Senior Architect - Direct to Market (D2M)

Job ID: 10170

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; Calgary, AB; Toronto (North York), ON.

Working Business Language: 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 a pension plan. The salary offered for this role is estimated to be within the following range: $130,000 - $165,000. 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.

Job Overview

The Senior Architect – Direct to Market Domain (D2M) partners with Wawanesa business leaders, product owners, and delivery teams to develop and steward the technology roadmap for the D2M domain. Working in close partnership with product owners, delivery leaders, and Technology Platform Architects, this role uses a combination of business and technology expertise to shape domain‑level roadmaps, define technology solutions that enable business outcomes, develop high‑level solution designs, and ensure D2M solutions are delivered in alignment with enterprise architecture standards and principles. This role reports to an Enterprise Architect within the centralized architecture team and collaborates with peer Domain Architects, Technology Platform Architects, and Enterprise Architects to translate business outcomes into cohesive, standards‑aligned technology solutions for Wawanesa.

Job Responsibilities

• Work closely with Wawanesa business and delivery owners to develop the D2M roadmap.
• Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture to define, maintain, and evolve the D2M Technology Strategy, ensuring the domain roadmap aligns with enterprise direction.
• Align technology capabilities, applications, and roadmaps to business capabilities and processes, showing how technology enables the domain.
• Act as a focal point for architecture decisions and product selection across D2M.
• Gather solution architecture requirements from business and IT stakeholders, standards, principles, and reference architectures.
• Develop and maintain current‑state architecture models across business, application, data, and technology domains.
• Identify business and technology drivers affecting application architecture, including user needs, legacy systems, and non‑functional requirements.
• Evaluate options and define target‑state architecture based on project objectives and architecture requirements.
• Provide architecture guidance for prototypes, proofs of concept, and models of complex or new designs.
• Collaboration Across the Architecture Team.
• Consult Technology Platform Architects to reuse appropriate services, patterns, frameworks, tools, and templates in D2M solutions.
• Collaborate with Technology Platform Architects on external system interfaces using SOA, APIs, and event‑driven patterns.
• Work with Enterprise Architecture to align D2M priorities, cross‑domain impacts, and roadmap decisions with enterprise direction.
• Mentor architects and aspiring architects to strengthen team capability and consistency.
• Guide D2M delivery teams to align designs and implementations with the target architecture, adapting where solution needs require.
• Ensure D2M solutions comply with enterprise standards and help evolve standards through architecture governance.
• Validate solution designs against best practices and business requirements through reviews and design approvals.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of information systems architecture experience.
• 10+ years of experience designing and delivering enterprise solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, an analytical discipline, or equivalent experience.
• Experience in insurance or related platforms is an asset, particularly in digital engagement, distribution, customer, product, policy, or claims domains.
• Solid understanding of architecture frameworks.
• Experience modeling applications, services, systems, and data using modern architecture approaches.
• Experience with enterprise integration, including event‑driven architecture, ESB/message brokers, APIs, and web services.
• Expertise designing scalable, usable, cost‑effective, multi‑domain solutions.
• Experience implementing, configuring, and integrating enterprise commercial off‑the‑shelf software or SaaS.
• Understanding of AI‑enabled solution design for business outcomes.
• Experience with CRM architecture integration is preferred.
• Experience with customer‑facing agentic AI solutions is strongly preferred.
• Experience with enterprise business applications, including policy, billing, claims, case management, and workflow, is an asset.
• Ability to translate complex business needs into practical technology direction.
• Ability to balance short‑term delivery needs with long‑term architecture goals.
• Ability to work effectively in high‑trust, fast‑moving environments focused on experimentation, accountability, and learning.
• Ability to make sound decisions in complex or ambiguous situations and coach others.
• Expert analytical and problem‑solving skills, with the ability to prioritize multiple large initiatives.
• Ability to influence stakeholders and adapt quickly to change.
• Strong stakeholder engagement and negotiation skills.
• Clear and persuasive written and verbal communication skills.

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 jobs@wawanesa.com.

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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.

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