AVP, Agentic Development

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:

Job Description

About the role:

Reporting to the VP, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, the AVP, Agentic Development leads the enterprise organization responsible for agentic AI strategy, engineering, platforms and adoption. The role sets direction and is accountable for the organization’s operating model, talent, investment, delivery and performance, ensuring teams translate enterprise priorities into secure, reliable and reusable capabilities that improve how employees serve Clients and operate the business.

This leader combines deep technical judgment with enterprise and people leadership. They build and develop a high-performing organization of leaders and technical professionals, establish the model for human-agent collaboration, and partner across Technology, Data and Analytics, Product, Design, Cybersecurity, Privacy, Legal, Compliance, Risk and business teams to scale responsible AI and measurable business value.

The role leads with Purpose, develops people and elevates performance by creating clarity through change and strengthening a human-led, Client-focused culture.

What Will You Do?

Responsibilities

• Lead the agentic development organization, including organization design, leadership accountabilities, workforce and succession planning, talent acquisition and development, culture, financial stewardship and vendor performance.
• Define and execute the multi-year agentic AI strategy, roadmap and investment portfolio, translating enterprise priorities into clear choices that balance value, risk, cost, speed, reliability and technical debt.
• Set technical direction and engineering standards for agent frameworks, orchestration, planning, tool use, memory, retrieval and grounding, model gateways, evaluation, observability, safety controls and secure enterprise integration.
• Oversee the end-to-end delivery and operation of scalable, production-grade agentic and generative AI platforms and solutions.
• Establish a human-first operating model that defines agent roles, autonomy boundaries, tool and data access, escalation paths and oversight, and leads the workflow, role and change enablement required for sustained adoption.
• Embed responsible AI, privacy, security, data governance, auditability, explainability and human oversight into architecture, delivery and operations in partnership with control functions and business leaders.
• Identify and prioritize high-value opportunities, create reusable patterns and standards, and measure adoption, trust, productivity, quality, Client and employee experience, risk reduction and business value.
• Advise senior executives on AI capabilities, platform and build-versus-buy choices, investment, capacity and risk, and provide clear reporting on organizational capability, delivery health and outcomes.
  
  

What Do You Need to Succeed?

Qualifications

• Progressive senior leadership experience across software engineering, AI/ML, data, product or platform organizations, including leading leaders and multidisciplinary technical organizations.
• Demonstrated success setting strategy and leading complex, cross-functional technology portfolios or platforms from concept through production, adoption and ongoing operation.
• Deep experience with large language model systems, agentic workflows, advanced ML infrastructure or enterprise AI platforms, including orchestration, tool use, memory, retrieval, evaluation, observability and guardrails.
• Experience operating in a large, matrixed enterprise, influencing senior stakeholders and leading organizational change across business and technology boundaries.
• Experience with organization design, talent and succession, workforce and financial planning, vendors, risk, build-versus-buy decisions and total cost of ownership.
• University degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
  
  

Preferred Skills

• Experience in financial services or another regulated industry; an advanced degree or complementary business education is an asset.
• Broad technical judgment across agentic AI, distributed systems, APIs, data pipelines, cloud infrastructure, identity, security and production operations, with the discipline to choose the simplest effective approach.
• Strong grounding in responsible AI, data governance, privacy, cybersecurity, model risk, auditability, human oversight and regulatory expectations.
• Ability to connect technology and organization strategy to Client, employee, operational and financial outcomes and communicate decisions and trade-offs in terms executives can act on.
• Executive presence and strong communication, facilitation and influencing skills, with the ability to align diverse teams, lead through ambiguity and mobilize change.
• A builder and people leader who creates clarity, raises organizational capability and moves from strategy to measurable delivery.
  
  

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.
  
  

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:

11/11/2026