Hybrid Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture – Data & AI

at Colliers

• Job title: Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture – Data & AI
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: CA$157,500 - CA$175,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: AWS, Azure, BigQuery, Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, Kafka, Spark
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Toronto, Canada

About the role

• Senior Director of Data & AI Architecture at Colliers leading cloud-native data and AI platform initiatives. Transforming digital processes and providing strategic architectural leadership for enterprise systems.

Responsibilities

• We are hiring a transformational yet pragmatic leader to architect and scale Colliers’ data-to-AI platform on Google Cloud.
• This role is central to our digital transformation.
• You will turn our GCP standardization and Gemini Enterprise initiatives into durable capabilities that deliver trusted data, governed GenAI, and measurable business impact — without accruing technical debt.
• As the Senior Director of Data & AI Architecture, you will set the multi-year strategy, make rigorous architecture decisions, and guide cross-functional teams to ship outcomes that executives can trust and frontline teams can use.
• You will have strategic autonomy, executive support, and a global team committed to innovation.
• Define, own, and champion the enterprise data & AI architecture vision and roadmap, ensuring direct alignment with strategic business priorities.
• Lead the architectural design of a cloud-native data & AI platform on GCP (BigQuery, Vertex AI, Pub/Sub, Dataflow), incorporating reference patterns for Snowflake, Databricks, and Kafka where appropriate.
• Establish and govern the financial operations (FinOps) for the platform, driving cost-optimization, budget predictability, and tracking unit economics (e.g., LLM request cost, BigQuery slots).
• Accelerate the enterprise adoption of Gemini on Google Cloud by defining the technical architecture for governance, usage analytics, and secure integration with enterprise data.
• Architect grounded AI patterns (Vertex AI Search, RAG) with context caching and cost controls to balance innovation with sustainability.
• Standardize LLMOps practices and responsible AI guardrails aligned to NIST AI RMF and EU AI Act, including patterns for automated evaluation, red-teaming, and jailbreak defenses.
• Act as a key technical leader within the AI Governance forum, shaping policy in partnership with Legal, Compliance, and Risk.
• Institutionalize the Google Cloud Dataplex Universal Catalog to publish certified data products, enforce column-level lineage, and automate data quality rules with alerting.
• Adopt OpenLineage to capture runtime pipeline lineage from tools like Dataflow and Spark, accelerating root-cause and impact analysis.
• Architect a defense-in-depth security posture using VPC Service Controls, private ingress/egress, and Sensitive Data Protection (DLP) to mitigate data exfiltration risks.
• Apply Confidential Computing (Confidential VMs/GKE) for data-in-use protection during sensitive analytics and ML workloads.
• Serve as a trusted advisor to business and technology leaders, translating complex strategies into clear, outcome-oriented plans.
• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing community of practice for architects and engineers across Data, Enterprise Architecture, and AI/ML functions.

Requirements

• 12–15+ years across data architecture, engineering, and analytics, with 3+ years in an enterprise leadership role leading large-scale modernization.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• A proven track record of delivering governed GenAI and data platform capabilities from strategy through execution.
• Deep, hands-on knowledge of GCP data services (BigQuery, Vertex AI, Dataplex, Pub/Sub, Dataflow) and multi-cloud awareness (Azure/AWS).
• Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer/Architect, TOGAF, DAMA CDMP.
• Experience with enterprise enablement, admin controls, adoption analytics, long-context RAG patterns, and cost optimization.
• Mastery of Dataplex for creating data products and enforcing column-level lineage, supplemented by OpenLineage for runtime analysis.
• Demonstrable expertise in VPC Service Controls, DLP, Confidential Computing, and fine-grained BigQuery security.
• Practical LLMOps experience (TEVV, safety filters, adversarial testing) and operating AI governance aligned to frameworks like NIST AI RMF or the EU AI Act.

Benefits

• Innovative projects: Work on cutting-edge initiatives that shape our communities, drive our growth, and make a tangible impact.
• Career growth: Advance your career and achieve your goals with industry-leading training and development programs.
• Competitive benefits & compensation: Enjoy a comprehensive and flexible benefits package along with competitive compensation that rewards your contributions and supports your well-being.
• Collaborative culture: Join our enterprising team where innovation thrives, collaboration is key, and our people are empowered to be their authentic selves and do their best work.
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion: Our robust North American Diversity & Inclusion Program features eight Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), where you can connect, learn, and contribute to a diverse and supportive community.
• Global network : Join a global team of 24,000 professionals across 70 countries, where you'll expand your network and learn from experts in a dynamic international community.