Job Description

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You can be your best here. You’re part of a diverse and inclusive workplace where your career and well-being are championed. You’ll have the opportunity to excel in your way, finding new and better ways to deliver exceptional customer and advisor experiences.


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Be your best at Canada Life.

We are looking for a AVP, Quality and Testing Engineering – Canadian Technology

Given the size and scope of our organization, we have the flexibility for this position to be located in the following head office locations: Toronto, London, Winnipeg.
Our Canadian Technology group is looking to hire an Assistant Vice-President, Quality and Testing Engineering Leader who will report to the Senior Vice President Technology Enablement Platform. This role acts as the most senior Leader in the Quality space and will build and maintain a modern quality process focused on automation, modernization and optimization.
The AVP is accountable to enable business strategy through the development and delivery of a framework that uplifts testing and moves to a modern approach to deliver quality. The AVP contributes to business strategies and sets the technology strategy and culture in the unit. Role is accountable for all aspects of testing/quality strategy: leading matrix teams, driving new solutions to reduce the time and cost of testing, develop robust automation strategies for regression, security and performance testing, design and manage a remote workforce, and collaborate with delivery teams. This role will work heavily with all IT teams within CanTech and Digital to build and deploy one service that can be leveraged enterprise wide.

The AVP – Quality and Testing Engineering will demonstrate all leadership traits as defined in our Leadership Capability model. For Strategy the incumbent will have an outward focus and drive innovation. On the People Capabilities the AVP will be developing talent from hire to retire and will be the crucial influencer and adopter of building collaborative partnerships. In the category of performance, the AVP will execute for results and will lead the organization forward in results

To be successful the AVP – Quality and Testing Engineering should have exceptional leadership, communication and management skills and a strong result-oriented approach. The AVP will have experience in identifying and driving organizational changes, a keen interest in trends in digital and cloud.

What you will do

• Be responsible for the application Quality and Testing roadmap, including offshoring, masking, and automation
• Review the existing portfolio of quality assurance services and solutions across the enterprise and formulate strategies that provide opportunities for consistency, velocity optimization, and automation
• Collaborate cross functionally with various business units and technology teams, on delivering improvements in testing execution and common reusable components
• Create and manage a robust on-shore and off-shore practice that covers all environments and drives cost reduction and scale
• Conduct research of services in the industry and with vendors to determine if improvements can be made to Quality Assurance services
• Drive a high-performance culture for staff and promote culture changes within the organization
• Build strong and trusted relationships with internal and external partners i.e. third party vendors where applicable
• Manage risk and compliance in accordance with Canadian or Global standards. Ensure alignment / adherence to Enterprise technology standards, vendor management standards, and risk standards.
• Focus on continuous learning and professional development
• Drive an agile mindset within the team that measures progress over perfection
• Identify and invest in opportunities (processes, training, systems) to enhance individual and team effectiveness
• Contribute to the success of Business strategy by building practices and processes that increase quality of delivery

• Ability to flex between and be comfortable with influencing, advising, and collaboration
• Inspires a vision that adapts to new realities, articulating meaningful expectations and creating clear pathways to desired outcomes
• Ability to provide insight into the relationship between technology and business strategy
• Ability to use knowledge of industry, business and systems to solve business problems
• Strong understanding of business unit people, products and processes
• Strong communication and relationship building skills
• Using credibility and trusted advice, fosters collaboration
• Promotes innovation with customer centric outward thinking
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and flexibility of approach
• Drives results and changes processes to improve performance; creates a culture of accountability
• Assesses issues and provides strategic direction; devises tactical solutions to iteratively advance strategies
• Technology and systems expertise
• Attracts, motivates, and develops talent to build the right team
• Ability to manage and challenge vendor relationships to meet quality, cost, and performance goals
• Understanding of internal economy and financial processes
• Ability to oversee and manage budgets

• 10+ years’ experience in an quality/technology leadership position
• 10+ years experiences with Quality Assurance processes, practices, and tools for large scale organizations
• Experience working in financial services or a comparable industry at similar size, scale, and complexity
• Experience leading through transformations
• Experience with technology vendor relationship management
• Agile delivery experience
• Understands how emerging technologies and service providers can be utilized to improve our offering or operational efficiency
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and with flexibility of approach
• Has a strong appreciation for the complex and ever-changing regulatory environment and the need to be ahead of regulations
• Strong knowledge of industry, business, and systems to solve business problems and maximize business performance