Director, Analytics & Insights
Department: Technology
Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time
Location: Waterloo, ON
Compensation: CA$130,000 - CA$170,000 / year
Description
What we do every day to be our very best
Every day at Securian Canada means a day spent helping Canadians and their families build secure tomorrows. We’re agile and innovative, and we aren't afraid to challenge and create, or bring diverse perspectives to our work.
Who we need
As our Director, Analytics & Insights, you'll help shape how data drives decisions across Securian Canada.
We're looking for a leader who sees beyond dashboards and reports. Someone who is energized by complex business challenges, naturally curious about what drives performance, and passionate about transforming data into meaningful business outcomes. You'll play a pivotal role in building and evolving an enterprise analytics capability that empowers leaders with trusted insights, scalable analytics products, modern business intelligence, and practical AI-enabled solutions.
Reporting to the AVP, Data Solutions, you'll lead a multidisciplinary team responsible for Analytics & Insights, Business Intelligence, and Analytics Engineering. Working across business and technology teams, you'll help create a shared understanding of customers, products, markets, financial performance, and organizational priorities, enabling smarter decisions at every level of the organization.
This opportunity is ideal for someone who enjoys balancing strategic thinking with hands-on leadership. You'll influence enterprise priorities, guide complex analytical initiatives, challenge assumptions, and help leaders translate insights into action.
The leader we're looking for combines strong business judgment with technical depth. You start with the decision that needs to be made, not the tool that will be used. You understand that data and analytics are strategic business assets and know how to balance immediate business needs with scalable enterprise solutions. You're pragmatic, collaborative, governance-minded, and skilled at translating complex analytical concepts into compelling business narratives that drive action.
Most importantly, you're passionate about building high-performing teams, developing talent, fostering collaboration, and creating an environment where people can do their best work while making a meaningful impact.
At Securian Canada, analytics is about more than understanding what happened. It's about helping people make better decisions that support our mission of helping Canadians and their families build secure tomorrows. You'll join a team of talented professionals who are committed to innovation, continuous improvement, and creating solutions that make a real difference across our business.
The base salary range for this position is between $130,000 to $170,000 depending on experience. Details of our additional benefits are outlined below. This job posting is for an existing vacancy. Only one position is available. However, it may be based in multiple locations: Toronto (ON), or Waterloo (ON), or Montreal (QC).
What you will do
- Define and execute an analytics and insights roadmap aligned with enterprise, market, customer, and partner priorities.
- Transform strategic business questions into actionable analytical opportunities, KPI frameworks, data requirements, and decision-support solutions.
- Deliver meaningful insights into business performance, customer behaviour, claims experience, product results, portfolio trends, operational effectiveness, and emerging risks.
- Translate complex findings into clear recommendations and executive-ready narratives that drive informed decision-making.
- Establish scalable practices that improve prioritization, delivery, adoption, value realization, and continuous improvement.
- Lead the evolution from fragmented reporting toward trusted, enterprise-scale analytics products.
- Oversee the development of curated datasets, semantic models, certified metrics, dashboards, scorecards, and client-facing reporting solutions.
- Partner with Data Pipeline Engineering, Technology, Governance, Finance, and business leaders to strengthen analytics foundations and support critical business priorities.
- Improve self-service analytics capabilities while reducing manual effort, duplicated logic, and disconnected solutions.
- Ensure analytics products are scalable, reliable, understandable, and centered around real business decisions.
- Identify practical opportunities where advanced analytics, machine learning, predictive modeling, and AI can create measurable business value.
- Prioritize initiatives based on business impact, data readiness, adoption potential, and long-term sustainability.
- Establish governance, controls, explainability, data quality standards, and operating requirements needed to support responsible AI and advanced analytics.
- Guide innovative solutions from ideation through implementation, ensuring clear ownership, measurable outcomes, and long-term success.
- Lead, coach, and inspire a team of professionals across analytics, insights, business intelligence, reporting, and analytics engineering.
- Foster a culture focused on analytical excellence, collaboration, accountability, continuous learning, and business partnership.
- Provide guidance on analytical problem solving, data-product design, storytelling, and stakeholder engagement.
- Help team members grow beyond traditional reporting by strengthening skills in problem framing, root-cause analysis, insight generation, and strategic recommendations.
- Create an environment where innovation, curiosity, and measurable business outcomes are valued and celebrated.
- Serve as a trusted advisor to senior leaders, helping connect business priorities to data-driven solutions.
- Build strong relationships across Data Solutions, Technology, Finance, Operations, and business teams.
- Influence decision-making by bringing clarity, insight, and strategic perspective to complex challenges.
- Champion a data-informed culture that increases confidence, consistency, and trust in organizational decision-making.
What you will bring
- University degree in Analytics, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering, Economics, Business, or a related quantitative discipline.
-
10+ years of progressive experience in analytics, business intelligence, analytics engineering, data science, decision support, or related fields, including leadership responsibilities.
- Demonstrated success building, transforming, or significantly advancing enterprise analytics capabilities within a complex organization.
- Strong experience translating ambiguous business challenges into actionable analytical solutions, meaningful insights, and measurable outcomes.
- Deep expertise in SQL, Python, analytical data modeling, business intelligence platforms, and modern cloud data environments.
- Experience developing scalable analytical datasets, curated data products, KPI frameworks, semantic models, and enterprise reporting solutions.
- Strong understanding of modern data ecosystems, from source systems and data engineering through analytics delivery and business consumption.
- Experience applying advanced analytics, machine learning, predictive modeling, or AI-enabled solutions to business challenges.
- Proven ability to influence executive stakeholders while effectively leading highly technical teams.
- Strong leadership capabilities with experience building, mentoring, and developing high-performing teams.
- Experience within insurance, financial services, or another regulated industry is considered an asset.
- Experience with cloud data warehouses, lakehouse architectures, and modern self-service BI platforms.
- Knowledge of responsible AI practices, model governance, data quality, lineage, explainability, and operational controls.
-
Exceptional communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to simplify complexity and inspire action through data.
- A strategic and product-oriented mindset focused on delivering sustainable, scalable solutions that create long-term business value.
Why join?
When you’re a part of Securian Canada, you’re a member of an agile and innovative, high-performing, bright-thinking, make-things-happen culture – so that together, we can discover the art of possible.
At our company, we see your potential on day one and challenge you to grow your unique strengths as you create a career filled with opportunity, collaboration, and purpose.
You’ll also be part of a team that’s committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and who values diverse perspectives, so that you can be the person you want to be – both in, and outside, work.
Securian Canada offers a competitive total rewards program with a variety of perks and benefits, including:
-
Flexible work arrangements with monthly financial allocations to support your work-life balance;
-
Generous starting paid vacation time, plus additional vacation days for every year of service;
- Paid volunteer day so you can dedicate time to a cause you are passionate about;
- Paid personal and wellness days to support your total wellbeing;
- Educational assistance of up to $3,500 a year (with approval from your manager);
- Flexible health and wellness account (in addition to comprehensive drug and dental coverage) to help pay for a wide range of wellbeing services that are meaningful to you;
-
Up to 14% of combined contributions to the RRSP matching program;
-
Family-friendly maternity/parental leave and,
- Many more benefits, perks and programs.
If you have at least 70% of the qualifications we're looking for, want to work in a fast-growing, leading and progressive company, and feel driven to help Canadians and their families build secure futures – we want to hear from you!
Take the first step in building your future with Securian Canada. Apply now.
Securian Canada is committed to providing a barrier-free work environment and equal access to employment for all qualified applicants. As such, upon request, Securian Canada will work with applicants that require reasonable accommodations during the recruitment process. Please contact careers@securiancanada.ca for accommodation requests. All information shared during any accommodation request process will be stored and used only in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Securian Canada/Canadian Premier Life Insurance Company policies.
