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Director, Engineering Lead, In-House Accelerator
Director, Engineering Lead, In-House AcceleratorSun Life • Waterloo, Ontario
Director, Engineering Lead, In-House Accelerator

Director, Engineering Lead, In-House Accelerator

Sun Life • Waterloo, Ontario
23 days ago
Job type
  • Full-time
Job description

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.
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    Director Engineering Lead InHouse Accelerator • Waterloo, Ontario

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