AVP, AI Engineering

AVP, AI Engineering & Delivery Join to apply for the AVP, AI Engineering & Delivery role at Canada Life. Permanent Full Time Canada Life has an ambition to apply human‑led AI to innovate, elevate customer service, and accelerate growth across the organization. To succeed, we believe there is a need to accelerate AI adoption across the enterprise to enable business strategy while adequately managing risk to protect the organization. Our Technology team is a strategic partner in our business – with an ambition to be a forward‑thinking, agile technology organization delivering secure, resilient, and leading solutions that support Canada Life and the well‑being of millions of Canadians. What you will do: Technical Leadership Architect AI applications leveraging advanced prompting techniques, agentic frameworks, structured/unstructured data access, AI analytics, and tool interactions. Provide expertise in Large Language Models (LLMs), Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), and multi‑modal AI (text, vision, structured data). Guide teams on AI‑first application design, ensuring scalability, robustness, and reasoning capabilities in AI‑driven products. Establish standards, patterns, and best practices for Generative AI and Agentic AI solution design and development. Design and execute rapid prototypes, establish pragmatic pathways to production‑quality solutions while effectively managing trade‑offs. Drive efficient AI DevOps, ensuring high‑velocity, high‑quality AI development with automated monitoring, retraining, and CI/CD pipelines. Serve as a trusted partner and product owner to define, champion, and operationalize AI services and technology platform. Seamlessly integrate AI‑driven solutions, ensuring AI enhances decision‑making and operational efficiency. Champion data integrity and governance, ensuring the team works with clean, reliable, and ethically sourced data. Architect and oversee the development of next‑generation data structures and pipelines that enable scalable, future‑ready AI solutions. AI Governance & Ethics Implement responsible AI practices, ensuring transparency, fairness, and bias mitigation in AI models. Establish AI governance frameworks to monitor and control AI system behavior, ensuring ethical and regulatory compliance. Champion explainable AI and AI observability, ensuring stakeholders understand and trust AI‑driven decisions. Cross‑Functional Collaboration & Leadership Partner with Business leaders, Application and Data Engineering, Data Science, and Enterprise Architecture teams to align AI solutions with business objectives and drive measurable impact. Lead by influence, effectively communicating complex AI concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, explaining the benefits, limitations and value AI can enable. Lead matrixed and cross‑functional squads in the design and implementation of AI solutions. Operationalize and evolve the AI delivery model and support model across Canada Life as the organization mature and scale in advancing AI. Recruit, develop, and retain top‑tier AI talent across on‑shore and off‑shore locations (50/50 split), ensuring seamless collaboration across time zones and cultures. Provide mentorship and career development opportunities for team members, encouraging growth in both technical and leadership capabilities. Promote cross‑functional collaboration and knowledge sharing to accelerate AI adoption and impact across the segments and organization. Cultivate a culture of innovation, experimentation, and continuous learning within the AI team. What you will bring: You hold a University degree in Software Engineering, Data Science, or equivalent. Proven track record of at least 5 years with AI / ML / Advanced Analytics implementations in a leadership role. Strong technical depth in LLMs, multi‑modal AI, MLOps, AI DevOps, vector databases, embeddings, automated AI workflows, and software engineering principles. Proven record of software development excellence, seamlessly integrating AI advancements into engineering execution and delivering impact. Experience in AI governance and ethics, ensuring compliance, fairness, and responsible AI practices. Strong executive presence, able to engage and influence C‑level stakeholders while aligning AI strategy with business goals. You have a track record of collaboration and influence when working in cross‑functional teams in a highly complex organization, ability to lead and foster collaborative relationships, engage, and inspire the right outcome through partnerships and mutual respect. You are excited to develop high‑performing teams, and can lead, mentor, and influence junior talent. You have previous experience in a large enterprise environment in a regulated industry. Continuous learning mindset to stay updated with the latest AI trends and emerging technologies. Career opportunities will be open a minimum of 5 business days from the date of posting, closing dates will vary depending on the search activity. All applications received will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Being a part of Canada Life means you have a voice. This is a place where your unique background, perspectives and talents are valued, and shape our future success. Canada Life supports an inclusive, accessible environment, where all employees and customers feel valued, respected and supported. We are dedicated to building a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities in which we live, and to creating an environment where every employee has the opportunity to reach their potential. It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Canada Life policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact talentacquisitioncanada@canadalife.com. Canada Life would like to thank all applicants, however only those who qualify for an interview will be contacted. #J-18808-Ljbffr