Director, Engineering

Our Company Background & Culture
UPP is the first pension plan of its kind in Ontario's university sector, proudly serving over 41,000 members across five universities and fourteen sector organizations. Our purpose is to bring greater retirement peace of mind to the university sector by investing with integrity and serving members with care. As a sector-wide plan designed for growth, our doors are open to all Ontario universities.

Together, we're a team of progressive thinkers and agile doers operating within a fast-paced culture of collaboration and respect. We believe in bringing smart and capable people together to create, solve, and grow with a clear shared vision and values of integrity, inclusivity, ingenuity, and impact. Our culture is intentionally welcoming and purposefully rooted in equity, diversity, inclusion, and reconciliation (EDI&R). We believe diverse teams, perspectives, and lived experiences contribute to better decisions and a better workplace.

As a pension plan, UPP approaches investing through a long-term lens to generate and safeguard value. Our commitment to investing responsibly accounts for material risks that impact our investment portfolio to generate sufficient risk-adjusted returns to meet the pension needs of our members.

Join us in building a bright future for our members, our organization, and each other.

THE ROLE
We are seeking a motivated professional with diverse hands-on and management experience with a proven background for connecting technology to business outcomes.

Reporting directly to the Senior Director, Architecture & Engineering, the Director, Engineering & Enablement will partner with Technology, Data and Delivery division leaders, solution architects, and business teams to support the design, enablement, configuration, implementation, testing, and post-implementation operations of digital solutions across UPP.

This is a fantastic opportunity for a motivated individual that is looking to learn from and be part a team of high-performing individuals and make a great impact in a dynamic and progressive work environment.

This role is based in downtown Toronto in a hybrid work environment, allowing employees the flexibility to work remotely and in-office (minimum two days per week in-office).

Specific Accountabilities
The Director, Engineering & Enablement, will be responsible for a variety of duties, including but not limited to the following:

• Provide strategic direction and leadership to an agile development practice to support UPP business initiatives across Pensions, Investments and Corporate divisions with a focus on progressive performance and process improvements.
• Provide strategy and ownership in the development and operationalization of technology solutions.
• Lead and develop a team of high-performing engineers and technical analysts with a focus on talent growth, collaboration and delivery excellence.
• Play a key role in planning and executing implementation initiatives, ensuring seamless transition, operational stability and comprehensive support.
• Drive process improvements and cultivate shared ownership of the SDLC consistently across development teams.
• Work with business partners to prioritize product backlogs, balancing features/fixes to ensure technical debt, scalability and performance improvements are represented appropriately.
• Ensure operational readiness of solutions including operational handover, major incident management, and integration with vendor support procedures.
• Manage resource utilization and outcomes of external delivery network and partners.
• Establish and monitor delivery metrics, enabling proactive and transparent communication with business and executive stakeholders.
• Active resource management and capacity analysis of delivery teams; proactive escalation of capacity constraints; negotiate development and operational commitments with delivery and business partners.
• Source and actively monitor performance of vendors as pertaining to development, delivery, support and operations.
• Prioritize risks/issues and address them through appropriate escalation with Technology Risk functions.
• Liaise with cross-functional peers to document and align on Risks, Decisions, Key Business Dates, etc.
• Actively participate in technology intake from business teams and/or strategic organizational initiatives
• Lead and establish the capabilities to build solutions on enterprise platforms, which include document management, knowledge management, and workflow management.
• Facilitate and enable delivery and business partners to create innovative and enabling technology solutions, providing leadership from ideation through implementation, with a goal of delivering improved efficiency and employee experience.
• Partner with Solution and Business Architects to ensure that the delivery of solutions aligns to UPP strategy and standards.
• Develop, mentor and foster talent within the team through passion and ownership of technology solutions.

Qualifications & Experience

• Post-secondary degree or equivalent, Computer Science, Business, Engineering, or a related discipline
• 10+ years of experience in Technical Product Management, Development and Operations in progressively senior roles
• Proven experience managing a Portfolio of Initiatives and Projects, including prioritization, and changes
• Ability to lead, mentor, and develop high performing teams through coaching and goal setting
• Proficient with Agile Methodology, usage of agile planning tools (JIRA), and product and/or portfolio reporting
• Experience managing technical resources to optimize work estimation, developer tasks, testing, deliverables, and documentation
• Excellent analytical, written and verbal communication skills
• Ability to delegate effectively, build trust, and empower team members to take ownership of their work
• Strong interpersonal, collaboration and communication skills (both written and verbal).
• Ability to adapt to new concepts quickly and efficiently
• Strong problem solving, and conflict resolution abilities

ATTRIBUTES

• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Ability to create clear, consistent, and succinct written communications
• Proficient in verbally transmitting ideas and sentiments in a manner that creates engagement
• Demonstrates capability to identify, design, and implement right sized and repeatable management control processes
• Ability to engage and align the D&T management team to reach consensus
• Skilled at designing and executing repeatable processes
• Adept at organizing and driving results from different contributors
• Ability to effectively identify emerging technologies, trends, standards, and products that have strong potential to better enable UPP business units

LIFE AT UPP
Do work that matters
.
We are duty-bound to serve our members' interests, and it's a responsibility we don't take lightly. That's why we've ingrained sustainability in our work from day one—to ensure our members have a resilient future to retire into, both today and for generations to come.

Stronger together
.
Collaboration is how UPP was born, and it's how we work with each other and our partners day in, day out. No one at UPP is just a number (even if they are excellent at math) and every win is a shared win.

Grow every day
.
You'll have the opportunity to work on unique, once-in-a-career projects that maximize your skill set and probably teach you some new ones—at any stage in your career.

Benefits
Prioritize wellness
.
At UPP, wellness takes many forms. Ultimately, it's about ensuring our people are cared for in the ways that matter to them. Check out some highlights of our inclusive employee-focused benefits program including:

• Defined benefit pension plan
• Flexible hybrid work model
• Work from abroad up to eight weeks/year
• Comprehensive group benefits including medical, dental, vision etc.
• Extended paramedical and mental health service coverage
• Health care and lifestyle spending accounts
• Fertility treatments, paid parental leave, and gender affirmation coverage
• Education Assistance program

UPP enthusiastically welcomes applications from all qualified applicants and especially invites people with lived experience as an Indigenous person, a person with a disability or as a member of another Human Rights Code protected group that faces barriers to employment to apply. Our goal is to create a barrier-free experience for every candidate throughout the recruitment process, so if you require accommodation at any point during the process, please let us know so that we can make the appropriate arrangements. It would be our honor to work with you to adapt our processes to ensure that you can meaningfully participate.
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