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¹Fortune 500, published June 2024, data as of December 2023. Compensation provided for using, not obtaining, the rating.
As an
Initiatives Leader within Canada Operations, this role is accountable for the end-to-end execution and successful delivery of complex, mid-to-large scale strategic initiatives, including both mandatory and discretionary programs. These initiatives are highly cross-functional in nature, often span multiple years, and may impact multiple business units, portfolios, operational capabilities, and technology platforms across the organization.
The Initiatives Leader serves as the primary execution leader for transformation efforts, overseeing all aspects of initiative delivery including strategic planning, financial management, stakeholder alignment, resource planning, organizational change management, risk mitigation, service readiness, operational implementation, and overall execution. The role holds significant influence across Canada Operations, driving solutions that affect systems, processes, organizational structures, people, controls, and client experiences.
This role is critical to advancing strategic initiatives across Digital and Canada Operations. Success requires extensive orchestration and collaboration with senior business and Digital leaders, strategic vendors, and a broad network of internal partners, including Technology, Infrastructure, Architecture, Cybersecurity, Digital Product Management, Cloud, Data & AI, Compliance, Legal, Wealth Management, Risk Management, and Field Management teams.
In addition to initiative delivery, the role provides strategic leadership by helping shape business direction, influence organizational strategy, strengthen operational capabilities, and support talent development. The Initiatives Leader plays a key role in ensuring the organization is positioned to effectively manage risk, achieve regulatory compliance, optimize operational performance, and deliver sustainable business outcomes.
Key Responsibilities
Strategic Initiative Leadership
- Lead the end-to-end delivery of complex, high-impact initiatives that span multiple functions, portfolios, business units, and technology domains.
- Develop and execute strategic plans that align initiative outcomes with organizational priorities and long-term objectives.
- Establish and maintain initiative governance structures, ensuring transparency, accountability, and effective decision-making.
- Drive organizational transformation efforts involving systems, processes, operating models, controls, and workforce capabilities.
- Ensure successful execution of multi-year initiatives while balancing strategic objectives, operational requirements, regulatory obligations, and client needs.
Technology, Process, and Solution Delivery Leadership
- Hold overall accountability for technology and process design, budget management, implementation execution, and operational readiness.
- Ensure a cohesive and integrated approach to solution development, delivery, and deployment with clearly defined quality, performance, and measurement metrics.
- Align technical solution designs with target-state architecture, business strategies, and operational requirements.
- Facilitate collaboration among Architects, Technology Leaders, Product Leaders, and business stakeholders to ensure end-to-end solution integrity.
- Oversee end-to-end testing activities, implementation planning, and readiness assessments as appropriate.
Stakeholder and Organizational Leadership
- Build alignment and commitment among senior leaders, executives, and cross-functional teams to achieve strategic outcomes.
- Facilitate complex conversations and decision-making across organizations impacted by initiative delivery.
- Partner with business, operations, technology, and vendor teams to manage competing priorities, dependencies, and delivery risks.
- Influence key strategic decisions with long-term organizational impact, including technology investments, vendor selection, solution design, and operating model changes.
Financial and Resource Management
- Manage initiative budgets and financial forecasts, ensuring effective allocation of funding and resources.
- Oversee resource planning strategies across multiple teams and organizational boundaries.
- Monitor benefit realization and ensure initiatives deliver measurable business value and operational improvements.
Risk, Governance, and Regulatory Oversight
- Serve as the primary escalation point for complex, cross-functional risks, issues, and dependencies throughout the solution lifecycle.
- In partnership with Senior Technology Executives (STEs), Release Train Engineers (RTEs), and other leaders, ensure risks are effectively identified, mitigated, and managed.
- Verify compliance with legal, regulatory, security, operational, and organizational requirements.
- Ensure established governance practices, standards, controls, guidelines, and working agreements are consistently followed across teams.
- Facilitate Go/No-Go decision processes and confirm alignment with operational readiness plans.
Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence
- Lead efforts to improve operational efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability through process redesign and technology enablement.
- Foster innovation and continuous improvement in a fast-paced, high-volume, deadline-driven environment.
- Identify integration opportunities across business areas and promote strong partnerships that enhance organizational performance.
- Support the evolution of organizational capabilities, operating models, and talent development strategies to meet future business needs.
Scope and Impact
This position exercises significant influence over decisions with long-term strategic and operational implications, including technology architecture, vendor selection, process design, and service delivery models. Decisions made in this role may impact multiple departments, business divisions, advisors, branches, clients, and enterprise platforms. Given the scale and complexity of the initiatives led, ineffective decisions could have substantial operational, financial, regulatory, and reputational consequences.
The role operates with a high degree of autonomy and leadership responsibility and serves as a critical driver of Canada Operations' transformation agenda, supporting the organization's strategic objectives and long-term growth.
- 8-10 years of experience leading initiatives across one or more technical disciplines, including software engineering, technical program management, solution architecture, and large-scale technology implementations.
- Strong knowledge of Lean-Agile principles and practices, with experience applying frameworks and methodologies such as Scrum, Kanban, and Agile delivery approaches.
- Proven ability to lead and influence geographically dispersed, cross-functional teams comprised of leaders, associates, vendors, consulting partners, and SaaS providers, without direct management authority.
- Demonstrated domain expertise in financial services and related operational functions, including brokerage operations, wealth management, or similar business areas.
- Extensive experience leading mid-to-large scale platform conversions, implementations, and transformation initiatives.
- Expertise in planning and overseeing functional, non-functional, integration, and end-to-end testing for large-scale technology deployments.
- Strong understanding of software engineering, technology delivery, business processes, and system development lifecycles, enabling effective oversight, governance, and decision-making.
- Data-driven leadership approach with experience leveraging metrics and performance indicators to monitor delivery outcomes, quality, and business value. Experience as a software engineering leader is considered an asset.
- Experience utilizing enterprise portfolio, product, and delivery management tools such as Jira, Clarity, Aha!, and related platforms to track, manage, and measure value delivery from portfolio through product and team execution.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, communication, and influencing skills, with the ability to build alignment across business, operations, and technology organizations.
At Edward Jones, we are building a place where everyone feels like they belong. We're proud of our associates' contributions to the firm and the recognitions we have received.
Check out our U.S. awards and accolades: Insights & Information Blog Postings about Edward Jones
Check out our Canadian awards and accolades: Insights & Information Blog Postings about Edward Jones
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At Edward Jones, we value and respect our associates and their contributions, and we recognize individual efforts through a rewards program that promotes a long-term career, financial security and well-being. Visit our career site to learn more about our total compensation approach, which in addition to base salary, typically includes benefits, bonuses and profit sharing. The salary range for this role is based on national data and actual pay is based on skills, experience, education, and other relevant factors for a potential new associate.
