single Point of Contact for any matters related to strategic alignment, budgetary compliance, program updates, resource utilization and implementation.
• Drive the strategic direction of the functional area as well as significant depth of technical expertise in the assigned area
• Keep abreast of the latest technology advances, initiatives, implementations and capabilities to ensure suitable actions are taken within Air Canada.
• Establish the optimal balance of employees, contractors and managed services to achieve quality, performance and cost goals.
• Establish and participate in governing bodies and steering committees as required.
• Be a trusted strategic advisor to the CIO.
• Ensure AC leadership understands the importance, relevance and involvement of the role’s area.
• Participate and contribute to external groups as needed to advance Air Canada’s interests.
• Represent Air Canada in the IT and aviation industry at events, speaking opportunities and Advisory boards.
• Participate in vendor influence forums to guide their service offerings and product evolution toward satisfying Air Canada’s future needs.

As a senior leader within IT, participate in the overall IT budgeting process and oversight of spend toward achieving overall IT budget and long-range plan goals. Be aware of external benchmarks of relevance including areas such as planning and controlling cloud spend, optimizing device value and performance with smart lifecycle planning, and tracking/influencing mobile device subscription and fee costs.

This leader must also:

• Create and sustain a high-performance team, that gets to results within the values of Air Canada.
• Ensure compliance with policies, regulatory requirements and industry standards.
• Contribute to the culture of IT and AC, continuing to advance the values of Flight Path, aligned to the goals expressed in Rise Higher.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in IT related roles, most of which should be in leadership roles
• A relevant University degree/technical certification, and/or relevant experience
• MBA or technology-relevant post-graduate degree preferred
• A proven track record of delivering successful technology projects and products that meet or exceed objectives and customer expectations
• A strong knowledge of current and emerging technologies, trends, and best practices in the areas of cloud computing, mobile applications, networks, and ITSM
• Demonstrated ability to lead, inspire, and mentor a diverse and talented team of technology professionals. Experience in building and managing high performance teams
• A collaborative and customer-centric mindset, with excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• A passion for innovation, continuous improvement, and lifelong learning
• Highly skilled and experienced at negotiating conflict and problem-solving to achieve win-win outcomes at executive levels

Conditions of Employment:

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country of interest at the time any offer of employment is made and are responsible for obtaining any required work permits, visas, or other authorizations necessary for employment. Prior to their start date, candidates will also need to provide proof of their eligibility to work in the country of interest.

Linguistic Requirements

Based on equal qualifications, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.

Diversity and Inclusion

Air Canada is strongly committed to Diversity and Inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible and rewarding work environment which highlights employees’ unique contributions to our company’s success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from all to help us build a diverse workforce which reflects the diversity of our customers, and communities, in which we live and serve.

Air Canada thanks all candidates for their interest; however only those selected to continue in the process will be contacted.