Lead Architect, Cloud & AI – Asia

This role provides senior architecture leadership and governance for cloud, AI, and emerging technologies supporting Manulife's Asia markets. Working across global and regional technology teams, you will shape target-state architectures, standards, guardrails, and reusable patterns that enable secure, resilient, scalable, and responsible technology adoption while addressing regional business and regulatory requirements. Based in Canada or the United States, you will serve as a trusted architecture advisor to senior business and technology leaders, connecting enterprise technology strategy with the needs of Asia's diverse markets. You will influence architecture across Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Alibaba Cloud and help guide the responsible adoption of Generative AI, Agentic AI, and other emerging technologies. This is an opportunity to influence architecture at enterprise scale, helping teams make sound technology decisions while creating the standards and patterns that enable innovation, consistency, and reuse across markets. Position Responsibilities: Asia Cloud Architecture & Governance • Provide strategic architecture direction and governance for cloud, AI, and emerging technology initiatives supporting Manulife's Asia markets. • Define and evolve target-state architectures, reference architectures, technology standards, guardrails, and reusable enterprise patterns. • Guide architecture across Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Alibaba Cloud, balancing enterprise standards with regional business, technology, data, resiliency, and regulatory requirements. • Lead architecture reviews and provide clear recommendations on significant technology decisions, exceptions, risks, and trade-offs. • Connect Asia market requirements and architecture priorities with global technology strategy, standards, and roadmaps. • Identify opportunities to simplify technology landscapes, increase reuse, reduce unnecessary complexity, and avoid inappropriate vendor or platform dependency. • Promote architecture approaches that support scalability, resiliency, interoperability, security, operational readiness, observability, and cost effectiveness. AI & Emerging Technology Architecture • Shape enterprise architecture for Generative AI, Agentic AI, and other emerging technology capabilities, ensuring alignment with business priorities and enterprise architecture principles. • Establish reusable architecture patterns for language models, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), enterprise grounding, model selection and routing, context management, AI orchestration, and integration with enterprise data, applications, platforms, and tools. • Provide architecture leadership across the Microsoft AI ecosystem, including Azure AI Foundry, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, GitHub Copilot, Microsoft Fabric, and evolving AI capabilities. • Evaluate relevant technologies and models across commercial and open-source ecosystems, including Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and emerging providers. • Shape architecture approaches for AI agents and multi-agent solutions, including orchestration, identity and authorization, Model Context Protocol (MCP), APIs, memory and context, human-in-the-loop controls, observability, and auditability. • Evaluate emerging technologies based on business value, architectural fit, security, resiliency, scalability, interoperability, operational readiness, and cost. • Lead or sponsor targeted architecture assessments, feasibility studies, and proofs of concept when needed to inform significant technology and architecture decisions. Security, Risk & Responsible Technology • Ensure cloud and AI architectures align with cybersecurity, privacy, regulatory compliance, data governance, model risk, and Responsible AI requirements. • Partner with Cybersecurity, Risk, Data, Platform, and Engineering teams to incorporate appropriate controls for identity, authorization, data access, content safety, observability, and auditability. • Establish practical architecture guardrails that enable teams to innovate while maintaining appropriate enterprise controls. • Guide the integration of cloud and AI capabilities with enterprise platform, data, API, identity, and security services. • Promote resilient, observable, and cost-conscious architectures, incorporating appropriate reliability, performance, and FinOps considerations. Enterprise Leadership & Collaboration • Serve as a trusted architecture advisor to senior business, technology, and architecture leaders across global and Asia market teams. • Provide technical direction for strategic cloud, AI, and emerging technology initiatives, helping stakeholders evaluate options, risks, dependencies, and trade-offs. • Partner with global and regional Architecture, Engineering, Data, Cybersecurity, Risk, and Platform teams to drive alignment and effective architecture decisions. • Engage strategic technology providers to understand product roadmaps and assess emerging capabilities relevant to Manulife and its Asia markets. • Communicate complex architecture concepts and decisions clearly to technical practitioners, business stakeholders, and senior leadership. • Mentor architects and engineers and contribute to the evolution of architecture standards, practices, and communities across the organization. Required Qualifications: • Significant experience in enterprise, solution, platform, cloud, or AI architecture, typically gained through 10+ years in progressively complex technology and architecture roles. • Demonstrated experience designing and governing enterprise-scale cloud architectures, particularly within Microsoft Azure and modern multi-cloud environments. • Experience defining target-state architectures, reference architectures, technology standards, architecture guardrails, and reusable enterprise patterns. • Strong understanding of cloud architecture, cybersecurity, identity and access management (IAM), APIs, data and integration