City : Ottawa

Category : IT

Industry : Banking/Financial

Employer : Bank of Canada

Data Architect

Take a central role

The Bank of Canada has a vision to be a leading central bank—dynamic, engaged and trusted—committed to a better Canada. No other employer in the country offers you the unique opportunity to work at the very center of Canada’s economy, in an organization with significant impact on the economic and financial well-being of all Canadians. You will be challenged, energized and motivated to excel in our environment. 

Building on the principles that have always guided us – excellence, integrity and respect – we strive to be forward-looking and innovative, to welcome people with diverse perspectives and talents, and to earn trust by living up to our commitments and by clearly explaining the intent of our policies and actions.  

With our defined-benefit pension plan, benefits, and high flexibility for work life balance - find out more about why we are annually ranked as one of Canada's top employers:  Working Here - Bank of Canada

Find out more about the next steps in our Recruitment process. 

What you will do
We are currently looking for a solutions-oriented Data Architect with strong functional knowledge and hands on mindset to join the Data Delivery Portfolio (DDP) Portfolio in the Information Technology Services (ITS) Department. You will provide technical leadership and guide the development team to build resilient data solutions while working with structured and unstructured datasets, diving into MLOps, responsible to create a blueprints of data infrastructure, build data flow diagrams, and offer a tech stack that will support our long-term strategy and make data bring the business value needed to support the Bank of Canada’s mandate. This is an excellent opportunity if you are looking to make a big impact on a very challenging problem.

You Are: 

Someone who wants to be part of building something with great visibility across the organization and endless possibilities ahead as we continue to grow and scale.

A person who wants to help others develop and learn from your experience.

You have experience with data as a product, and the systems that produce and underpin those products including data lakes, data pipelines, governance, and analytics. You can fine tune for viability, performance, scalability, and resilience. You have direct experience and insights into the benefits and downsides of different data storage and transformation technologies and governance.

You love to get hands on and prove it with code. You know that there is a big difference between thinking that our architecture works and knowing that it does. 

More specifically you will:

• Use your knowledge and experience to show how new ideas or strategies can work in real life
• Help define service levels and commitments with inputs from clients, product owners, and development team to deliver data-driven experiences
• Monitor and maintain the system health by completing regular tests, troubleshooting, and responding to problems in a timely manner.
• Provide technical inputs to agile processes, such as epic, story, and task definition to resolve issues and remove barriers throughout the lifecycle of client engagements
• Support the ongoing shift towards our CI/CD environment using tools such as GitHub
• Review and guide data model designs with a focus on enabling broad data sharing and user empowerment
• Analyze the current data architecture to identify deficiencies and opportunities for improvement
• Create architecture that is a pattern that others can follow to create and improve data systems
• Define data flows, i.e., which parts of the organization generate data, which require data to function, how data flows are managed, and how data changes in transition
• Work as part of the portfolio-wide Architecture team to ensure consistency and efficiency 
• Collaborate and communicate with and support product managers to architect operations, resiliency, business continuity, performance, scale, cost optimization, development efficiency and security.

You will need

• Practical experience in enterprise level data platforms involving implementation of end-to-end data pipelines in a Disciplined Agile and DevSecOps environment
• Experience with column-oriented database technologies (e.g., Synapse), NoSQL database technologies (e.g., DynamoDB, Cosmos DB, etc.) and traditional database systems (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL)
• Solid understanding of ETL strategies and design, (staging environments, data transformation, change data capture, slowly changing dimensions, etc.), with an eye toward delivering functional and valuable solutions in a timely manner.
• Test plan creation and test programming using automated testing frameworks, data validation and quality frameworks, and data lineage frameworks
• You get fired up to … Data modeling, querying, and optimization for relational, NoSQL, timeseries, graph databases, data warehouses and data lakes
• working with business stakeholders to understand their requirements, and design data solution to meet requirements
• Work experience with or in:
  • establishing the foundation components of data architecture to support operational and analytic data pipelines solutions, including the development and application of enterprise standards for data modelling, data architecture principles and best practices for transactional and data warehouse designs
  • data modelling and query tools, 
  • working in Agile Teams, ability to explore new data technology and trends

Nice-to-have 

• Willingness to apply your skills in Azure Cognitive Services, Azure PaaS, and Machine Learning services.
• Experience in architecting data pipelines and solutions for both streaming and batch integrations using tools/frameworks like Azure Data Factory, Data Bricks, Azure functions and Stream analytics
• Logical programming in Python, Spark, PySpark, Java, JavaScript, and/or Scala
• Test plan creation and test programming using automated testing frameworks, data validation and quality frameworks, and data lineage frameworks

Your education and experience
This position requires a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Computer Engineering, or Systems Analysis along with a minimum of seven years of experience with all aspects of a project from design to production. In addition, a minimum of five years of experience in a Data Architect role is required. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered. 

What you need to know

• Language requirement: English and French essential (bilingual) with a minimum starting level of functional (level 4) in second official language. Training may be provided to help reach the required level of fully functional (level 5) in second official language.
• Priority will be given to Canadian citizens and permanent residents
• Security level required: Be eligible to obtain Reliability or Secret 
• Relocation assistance may be provided, if required
• Please save a copy of the job poster. Once the closing date has passed, it will no longer be available.

Hybrid Work Model #LI-Hybrid

The Bank offers work arrangements that provide employees with flexibility, enable high-performing teams, and support an excellent workplace culture. Most employees can telework from home for a substantial part of each month as part of the Bank`s hybrid work model, and they are expected on site at the Bank location a minimum of eight days per month to help build connections between colleagues. You must live in Canada, and within reasonable commuting distance of the office.

What you can expect from us
This is a great opportunity to join a leading organization and be part of a high-performing team. We offer a competitive compensation and benefits package designed to meet your needs at every stage of your life and career. For more information on key benefits please visit A great deal to consider. 

• Salaries are based on qualifications and experience and typically range from $99,340 to $124,175 (job grade 18)
• Depending on performance, you may be eligible for performance pay. The first tier of performance pay is for successfully meeting expectation, at  7 to 10% of your base salary. The Bank offers additional performance pay for those who exceed expectations (15% of your base salary).. Exceptional performers who far exceed expectations may be eligible for higher performance pay.
• Flexible and comprehensive benefits so you can choose the level of health, dental disability and life and/or accident insurance coverage that meets your needs
• Extra vacation days (up to five each year) that you can purchase to add to your vacation entitlement
• Indexed, defined-benefit pension #LI-POST

We wish to thank all applicants for their interest and effort in applying for this position. Only candidates selected for interviews will be contacted.