About the Role
This role is responsible for designing, governing, and managing the company‑wide IT architecture to ensure strong alignment with business strategies and Sun Life technology guardrails. The position enables business and IT partners to achieve desired outcomes by delivering scalable, compliant, and forward‑looking technology solutions while reducing technical debt and ensuring tech currency. The role also drives the development of architectural standards and governance frameworks, oversees the integration of new technologies into existing platforms, and ensures adherence to regulatory and internal compliance requirements. The incumbent collaborates closely with cross‑functional stakeholders and external IT partners to translate business needs into robust technical designs, ensuring that vendor implementations fully meet Sun Life policies and risk requirements. This role also contributes to building future architectural capabilities by mentoring technical talent and developing the next generation of architects. Additionally, the role represents Sun Life in the broader technology community by contributing to thought leadership such as white papers and participation in industry IT forums.
Responsibilities
- Shape Technology Architecture - Focus on the company-level design of the IT landscape and keep track of tools and technology evolution of applications portfolio. Analyze current trends in technology and provide recommendations that comply with company standards. Stay on top of emerging technology trends and advise business partners, IT engineers and developers to promote innovation.
- Architectural Governance and Technical Leadership - Take a broader strategic view to check and align whether the design patterns and standards chosen by the technical architects and tech leads is in accordance with the overall technology vision, architecture & roadmap. Promote best practices and consistent architectural thinking across programs.
- People Leadership and Capability Development - Mentor, coach and guide application and technical architects on various programs spanning across range of technologies. Train and develop the internal architecture team to build future technical capabilities and foster the next generation of architects.
- Compliance and Support Architectural Governance Processes - Coordinate with Governance Controller and align in terms of support audit compliance to architecture standards and collaborate with other Enterprise Architects globally. Use EA Tools to identify and analyze the execution of change toward various solutions against business.
- Drive Technology Thought Leadership and Cloud Standards - Provide thought leadership on range of technologies such as Portals, Mobile Apps, Microservices, API's, Cloud, DevOps, Workflow, Document Management, IAM etc. Define and maintain the standards, guardrails and design patterns for applications hosted on SL AWS Cloud.
Qualifications
- Minimum Bachelor degree preferably with Master degree in Computer Science or Engineering discipline.
- 15+ years IT experience, preferably 5+ years in the FS and Insurance Sector.
- Demonstrated expertise working across multiple technology domains such as cloud (AWS preferred), APIs, microservices, integration platforms, DevOps, mobile/web technologies, IAM, or workflow systems.
- Strong background in designing and governing complex enterprise‑level systems, including hands‑on experience with technology modernization, application portfolio oversight, and technical debt management.
- Proven experience collaborating with cross-functional business and IT stakeholders, as well as managing or guiding architects, technical leads, and engineering teams.
- Experience working in regulated or compliance‑heavy environments is an asset, given architectural responsibilities related to audit and governance.
- Vendor management experience, particularly in solution delivery and ensuring compliance with enterprise policies and risk frameworks.
Required Skills
- Expert-level knowledge of enterprise architecture frameworks, such as TOGAF, Zachman, or Gartner EA, with the ability to apply these frameworks pragmatically to large-scale transformation initiatives.
- Proven experience across broad range of technology areas such as Microservices, COTS solutions, Legacy Modernization, Integration, ECM, BPM, Workflow, Portals, Mobile Apps, Cloud, API, DevOps etc.
- Strong communication capabilities, including the ability to deliver high-impact presentations, lead technical seminars, produce clear architectural documentation, and write thought‑leadership materials (e.g., white papers, standards, guidelines).
- Deep understanding of the Financial Services and Insurance industry, including regulatory, compliance, and operational considerations that influence technology design.
- Demonstrated experience in developing complex solutions and platforms.
- Understanding of common patterns, frameworks, and reference architectures for FS domain.
- Asia regional experience an advantage.
Preferred Skills
- Demonstrated problem solving, communication and organizational skills, a positive attitude, and the proven ability to negotiate and influence others to obtain desired results.
- Strong professional consulting skills.
- Handling large, complicated, cross‑domain issues involving legacy systems, new digital platforms, and cloud technologies, where solutions require deep architectural insight and the ability to weigh trade-offs between short‑term delivery and long‑term architectural health.
- Ability to speak in business terms, as well as the ability to effectively communicate both internally and externally.
- Mature, confident, and performance-oriented.
- Capable of developing strong relationships with all levels of management.
- Must possess excellent problem-solving skills for large complicated and broad issues and able to work independently.
- Able to work in a complex environment with a mix of technologies and different levels of IT maturities in each business unit.
