Senior Architect - Winnipeg - Wawanesa

Description

Employment Type: Existing Role. Working Business Language: English. This role is considered a head‑office role and will be required to communicate with internal and external stakeholders across Canada where the primary business language for this role is English. As such, the successful candidate must be fully proficient in English.

Salary: At Wawanesa, salary is only one component of a holistic, comprehensive and competitive offering that we provide to our employees. In addition to salary, full‑time and part‑time permanent employees are eligible for an annual bonus plan, leave of absence top‑up programs and generous vacation time, personal days, premium free benefits and a pension plan.

The salary offered for this role is determined with consideration to various factors, including but not limited to: your work location, local labour market conditions, external market salary data, internal pay equity and the knowledge, skills, experience and anticipated proficiency in the role. The salary offered is estimated to be within the following range: $130,000 – $170,000. Candidates with salary expectations outside of the range are still encouraged to apply.

About Us

At Wawanesa, we offer a hybrid work environment that offers flexibility to our employees in balancing in‑office (2 days per week OR 15 hours per week in a Wawanesa office) and remote work. You may work from any of the following locations: Winnipeg, MB; Wawanesa, MB; Vancouver, BC; Calgary, AB; Edmonton, AB; Lethbridge, AB; Toronto (North York), ON; Kitchener, ON; Ottawa, ON; Montreal, QC; Quebec City, QC; Moncton, NB; Dartmouth, NS.

The Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company ('Wawanesa Mutual'), founded in 1896, is one of Canada's largest mutual insurers, with over $3.5 billion in annual revenue and assets of $10 billion (CAD). Wawanesa Mutual, with its National Headquarters in Winnipeg, is the parent company of Wawanesa Life, which provides life insurance products and services throughout Canada, and Western Financial Group, which distributes personal and business insurance across Canada. Wawanesa proudly serves more than 1.7 million members in Canada, and we are home to more than 3,300 employees distributed across the Canadian regions and communities where we operate. We give back to organizations that strengthen communities, donating more than $3.5 million annually to charitable organizations, including more than $2 million annually in support of people on the front lines of climate change. We are also proud to be recognized as one of Manitoba's Top Employers. To learn more visit

We are currently looking for dedicated, driven, and enthusiastic individuals who thrive in an environment that welcomes change and are looking for an opportunity for diverse experience and advancement on a growing team.

Job Overview

Under minimal supervision, this role contributes to Wawanesa's success by using a combination of business and technology expertise to partner with product owners on the development of domain‑level roadmaps, providing high‑level design of enterprise IT solutions, and architecture standards and principles, to meet business objectives considering the existing architectural landscape at Wawanesa. The domain architect ensures IT solutions are implemented following the solution architecture design.

Job Responsibilities

• Working closely and regularly with business and delivery owners to develop domain roadmaps.
• Develop detailed application roadmaps within the domain based on corporate business and IT objectives and strategies.
• Gather solution architecture requirements from various sources including interviewing business and IT stakeholders, established architecture standards and principles, and reference architectures.
• Develop and maintain current state architecture models and artifacts including the four key domains of architecture: Business, Application, Data, and Technology.
• Identify solution non‑functional requirements.
• Identify key business and technology drivers that impact application architectures, such as end‑user requirements, existing application environment (including legacy and packaged systems), and non‑functional requirements.
• Evaluate alternate approaches and develop target state architecture models based on project objectives, architecture requirements, and non‑functional requirements.
• Collaborate with technical architects to ensure proper and effective reuse of application and technical services, patterns, frameworks and standard tools and templates in the proposed solution.
• Collaborate with technical architects to design external system interface architecture, including appropriate application of techniques and standards such as service‑oriented architecture, web services, etc.
• Provide leadership and direction guidance to solution delivery teams to ensure solution design and implementation aligns to the target state architecture, as well as to identify when it is necessary to modify the architecture to accommodate solution needs.
• Ensure architectural compliance of solutions to enterprise architecture standards and principles.
• Participate and provide architectural guidance in the construction, modeling, and design of prototypes, proofs of concepts and working models of complex or new design elements.
• Ensure that all aspects of the solution design follows best practices and meets the requirements of the business by participating in conceptual and physical design, participating in design reviews and approving/signing off on design deliverables.
• Create and maintain system and architecture design standards and provide guidance to project teams regarding guiding principles, system and application design, coding and design standards.
• Review and provide recommendations for continuous improvements to architecture practice.
• Participate in architectural reviews to ensure application of consistent architecture practice.
• A primary responsibility of this role is to safeguard confidentiality of any data they come across in their daily duties.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• 5 years of IS architecture experience along with 10+ years of experience in full life cycle solution design using object‑oriented analysis and design techniques, preferably in a medium to large environments.
• Experience with enterprise application integration using a variety of techniques including enterprise service bus and/or message brokers, and web services.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, an analytical discipline or equivalent experience.
• Experience in comprehensive modeling for applications, services, systems, and data with approaches in component‑based, service‑oriented, model‑driven manner.
• Expert knowledge and experience with designing and delivering solutions that factor in system performance, usability, quality, cross‑system interdependencies, scalability and overall cost to develop and maintain.
• Sound knowledge and experience with design patterns, integration architecture, solution frameworks, Enterprise frameworks, technical patterns and technical services.
• Must be able to balance the long‑term ("big‑picture") and short‑term implications of individual decisions and drive actions that are consistent with long‑term goals.
• Strong business sense with the ability to translate complex business requirements into technology solutions.
• Ability to communicate, both verbally and in writing, in a persuasive and eloquent manner.
• Expert analytical and problem solving skills with the ability to manage and prioritize a busy workload and multiple large projects.
• Ability to lead others to embrace, perform effectively, and adapt quickly to change.
• Ability to make excellent and well‑justified decisions in complex and high‑pressure situations and coach others in decision making.
• Strong interpersonal and contract negotiation skills, able to effectively deal with both internal and external clients.
• Knowledge and understanding of Guidewire Insurance Suite, AWS.
• Experience designing, developing, and implementing large‑scale n‑tier applications using Java‑based technologies is considered an asset.
• Experience implementing, configuring and integrating enterprise commercial off the shelf software or SaaS.
• Sound understanding of, and ideally experience with, the implementation of AI to solve business problems.
• Knowledge of and experience in the insurance industry is considered an asset.

Diversity Equity, Inclusion & Belonging

At Wawanesa, we are committed to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) and believe that our strength lies in the diversity of our people – this is supported by having a representative workforce.

We welcome applications from all qualified candidates, including racialized persons, women, Indigenous Peoples, persons with disabilities, members of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, gender‑diverse and neurodiverse individuals, and anyone who can contribute to the further diversification of thought and ideas.

We aim to ensure our recruitment process is accessible to all candidates. If you require accommodations during any stage of the recruitment process, please reach out in confidence to

Please note that the recruitment process for this position may involve the use of AI tools to screen, assess, or select applicants. All final decisions are taken or reviewed by human recruiters and human hiring leaders in compliance with all applicable legislation.