Lead Software Engineer - MLOps (Toronto)

Overview

Job Description: About the role: The Enterprise Data & Analytics Enablement team is looking for a highly experienced, hands‑on Lead Software Engineer to lead our MLOps team within an Analytics Platform, emphasizing AWS cloud services and machine learning operations.

The successful candidate will have strong technical and problem‑solving skills and the ability to lead a team of MLOps Engineers.

This unique opportunity offers a dynamic space and a chance to collaborate with multiple technical and business teams.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for the MLOps squad within the Analytics Platform, influencing architecture and standards across multiple teams.
• Design, build, and evolve production‑grade MLOps and ML platform capabilities, including model lifecycle management, CI/CD, evaluation, monitoring, and governance.
• Spend ~60% hands‑on in software engineering, building high‑quality, testable, maintainable services, frameworks, APIs, and shared libraries that enable ML and GenAI at scale.
• Spend ~40% on platform, cloud, and MLOps enablement, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, observable, and cost‑effective.
• Act as a technical authority for AWS‑based ML platforms, leading design decisions and guiding adoption of new cloud and GenAI services.
• Establish and evolve engineering and MLOps standards, patterns, and best practices across squads.
• Partner closely with Architecture, Security, Risk, and Product teams to reduce delivery, operational, and model governance risk.
• Lead by example through code reviews, design reviews, incident analysis, and operational improvements.
• Mentor senior and intermediate engineers, raising the overall technical bar without direct people management.

Qualifications

• A deep software engineering background with a strong track record of building and operating large‑scale, production systems.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with AWS in production, including infrastructure design, deployment, and optimization.
• Robust experience with distributed systems and cloud‑native architectures, CI/CD pipelines and automation.
• Observability, reliability, and incident response.
• Practical experience with MLOps, Model Ops, ML platforms, or LLMOps in enterprise environments.
• Proficiency in one or more of: Python, Java, Scala, and infrastructure‑as‑code tooling (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Ability to operate at Lead scope, influencing architecture and decisions across multiple teams and domains.
• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

Preferred Skills

• Deep familiarity with AWS analytics, ML, and GenAI services, including evaluation and monitoring tooling.
• Experience designing or supporting enterprise MLOps/ML platform frameworks used by multiple teams.
• Strong understanding of security‑first design, governance, and compliance in regulated environments.
• Experience balancing innovation with operational supportability in platform teams.
• Proven ability to mentor and influence without formal authority.
• Strong product and business awareness, enabling pragmatic technical tradeoffs.

Benefits

We were honoured to be recognized as a 2026 Best Workplace in Canada by Great Place to Work Canada.

We offer wellness programs that support the three pillars of health: mental, physical, and financial.

The opportunity to progress along a variety of career paths with extensive networking potential.

As a hybrid organization, you and your leader can choose where you work—at home or in the office—based on business and client needs.

Additional Requirements

The successful candidate must obtain a Government of Canada Reliability Status security clearance through Sun Life in advance of the start date and be able to satisfactorily complete applicable background checks prior to the start date and during employment, in accordance with Sun Life’s policies and practices.