Director, Engineering Lead, In-House Accelerator

You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do. Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.

Job Description:

About the Role

Are you a software engineering leader with a technology innovator, or a founder-level engineer in a start-up? Do you have extensive 0 to 1 product or platform experience?

We are building a startup-style innovation team within Sun Life to rapidly design, build, and scale transformative digital products-including an agentic AI platform and new client experience solutions.

As Engineering Lead, In-House Accelerator, you will be the first engineering hire and technical counterpart to the AVP, Digital & Innovation Lead. In the early phase, this role is intentionally hands-on and execution-heavy: you will write production code, make pragmatic architecture decisions, and ship working software quickly in a regulated environment.

Over time, as the accelerator proves value and grows, you will build and mentor the engineering team-hiring strong builders, setting technical standards, and shaping an engineering culture rooted in ownership, speed, and learning. This is a builder-first role with clear long-term ownership for scaling both the technology and the team.

Key Responsibilities

• Hands-On Technical Leadership (Immediate Priority)

• Write production-quality code daily across backend, APIs, and AI-enabled services

• Make fast, pragmatic architecture decisions that prioritize learning and delivery while keeping future scale in mind

• Design and evolve Sun Life’s agentic AI platform, including orchestration, integration layers, APIs, and guardrails

• Evaluate and experiment with new technologies, AI models, and vendor solutions

Team Building & Engineering Culture (As the Team Scales)

• Hire, onboard, mentor, and develop a small, high-caliber engineering team (AI, backend, full-stack)

• Lead primarily through contribution and example, not process or hierarchy

• Establish engineering practices, standards, and ways of working that enable speed without sacrificing quality

• Foster a culture of experimentation, ownership, and continuous learning

Quality, Security & Enterprise Navigation

• Build with security, reliability, and compliance awareness appropriate for a regulated financial institution

• Understand which enterprise guardrails matter now vs. later, and navigate governance without slowing experimentation

• Partner pragmatically with InfoSec, Legal, Compliance, and Data Governance as solutions mature

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on engineering experience, with recent, demonstrable coding work in a 0 - 1 environment.

• Experience acting as a software engineering leader or founder-level engineer on complex digital products or platforms

• Strong fluency in modern cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and DevOps practices (CI/CD, containers, infrastructure as code)

• Proven ability to operate in ambiguity, make trade-offs, and ship imperfect solutions quickly

• Ability to grow from individual contributor to team builder-comfortable hiring, mentoring, and raising the bar for others

• Startup or early-stage product experience is a significant asset

• Nice to have: Experience with AI/ML systems building with LLMs, prompt engineering, or agentic architectures

What Success Looks Like

• Within the first 90 days: working software shipped, real users engaged, and clear technical and product learnings captured (even if it is ugly)

• Within 6-12 months: a reusable technical foundation supporting multiple experiments and MVPs

• A small, high-performing engineering team that can move quickly without heavy process

• Demonstrated business and client impact through adoption, outcomes, and measurable value

What’s in it for you?

• Great Place to Work® Certified for Most Trusted Executive Team in Canada - 2025, 2024 and 2023
• Great Place to Work® Certified for Best Workplaces in Canada - 2025
• Canada Order of Excellence for Mental Health at Work® certification from Excellence Canada. Sun Life is one of only four companies in Canada to ever receive this certification - 2024
• Top Work Places® for Remote Work - Monster Canada - 2024
• Great Place to Work® Certified for Best Workplaces in Canada - 2024 and 2022
• Great Place to Work® Certified for Best Workplaces for Women in Canada - 2024
• Flexible hybrid work model. #LI-Hybrid
• Pension, stock and savings programs to help build and enhance your future financial security
• Work and professional development that is united by our Purpose: to help Clients and Employees achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives
• A friendly, collaborative and inclusive culture
• Be part of our continuous improvement journey in developing the next greatest digital enterprise experience.
• Competitive salary and bonus structure influenced by market range data

*** For candidates with these preferred skills, exceptions beyond the usual salary range below may be possible ***

The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.

Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.

Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.

We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you! Several work options are available and can be discussed throughout the selection process depending on the role requirements and individual needs.

We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.

We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

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