You are as unique as your background, experience and point of view. Here, you’ll be encouraged, empowered and challenged to be your best self. You'll work with dynamic colleagues - experts in their fields - who are eager to share their knowledge with you. Your leaders will inspire and help you reach your potential and soar to new heights. Every day, you'll have new and exciting opportunities to make life brighter for our Clients - who are at the heart of everything we do.
At Sun Life, we're driven by our Purpose: helping our Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Our values shape how we work: caring, authentic, bold, inspiring, and impactful.
When you join Sun Life, you'll work with passionate colleagues and empowering leaders who support your growth and celebrate your contributions, so you can make a meaningful difference in our Clients' lives.
Discover how you can make a difference in the lives of individuals, families and communities around the world.
Job Description:
About the role:
The AVP, Security Architecture is a senior leader accountable for the enterprise security architecture strategy, governance, and evolution of security capabilities across global business and technology environments.
The role translates business priorities, cyber risk appetite, and emerging threats into architecture direction that protects clients, employees, information, and critical services.
Working closely with the CISO, CTO, enterprise architects, and business technology leaders, the AVP leads the Security Architecture function and embeds secure-by-design, Zero Trust, and defense-in-depth principles into enterprise transformation and solution delivery.
The AVP serves as a senior security design authority within enterprise architecture governance, shapes security investment priorities, and develops a team that provides consistent architectural guidance across business units and geographies.
What You Will Do?
Key Responsibilities:
1. Enterprise Security Architecture Strategy and Road mapping
- Own the enterprise security architecture strategy and target state across identity, cloud, infrastructure, networks, endpoints, applications, data, and security platforms.
- Establish multi-year security capability roadmaps aligned with business priorities, enterprise architecture, the cybersecurity strategy, and organizational risk appetite.
- Translate capability assessments, threat trends, and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework into prioritized architecture improvements, with Zero Trust and defense in depth guiding modernization.
2. Security Architecture Function and People Leadership
- Lead and develop the Security Architecture team, with accountability for performance, coaching, succession planning, and the skills required to support enterprise priorities.
- Define the function's operating model, engagement processes, and service expectations, providing architecture coverage across security programs and business-led technology initiatives.
- Prioritize demand and allocate capacity across strategic planning, project assurance, governance, and emerging technology work; establish coverage and knowledge-sharing practices that reduce dependence on individual specialists.
- Manage the function's operating plan, assigned budget, and resources, and build business cases for additional capacity or specialist support.
3. Architecture Governance and Design Authority
- Establish security reference architectures, standards, reusable patterns, and guardrails in partnership with global domain architects and enterprise security policy owners.
- Serve as senior security design authority for significant initiatives within the enterprise architecture governance process, with clear decision rights and escalation paths.
- Represent Security Architecture on enterprise technology review boards, resolve cross-domain design issues, and oversee design assurance against approved security requirements.
- Oversee recommendations for architectural exceptions, compensating controls, and remediation plans; escalate material residual risks to accountable business and risk owners through established governance.
4. Secure Solution Design and Transformation Oversight
- Provide security architecture oversight for major business and technology initiatives from early planning through implementation, with review effort proportionate to risk and complexity.
- Embed threat modelling, secure design reviews, and reusable security patterns into delivery practices, partnering with application, data, infrastructure, cloud, and engineering teams.
- Lead architectural direction for security transformation programs, including identity modernization, cloud security, network segmentation, application security, data protection, and cyber recovery.
5. Security Capability Portfolio and Investment Leadership
- Direct the strategic evolution, integration, consolidation, and retirement of security tools, services, and capabilities to address enterprise needs and reduce fragmentation.
- Shape investment priorities and present business cases that assess risk reduction, control coverage, technical feasibility, interoperability, operational capacity, and total cost of ownership.
- Maintain an enterprise view of capability gaps, overlapping technologies, lifecycle risks, and technical debt; partner with engineering, operations, procurement, and vendor management to turn roadmaps into achievable investment and delivery plans.
6. Technology Evaluation and AI Security
- Evaluate emerging security technologies, vendor capabilities, and service models, providing recommendations on suitability, integration, scalability, and long-term viability.
- Sponsor proofs of concept with clear success criteria for security effectiveness, technical compatibility, operational readiness, and business value.
- Define security architecture requirements and patterns for AI platforms, generative AI, and autonomous agents, addressing identity, data access, tool permissions, monitoring, and human oversight.
- Identify opportunities to use automation and AI within security capabilities, working with responsible teams to validate benefits, control effectiveness, and operational accountability.
7. Architectural Risk and Resilience
- Identify systemic security architecture weaknesses and drive mitigation roadmaps with accountable engineering, platform, and business technology owners.
- Translate security, privacy, regulatory, and data residency requirements into architecture requirements in partnership with Risk, Compliance, Privacy, and Legal.
- Integrate requirements for resilience, ransomware containment, recovery, logging, and monitoring into security designs, working with operational owners to establish implementation and validation expectations.
- Use findings from incidents, security testing, audits, and control assessments to improve reference architectures, patterns, and capability roadmaps.
8. Executive Engagement and Enterprise Partnership
- Act as a trusted advisor to the Global Chief Enterprise Architect, CISO, CTO, CIO, and business technology leaders on security architecture strategy and significant technology decisions.
- Translate complex architecture choices into clear business implications, investment options, delivery dependencies, and risk treatment recommendations for executive forums.
- Build alignment across global business units and technology functions, resolve competing priorities, and report on architecture coverage, adoption, roadmap progress, and outcomes.
What Do You Need to Succeed?
Qualifications Required:
- University degree or college diploma in cybersecurity, computer science, information technology, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
- 15+ years of progressive experience in cybersecurity architecture, engineering, or related technology leadership roles, including accountability for enterprise security architecture strategy.
- Demonstrated experience leading and developing architecture or security teams, managing priorities and resources, and delivering outcomes in a complex, matrixed organization.
- Experience influencing VP and SVP stakeholders and presenting architecture strategies, investment recommendations, and risk decisions at executive forums.
- Strong knowledge across identity and access management, cloud, infrastructure, network, endpoint, application, API, and data security, including cryptography and secrets management.
- Demonstrated ability to establish enterprise architecture standards, reference patterns, governance processes, and multi-year security capability roadmaps.
- Practical understanding of Zero Trust, defense in depth, threat modelling, secure development, and frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
- Experience modernizing security platforms and evaluating vendors or third-party services for technical feasibility, integration, control effectiveness, and total cost of ownership.
- Excellent communication, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills, with the judgment to balance security, business value, delivery constraints, and operational sustainability.
Preferred skills:
- Experience in financial services or another regulated industry with global operations and complex privacy or data residency requirements.
- Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, or Alibaba Cloud.
- Experience defining security architectures for AI, autonomous agents, automation, or other emerging technologies.
- Experience with major security transformations, technology rationalization, or mergers and acquisitions integration.
- Relevant professional certifications, such as CISSP, CISM, SABSA, TOGAF, or cloud security and architecture certifications.
Key Outcomes and Measures of Success:
- Enterprise direction: Approved security target states and prioritized roadmaps aligned with business needs and the cybersecurity strategy.
- Architecture coverage: Timely engagement on significant initiatives across business units, with consistent service coverage and review turnaround.
- Secure delivery: Greater use of approved patterns and earlier resolution of design weaknesses, reducing avoidable rework and exceptions.
- Risk treatment: Progress against remediation plans for material architectural weaknesses and timely escalation of unresolved risks.
- Portfolio effectiveness: Reduced capability duplication and technical debt, supported by documented control improvements and lifecycle cost benefits.
- Team capability: Improved skills, succession readiness, knowledge sharing, and capacity to support strategic and delivery priorities.
- Executive confidence: Clear investment recommendations, transparent reporting, and alignment among security, enterprise architecture, and business leaders.
Unique Requirements:
As this position is posted in several locations, we specify that bilingualism (French, English, both oral and written) is required for Quebec only for the frequent interactions with English and French-speaking colleagues or internal partners across Canada or worldwide.
What’s in it for you?
- Being a member of the Sun Life family, a group of people united by our Purpose: to help Clients and Employees achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives.
- An environment of continuous learning, development, and improvement.
- As a hybrid organization, you and your leader use business and Client need to choose where you work, at home or in the office.
- A competitive salary and bonus program, based on market scale and a flexible group insurance program starting on your first day of work to meet your needs and those of your family.
- We are proud to be included in Great Place to Work's 2026 list of Canada's Best Workplaces.
Application Information:
Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may email a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.
We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. All internal candidates will be contacted regarding the status of their application. If you have any questions, please contact your Recruiting Consultant.
The Base Pay range is for the primary location for which the job is posted. It may vary depending on the work location of the successful candidate or other factors. In addition to Base Pay, eligible Sun Life employees participate in various incentive plans, payment under which is discretionary and subject to individual and company performance. Certain sales focused roles have sales incentive plans based on individual or group sales results.
Diversity and inclusion have always been at the core of our values at Sun Life. A diverse workforce with wide perspectives and creative ideas benefits our Clients, the communities where we operate and all of us as colleagues. We welcome applications from qualified individuals from all backgrounds.
Persons with disabilities who need accommodation in the application process, or those needing job postings in an alternative format, may e-mail a request to thebrightside@sunlife.com.
We are proud to be a hybrid organization that offers our employees the choice and flexibility to work from both the office and virtually based on the needs of the business, our Clients and you.
We may use artificial intelligence to support candidate sourcing, screening, interview scheduling.
We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
Salary Range:
165,000/165 000 - 235,000/235 000
Job Category:
IT - Application Development
Posting End Date:
27/11/2026
