Senior DevOps Engineering Lead

About Canada Life

Canada Life is seeking a Senior DevOps Engineering Lead to provide technical and people leadership for a DevOps engineering team, advancing our DevOps transformation by improving how software is built, deployed, and operated across the enterprise.

What you will do

Technical Leadership & Strategy

• Provide technical direction and leadership for DevOps and platform engineering initiatives.
• Advance the DevOps transformation through modern engineering practices, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with Architecture, Platform, Product, Security, SRE, and Application teams to align DevOps solutions with enterprise standards and technology direction.
• Act as a senior technical escalation point for complex platform, CI/CD, and operational issues.

People Leadership

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of DevOps engineers.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high‑forming team culture.
• Provide guidance on technical growth, best practices, and career development.
• Support workload planning and prioritization to balance delivery, transformation, and operational responsibilities.

CI/CD & Platform Engineering

• Lead CI/CD platform strategy and delivery (standards, reusable pipelines, and enablement), primarily using GitLab.
• Enable containerized and cloud‑native delivery with secure, scalable patterns (e.g., Kubernetes/EKS).
• Enable backend‑for‑frontend (BFF) and API‑based architectures with reliable deployment and operational patterns.

Cloud & Infrastructure

• Provide leadership across AWS and GCP, focusing on reliability, scalability, and cost effectiveness.
• Drive infrastructure automation and configuration management using tools such as Ansible and Infrastructure‑as‑Code.
• Collaborate with infrastructure and cloud partners to ensure secure, compliant, and efficient environments.
• Support certificate lifecycle management and secure connectivity as part of platform operations.

Observability, Reliability & Operations

• Champion observability practices, including monitoring, logging, and alerting.
• Support incident analysis, root cause investigation, and preventive actions.
• Ensure DevOps practices support availability, resilience, and operational readiness.

Application Platform Enablement

• Partner with Platform Engineering to enable DevOps practices for platforms such as AEM and Salesforce, especially CI/CD, environment management, and release processes.
• Collaborate with application teams to modernize delivery while respecting platform‑specific constraints.

What You Will Bring

Education & Experience

• Post‑secondary degree or diploma in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 8+ years of experience in DevOps, DevSecOps, Cloud Engineering, or Platform Engineering roles.
• Prior experience as an application developer is strongly preferred, with a solid understanding of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• Experience leading or mentoring technical teams in an enterprise environment.
• Experience working in large, complex organizations; Insurance or financial services experience is an asset.

Technical Skills

• Strong experience with container platforms (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, Amazon EKS).
• Proven expertise in CI/CD (particularly GitLab) and pipeline engineering.
• Hands‑on experience with AWS, including cost optimization considerations.
• Experience with Infrastructure‑as‑Code and automation (e.g., Terraform, Ansible).
• Working knowledge of observability (monitoring, logging, alerting) and related tools.
• Understanding of DevSecOps practices and secure software delivery.
• Familiarity with authentication and integration patterns (e.g., SAML, OAuth, JWT).
• Automation‑first mindset focused on reducing manual effort and improving developer experience.
• Experience leading DevOps or platform transformations (not only operating existing tools).
• Strong understanding of cloud cost management and optimization.
• Cloud or DevOps certifications (AWS, Kubernetes, or similar).
• Experience standardizing and scaling observability practices across teams (e.g., Splunk, Dynatrace).
• Experience supporting AEM and Salesforce delivery pipelines is an asset.

Professional Skills

• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Ability to influence and collaborate across teams without direct authority.
• Comfortable balancing hands‑on technical work with leadership responsibilities.
• Experience using Agile delivery tools such as Jira and Confluence.

Operational Requirements

• Willingness to work in a 24/7 operational environment, including occasional on‑call rotation based on business needs.

Compensation

The base salary for this position is between $95,000.00 - $133,000.00 annually. This represents base salary only and does not represent other variable compensation components of our total compensation (i.e. annual bonus, commission, etc). If you are selected to move forward in our recruitment process, your recruiter will be able to discuss additional details of our total rewards program with you.

What we offer

• Career Development: Opportunities for career advancement, access to industry‑leading learning programs and up to $2,000 annually towards education reimbursement.
• Health & Wellness: Flexible health and dental benefits, plus a $5,000 mental health benefit to support your well‑being.
• Time Off: In addition to regular vacation and personal days, we support community involvement with a volunteer day.
• Financial Security: Company‑matching pension plan, share ownership program and additional investment options.
• Rewards and Recognition: Employee recognition programs, service milestone celebrations, employee discounts and more!
• Emphasis on Community: We provide a workplace where employees feel connected and supported through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), mentorship programs, social clubs and events.

We’re committed to removing barriers and ensuring equal access to employment. Applicants requiring reasonable accommodation during the application process may contact All information provided will be handled in accordance with applicable laws and Canada Life policies.

Canada Life would like to thank all applicants; however, only those who qualify for an interview will be contacted.