Director, Engineering, Core Banking

Join a Challenger

Being a traditional bank just isn’t our thing. We are big believers in innovating the banking experience because we believe Canadians deserve better options, and we challenge ourselves and our teams to creatively transform what’s possible in banking. Our team is made up of inquisitive and agile minds that find smarter ways of doing things. If you’re not afraid of taking on big challenges and redefining the future, you belong with us. You’ll get to work with people who will encourage you to reach new heights. We like to keep things fun, ask questions and learn together.

We are a big (and growing!) family. Overall we serve more than 670,000 people across Canada through Equitable Bank, Canada's Challenger Bank™, and have been around for more than 50 years. Equitable Bank's wholly-owned subsidiary, Concentra Bank, supports credit unions across Canada that serve more than six million members. Together we have over $125 billion in combined assets under management and administration, with a clear mandate to drive change in Canadian banking to enrich people's lives. Our customers have named our EQ Bank digital platform (eqbank.ca) one of the top banks in Canada on the Forbes World's Best Banks list since 2021. 

The EQ Bank Engineering Team

EQ Bank Engineering Team has been advocating building best-in-class branchless digital banking experience to advance millions of Canadians’ personal financial goals since its inception. The team believes that the more agile and seamless banking features we build, the more wealth opportunities Canadians can unlock. Engineers in EQ Bank adopt the agile mindset to continually create, test, deploy, improve, and scale banking digital services. Our partnership with Wise, Nesto, Ratehub, Flinks, Borrowell, and Neo Financial has given us top-notch banking consumer insights, and therefore, these insights allow the Engineering Team to build a differentiated and unique digital banking platform. The team is on an 18-to-24-month transformational journey and ready to expand more banking features by growing double-digit team size to triple-digit. Join us to lead engineers on a transformational journey!

Purpose of Job

We are evolving how we build and deliver software, and we are looking for a Director, Engineering (Core Banking) to lead and grow our teams! We are looking for someone that will enable EQ Bank’s Challenger Bank aspiration: A banking platform to put the power in customers’ hands. Every feature we build is designed to give our customers an edge over their money to maximize their potential. You will use cloud-native technologies and product-centric agile methodologies with an emphasis on user experience to manage multiple cross-functional pods dedicated to launching new products, features, and ongoing business value for our digital banking clients.

Reporting to the Sr Director, Digital Banking, you will have ownership and responsibility over the evolution our existing consumer Core Banking platform into a modern, state-of-the-art core banking platform using foundational Azure Cloud, DevOps, API, and PaaS services to deliver dozens of production releases per month. You will lead and collaborate on strategic roadmap planning, vendor relationship and engagement, build and manage a talented team that specialized in internal and external resources/suppliers, manage budget, vendor partners and suppliers, and be part of C-suite conversations about technology transformation for the Bank.

As Director, you will lead multiple teams through all areas of Agile Software Development and partner closely with Digital Banking Business & Operations, Product, and Engineering teams to prioritize and deliver outcome driven solutions. This will include quicker sprint cycles enabling MVP approaches and faster learning towards our customer goals and objectives

The Work

• Demonstrated experience in product-focused engineering roles such as Director, Senior Solution Architect, Senior Development Manager, Senior Technical Delivery Lead with proven experience in leading teams with focus on core banking.
• Designing, implementing, and maintaining tiered architecture in an organization with focus on Core Banking.
• Managing cloud native environment, and controls in a SaaS dedicated / tenant integration models.
• Driving decentralized evolution of core banking systems with oversight of core banking managed service support from large vendors.
• Rolling out and leading product-centric agile culture and managing cross-functional teams focused on delivered beautiful product and consumer experiences.
• Leading and Guiding engineers to build modern microservices design.
• Directing accountability of promoting for best practices in resiliency and high availability across the applications in the platform teams.
• Directing accountability for providing build and maintenance of technology framework applications, and event processing resiliency across the bank.
• Architecting and designing of the API interfaces across the core banking platform teams and promoting BIAN and Open banking standards across the bank.
• Driving the roadmap and governance processes for the various aspects of API Management and Resiliency and stability concerns.
• Driving a team with focused platform engineering specific OKRs and highlight growth and maturity within execution cycles.
• Mentoring engineering managers, senior architects and engineers to proactively manage and track work through sprints and provide transparency to all stakeholders.
• Working with cross-functional pods to coordinate QA strategy, release management and deployment activities.

Let's talk about you

• Demonstrated 12-15 years of experience in platform engineering leadership roles -focused engineering roles such as Director, Senior Manager ( Senior level Managing role), and principal architect, with proven experience in leading teams focussed on managing vendor relationship.
• Have 5+ years of experience in dealing with core banking system
• Highly preferred experience in managing Temenos vendor, FIS vendor, and other banking related partners 
• You’re well versed and have managed a team that supports API Lifecycle Management, Have driven API Gateway roadmaps, and have managed teams that have built event-driven platforms with high availability, resiliency and performance considerations.
• Expertise in maintaining systems with multi-tier API Architecture, rolling out and leading in product-centric agile culture and managing cross-functional teams.
• Builder mindset and proven technical depth to lead and guide engineers to build modern domain-based microservices architecture systems.
• Exemplary interpersonal and presentation skills with expert collaboration and customer-relationship skills with a proven ability to engage with all levels of the staff and management across multiple partner teams
• Post-secondary or related technical degree or equivalent experience is required.

#INDE

What we offer [For full-time permanent roles]

💰 Competitive discretionary bonus 

✨ Market leading RRSP match program

🩺 Medical, dental, vision, life, and disability benefits

📝 Employee Share Purchase Plan

👶🏽 Maternity/Parental top-up while you care for your little one

🏝 Generous vacation policy and personal days 

🖥 Virtual events to connect with your fellow colleagues

🎓 Annual professional development allowance and a comprehensive Career Development program

💛 A fulfilling opportunity to join one of the top FinTechs and help create a new kind of banking experience

The incumbent will be working hybrid and in office time will be spent working from Equitable Bank’s additional office space located at 351 King Street East, Toronto, ON.

Equitable Bank is deeply committed to inclusion. Our organization is stronger and our employees thrive when we honour and celebrate everyone’s diverse experiences and perspectives. In tandem with that commitment, we support and encourage our staff to grow not just in their career path, but personally as well. 

We commit to providing a barrier-free recruitment process and work environment for all applicants. Please let us know of any accommodations needed so that you can bring your best self to the application process and beyond. All candidates considered for hire must successfully pass a criminal background check and credit check to qualify for hire. While we appreciate your interest in applying, an Equitable recruiter will only contact leading candidates whose skills and qualifications closely match the requirements of the position.

We can’t wait to get to know you!