Senior Principal Architect, Enterprise Architecture- Artificial Intelligence

Requisition ID: 243224

Join a purpose driven winning team, committed to results, in an inclusive and high-performing culture.

The Enterprise Architecture team is pivotal in defining the technological and structural direction of the organization. Their mandate includes designing, developing, governing, and driving the global technology strategy for the Bank.

As a Senior Principal Architect with AI Competency, you will define and lead the enterprise AI architecture strategy, establishing how AI capabilities are designed, governed, and scaled across the enterprise with Enterprise AI and Data platform team's collaboration.

You will ensure that AI systems — including generative and agentic AI — are architected for security, transparency, and resilience. Acting as a trusted advisor to executives and governance bodies, you will influence how Scotiabank integrates AI into its fabric responsibly, ethically, and efficiently.

This role bridges technology innovation with governance, defining the standards and frameworks that allow the organization to innovate with confidence in an AI-driven world.

Is this role right for you? In this role, you will:
Strategy Development

• Partner with Global AI team to define and lead the enterprise AI architecture strategy, aligning intelligent automation, generative AI, and responsible AI principles with the organization's business and technology vision.
• Participate in the enterprise AI foundation, including governance, architecture patterns, lifecycle management, and model assurance frameworks.
• Develop the AI assurance and governance charter, ensuring transparency, auditability, and continuous compliance across all models, pipelines, and decision systems.
• Partner with Data, security, risk, and engineering teams to embed AI-driven resiliency, observability, and threat modeling into architecture standards.
• Evaluate, rationalize, and standardize AI platforms and tools for scalability, cost efficiency, and compliance alignment.

Transformational Leadership

• Architect agentic AI ecosystems — environments where autonomous agents collaborate safely within enterprise boundaries while maintaining traceability and control.
• Design secure, resilient, and compliant AI platforms that integrate with existing enterprise systems, ensuring alignment with risk, ethics, and regulatory frameworks.
• Partner with Global AI team to Champion responsible AI adoption, embedding ethical guardrails, explainability, and human oversight throughout the AI lifecycle.
• Drive architectural patterns and reference implementations for AI observability, versioning, and lifecycle automation (MLOps).
• Collaborate with Cloud, Data, Security, and Integration architects to operationalize AI workloads seamlessly across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Executive Presence & Influence

• Serve as a strategic advisor to C-suite and board-level executives, translating AI strategies into measurable business outcomes and investment priorities.
• Demonstrate strong executive presence in governance forums, influencing enterprise policy, risk posture, and technology direction.
• Lead with thought leadership and clarity, simplifying complex AI, ethics, and security topics to drive informed decision-making.
• Represent Enterprise Architecture in AI governance councils, compliance boards, and risk committees, providing authoritative direction on AI assurance and safety.
• Build strategic partnerships across business, risk, and regulatory domains, ensuring AI adoption aligns with corporate values and industry ethics.
• Inspire and mentor teams across architecture and engineering disciplines, cultivating a culture of innovation, responsibility, and trust in AI adoption.

Stakeholder Management

• Present and communicate with our CTO, engineering heads and other senior leaders on an ongoing basis to gather feedback, report progress and solve issues
• Work closely with technical teams and SMEs to ensure technology initiatives are delivered on time, within budget forecasts and deliver value identified at inception
• Work closely with non-technology teams including business lines, HR, Finance and Risk to ensure technology initiatives are meeting business needs and are integrated within the bank effectively

People Leadership

• Lead and coach a high performing team of individuals
• Direct, motivate and develop the team, to ensure maximum contributions from each member and considering their professional growth
• Share knowledge and collaborate with others within the team and with other teams across the Bank to ensure effective delivery of projects
• Champion enterprise learning on AI ethics, architecture patterns, and responsible deployment practices.

Skills
Do you have the skills that will enable you to succeed in this role? We'd love to work with you if you have:

• 10+ years of enterprise architecture leadership experience, specializing in AI systems design, intelligent automation, and digital transformation in complex, regulated enterprises.
• Proven ability to define and lead enterprise AI architecture strategy, ensuring scalability, security, resiliency, and ethical governance across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
• Expertise in architecting AI platforms and ecosystems, including agentic AI frameworks, adaptive learning systems, and model-as-a-service architectures that enable intelligence at scale.
• Deep understanding of MLOps, LLMOps, and AI observability frameworks, ensuring reliability, traceability, and performance across the entire AI lifecycle.
• Demonstrated success in implementing AI governance and assurance programs, aligned with frameworks such as NIST AI RMF, ISO/IEC 42001, and the EU AI Act to ensure transparency, accountability, and trust.
• Skilled at integrating AI ethics, fairness, and explainability into enterprise systems, enabling responsible innovation with human oversight.
• Experience defining AI risk and resiliency strategies, including threat modeling, continuous assurance, and AI-driven self-healing architecture patterns.
• Proficiency in designing secure AI infrastructures that balance innovation with operational control, privacy, and regulatory compliance.
• Proven track record of evaluating and rationalizing AI technologies, eliminating duplication, optimizing cost and performance, and aligning platforms with enterprise strategy.
• Strong understanding of data interoperability and AI-data convergence, ensuring that AI systems integrate seamlessly with enterprise data and analytics foundations.
• Recognized as a strategic advisor and thought leader, capable of influencing C-suite and board-level stakeholders on AI policy, investment, and governance.
• Strong executive communication, storytelling, and influence skills, bridging the gap between technical complexity and strategic business value.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor architects and engineering leaders, fostering a culture of innovation, ethical responsibility, and cross-domain collaboration.
• Advanced cloud and AI certifications (Azure AI, AWS ML, or GCP Vertex AI) preferred, with deep familiarity in AI tooling ecosystems such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, MLflow, and LangChain.

What's in it for you?

• Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Allyship - We strive to create an inclusive culture where every employee is empowered to reach their fullest potential, respected for who they are, and are embraced through bias-free practices and inclusive values across Scotiabank. We embrace diversity and provide opportunities for all employee to learn, grow & participate through our various Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) that span across diverse gender identities, ethnicity, race, age, ability & veterans.
• Accessibility and Workplace Accommodations - We value the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the Bank and are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. Scotiabank continues to locate, remove, and prevent barriers so that we can build a diverse and inclusive environment while meeting accessibility requirements.
• Upskilling through online courses, cross-functional development opportunities, and tuition assistance.
• Competitive Rewards program including bonus, flexible vacation, personal, sick days, and benefits will start on day one.
• Community Engagement - no matter where you choose to work from; we offer opportunities for community engagement & belonging with our various programs.

Location(s): Canada : Ontario : Toronto

Scotiabank is a leading bank in the Americas. Guided by our purpose: "for every future", we help our customers, their families and their communities achieve success through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets.

At Scotiabank, we value the unique skills and experiences each individual brings to the Bank, and are committed to creating and maintaining an inclusive and accessible environment for everyone. If you require accommodation (including, but not limited to, an accessible interview site, alternate format documents, ASL Interpreter, or Assistive Technology) during the recruitment and selection process, please let our Recruitment team know. If you require technical assistance, please click here. Candidates must apply directly online to be considered for this role. We thank all applicants for their interest in a career at Scotiabank; however, only those candidates who are selected for an interview will be contacted.