The Chief Architect, Enterprise Technology Services (ETS) is the senior architectural leader responsible for defining, governing, and evolving the technology standards, domains, and reference architectures that underpin Manulife’s shared enterprise technology landscape.

This role sets the architectural direction for ETS-owned platforms and services, ensuring enterprise standards are not only clearly defined, but engineered directly into delivery. The Chief Architect aligns enterprise architecture principles with real-world product and engineering needs by translating strategy into reference architectures, Golden Paths, and automated architectural guardrails that teams can adopt with confidence and minimal friction.

Operating at the intersection of platform strategy, engineering enablement, and enterprise governance, this role plays a critical part in shaping Manulife’s evolution toward a platform-driven, product-aligned technology organization.

Position Responsibilities:

Architectural Ownership of Enterprise Technology Domains

• Own architectural standards, reference architectures, and target-state direction for major ETS technology domains, including but not limited to:

✔️Cloud platforms and landing zones

✔️Network and connectivity services

✔️Observability, reliability, and resilience platforms

✔️FinOps capabilities and tooling

✔️Core shared platforms and developer enablement services

• Establish clear boundaries, responsibilities, and interfaces between ETS-owned domains and enterprise- or segment-owned capabilities.
• Ensure domain architectures align to enterprise principles and enable scalable, secure, and cost-effective delivery across segments.

Standards, Reference Architectures, and Golden Paths

• Define ETS technology standards by codifying strategic intent into domain-specific reference architectures and reusable patterns.
• Own the full lifecycle of architectural standards—from definition through adoption, evolution, and retirement.
• Translate reference architectures into Golden Paths, templates, and consumable solution patterns that accelerate delivery and reduce variance.
• Partner with platform, DevOps, and engineering enablement teams to automate standards through pipelines, policy-as-code, and architectural guardrails.

Product and Engineering Partnership

• Work closely with product, platform, and engineering leaders to ensure architectural standards are practical, adoption-friendly, and aligned to delivery realities.
• Act as a trusted design authority and thought partner, helping teams make informed architectural trade-offs within approved standards rather than relying on ad hoc exceptions.
• Provide clear target-state guidance and transition patterns that support platform modernization and evolutionary change.

Enterprise Alignment, Risk, and Control Integration

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Risk, Security, Audit, and Compliance teams to ensure ETS architectures are compliant and audit-ready by design.
• Embed regulatory, resilience, and risk requirements directly into standards, reference architectures, and Golden Paths.
• Represent ETS architectural perspectives in enterprise governance and decision forums, influencing outcomes through clarity, credibility, and engineering insight.

Leadership and Influence

• Operate as a peer to other Chief Architects across segments and global functions, shaping enterprise-wide architectural direction through influence and collaboration.
• Set the architectural bar for shared enterprise technologies, balancing consistency with innovation.
• Build strong partnerships across ETS, business segments, and control functions—enabling alignment without unnecessary bureaucracy.
• Mentor senior architects and elevate overall architectural maturity, judgment, and impact within ETS.

What Success Looks Like:

• Clear, authoritative reference architectures exist for all major ETS domains and are actively used by delivery teams.
• Product and engineering teams adopt ETS standards because they accelerate delivery, reduce risk, and improve developer experience.
• Golden Paths measurably reduce solution variance, review effort, and time-to-first-delivery.
• Risk, audit, and compliance engagements are simplified through standardized, engineered controls embedded into platforms by design.

Required Qualifications:

• Senior architectural leadership experience in large, complex enterprise environments, ideally within regulated or risk-aware industries.
• Proven experience designing, governing, and evolving technology domains, reference architectures, and standards at scale.
• Deep understanding of cloud platforms, shared services, and modern engineering and platform practices.
• Strong ability to influence senior stakeholders and drive adoption through clarity, credibility, and partnership—without relying on positional authority.

When you join our team:

We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.

We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.

As part of our global team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit https://www.manulife.com/en/about/our-story.html .

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

It is our priority to remove barriers to provide equal access to employment. A Human Resources representative will work with applicants who request a reasonable accommodation during the application process. All information shared during the accommodation request process will be stored and used in a manner that is consistent with applicable laws and Manulife/John Hancock policies. To request a reasonable accommodation in the application process, contact hr@manulife.com .

Referenced Salary Location

Toronto, Ontario

Working Arrangement

Hybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$129,800.00 CAD - $241,200.00 CAD

Employees also have the opportunity to participate in incentive programs and earn incentive compensation tied to business and individual performance. The actual salary will vary depending on local market conditions, geography and relevant job-related factors such as knowledge, skills, qualifications, experience, and education/training. If you are applying for this role outside of the primary location, please contact hr@manulife.com for the salary range for your location.

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans. We also offer eligible employees various retirement savings plans (including pension and a global share ownership plan with employer matching contributions) and financial education and counseling resources. Our generous paid time off program in Canada includes holidays, vacation, personal, and sick days, and we offer the full range of statutory leaves of absence. If you are applying for this role in the U.S., please contact hr@manulife.com for more information about U.S.-specific paid time off provisions.

We use data and analytics technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and automated processing tools, to analyze and process the information you provide to us or third parties in the application process. For more information, please refer to our personal information collection statement .