Purpose Unlimited is an independent financial services company with an unrelenting focus on customer-centric innovation, delivered through technology-driven solutions. Led by entrepreneur Som Seif, the company is developing a diversified product platform aimed at addressing historically underserved segments of the market. Purpose Unlimited’s businesses include Purpose Investments, Advisor Solutions by Purpose, and Driven.
Vacancy Status: This is for a current opening.
Responsibilities: What you will do
Data is the foundation every AI system at Purpose is built on. This role owns that
foundation.
You will join a high-output engineering team and operate at the senior end of that bar, owning the pipelines, data models, and platform infrastructure that data scientists, analysts, AI systems, and downstream products depend on for decisions that move real money and shape real client outcomes. Your output isnât a dashboard or a model. Itâs the layer of trust everything else stands on. Purpose Unlimited is building the infrastructure for a new kind of financial services firm, one where AI and human judgment operate in combination, and where data quality is not a nice-to-have but a competitive asset. This role is central to that bet.
Youâll work closely with data scientists, software engineers, and product teams to understand what data is needed, where it lives, and how to make it accurate, observable, and durable at scale, including the data pipelines that feed our AI systems and the products our advisors and clients will rely on.
We use Object Process Modeling (OPM) for system mapping and Figures-of-merit (FOMs) as our measurement layer. You donât need to be a process mapping expert. You do need to think in systems, understanding how data flows, where it degrades, and how platform decisions made today constrain what AI systems can do tomorrow.
What you’ll own
• Reliable data infrastructure: pipelines, models, and serving layers – built in Airflow, Python, SQL, and dbt on Snowflake – that ingest, transform, and deliver data across operational systems (CRM, financial platforms, custodial and Book-of-Record sources, event streams) and the external advisor ecosystem we integrate with. Accurate, observable, and production-grade. When something breaks downstream, you trace it to the source.
• Scalable data systems and data products: governed, reusable datasets and interfaces that other teams, tools, and partners build on – designed to hold up as data volume, sources, and consumers grow.
• A governed data model: dimensional models, semantic layers, and governed datasets that are self-service-ready, version-controlled, and trustworthy enough that analysts and the BI layer (Sigma) can build on them without second-guessing the numbers.
• Compliance-critical correctness: reconciliation, money-movement monitoring, and Book-of-Record integrity – where a false positive wastes the team’s time and a false negative is a real risk. You design for that error asymmetry deliberately rather than treating every failure as equal.
• Ecosystem integration that scales: the data plane connecting Purpose to third-party advisor tools, built on reusable patterns so each new integration costs less than the last rather than becoming another bespoke one-off.
• Data quality end-to-end: validation, monitoring, and observability that catch issues at the source before they reach a dashboard or a client-facing decision. Incidents are rare; when they occur, root cause is identified and remediated at the model layer, not masked downstream.
• Platform governance: warehouse configuration, orchestration, compute optimization, access controls, and cost management – evolving as Purpose’s data investments grow. You set the standard for what AI-assisted code looks like before it enters the production stack.
• Engineering discipline as default: version control, CI/CD, testing, documentation, and code review are not additions to the role, they are the role. This applies equally to human- authored and AI-generated code.
• Backend where data meets the ecosystem (secondary): where the work calls for it, the services and APIs (e.g. Django) that expose integration and compliance data to internal teams and partner tools. A plus, not a requirement – the core of this role is data.
What AI does, and what only you can do
AI tools handle a growing share of the mechanical work here â scaffolding pipelines and dbt models, drafting first-pass data-quality checks and documentation, and triaging routine incidents. You use them fluently, as a multiplier, not a novelty.
What stays yours is the judgment: designing data architecture trustworthy enough to drive decisions in a regulated environment, where a broken pipeline isnât an inconvenience but a compliance event; holding the line on data quality when everyone wants to ship faster, and tracing failures to root cause instead of patching symptoms; governing AI-generated code and setting the standard for whatâs production-safe at Purpose; and building the institutional trust that makes people say âI can rely on this numberâ and mean it.
Qualifications: What you will bring
- Deep fluency in SQL and Python, designing and maintaining complex transformation logic at scale, with production-grade testing and documentation standards.
- Hands-on experience building and operating production data pipelines using modern tooling: dbt, Airflow or equivalent orchestration, and at least one cloud data warehouse (Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift).
- Strong data modeling foundations â dimensional modeling, slowly changing dimensions, schema design that balances flexibility with query performance.
- Meaningful experience in a regulated industry (financial services, healthcare, or equivalent) - you understand what SOC 2 or ISO 27001 compliance means for how pipelines are built, accessed, audited, and controlled.
What will set you apart
- Experience governing or reviewing AI-assisted code in a production data environment â youâve thought carefully about what makes AI-generated pipeline logic safe to deploy.
- Strong opinions about data contracts and how to formalize interfaces between upstream systems and the data platform.
- A track record of raising the data quality bar on an existing team, not just building from a blank page, but inheriting a system and improving its reliability and trustworthiness.
- Youâve used AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or equivalent) as a genuine productivity multiplier, not just experimented with them.
Our Values
Every role at Purpose is assessed against our five values:
• Innovation – You bring new ideas, challenge the status quo, and find better ways of building. You don’t wait for permission to experiment.
• Courage – You speak up when something isn’t working, take difficult stands on technical quality, and act with conviction even when it’s uncomfortable.
• Owner’s Mindset – You take full accountability for your squad’s outcomes. You treat the platform, the team, and the business as your own.
• Client Focus – You place client outcomes at the center of every architectural and delivery decision.
• Winning Through Individual and Collective Growth – You invest in your own development and actively contribute to the growth of every engineer around you.
Why should you join us?
- We are one of Canada's Top Small & Medium Employers' 2023 & 2024.
- We believe in innovation and a vibrant culture - work for an innovative, people-first, financial services firm that values entrepreneurialism.
- We believe in a flexible work structure – A flexible hybrid work model that empowers you to do your best work whether at home or the office.
- We care about your rewards - Competitive compensation including equity program.
- We care about your health – comprehensive group health and dental benefits and life insurance at little to no cost to you. We also offer a Lifestyle Spending Account for all your wellness needs.
- We care about your quality of life - a flexible paid time-off policy covering vacation, sick, and mental health days.
- We care about your family - Paid parental leave for eligible employees with a top-up.
- We care about your future – Generous Group RRSP matching and an optional TFSA program.
- We care about your development – We offer training opportunities and tuition support year-round.
Purpose Unlimited is an equal opportunity employer and we are dedicated to fostering an inclusive and barrier-free work environment for all employees and candidates. We encourage all qualified candidates to apply and if accommodation is required during any stage of the recruitment process, please contact any member of the People & Culture team at [email protected]. We thank all applicants for their interest; however, only those selected for interviews will be contacted.
Our work philosophy is a hybrid model allowing for flexibility and collaboration. Applicants must be legally entitled to work in Canada. Immigration sponsorship is not offered for this role.
We may use artificial intelligence technology to assist in screening, assessing, or selecting applicants for this position. Final hiring decisions are made by qualified human reviewers.
